On Comments in Chinese

What is it with these Chinese "comments"? I know it happens to other bloggers, I've seen it in the Blogger complaint forum, but I'm still not sure why. If it's spam, why do the spammers think they can sell us anything in Chinese?

Every day, I eagerly check to see if anyone has been interested enough in my posts to make a comment - and most days the "comments" are either Chinese or English language spam.

Today there were two.

Sigh!

MADIGAN MINE By Kirstyn McDermott. Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 2010

Alex is in his twenties, in a shared house and working a dead-end job after failing to get anywhere with his art. Suddenly, he runs into childhood sweetheart Madigan, daughter of a wealthy family, who had been taken back to Ireland and wandered Europe after her mother’s death, before returning to Melbourne.

Madigan is beautiful, passionate, far more talented in art than Alex could ever be. And she is very much in love with him.

But Madigan has something deeply weird about her. She moves into his share house and his life, then brings her group of - disciples? Fans? Only Alex can’t see that there’s anything wrong, but even he throws her out when she finally goes too far even for him – and then she commits suicide.

But is she as dead as she seems? Alex suffers blackouts. People he has never met greet him. He has, apparently, done things he can’t remember doing. And it only gets worse….

This could easily be a psychological thriller, but gradually, through flashbacks, the reader realises that there is enough evidence to believe Alex when he says he’s possessed.

It’s an interesting premise, a possession story from the viewpoint of the possessed, and it’s some time before you do accept that he’s possessed and not just crazy – Alex is not exactly a stable person even at the beginning of the novel. My own background has the dybbuk as part of its folklore, but there is a ritual way to get rid of the dybbuk, while Alex seems to find only one very grim way to get her out of his body, if he is willing to do it.

This is a debut novel from a writer who is well-known in Australia for her short horror fiction and has won several awards in this genre. Hopefully, it is just the first in a long career.

So, what is it with all these princesses?

This is something for which we can't blame Stephenie Meyer. Her heroine is, at least, just the daughter of the local policeman. She might land herself a hot vampire boyfriend (or should that be a cold marble-skinned one?), but she isn't a vampire princess or a chosen one (at least - not in the first book. I haven't read the others yet).

I have just received my latest novel in which the heroine, a "normal American teenage girl" suddenly finds out she's a princess of some supernatural realm. I made myself read something else first, so that I wouldn't be biased.

But there's also a new pile of books at my school, to be processed next term, with at least three of these books in it. I think one of them is about a girl who finds she's a Faerie princess and gets a hot boyfriend from the supernatural realm. Vampire princesses are common. The story is as follows: the heroine is about to turn sixteen. She finds out that her parents are not her real parents, or at least her single-parent family is that way because her mother once had a romance with a vampire, a demon or a Faerie. And the father is always, always a king or a prince. Which makes the heroine a princess. And if she doesn't date the gorgeous mystery boy who has turned up in her life, the world will come to an end. Usually, there are bad guys after her, wanting to use her specialness for their own evil purposes.

Buffy, please come back! She may be the teenage "chosen one", but at least she's not a princess. And before the series was over, she found the reason for the "chosen one" and made damned sure that every girl could do what she did.

But, all this said, for the time being at least, the girls love it. So we older cynical girls will just have to accept it.

On the other hand, at least one of the good readers in Year 7 at my school has asked for the original Dracula. She too is getting a little tired of the vampire princesses.

THE MOTH DIARIES By Rachel Klein. London: Faber, 2004

This book was published a long time ago. I'm guessing that it has been sent for review again because there are plans afoot to make a movie based on it. From what I have read, it will be a horror movie, which may or may not be able to show the questions raised by the book.

It’s an interesting read – and a long way from the vampire romances coming out so regularly now.

Set in a boarding school for girls, some time in the 1970s, this very Gothic novel reads like a cross between Carmilla and The Turn Of The Screw. The narrator writes a foreword and afterword thirty years down the track, saying that her psychiatrist has suggested publishing the diary she kept at school, which he has had since treating her. Names will be changed “to protect the innocent”, but we never learn hers at all.

The narrator resents new girl Ernessa, who has taken over her friendship with Lucy Blake, the golden-haired airhead who, nevertheless, helped the diarist settle into the boarding school where she was sent after her father committed suicide (or did he? Was it suicide or murder?). She becomes convinced that Ernessa is a vampire. Ernessa never seems to eat. Her bed seems to be unslept-in. There is a bad smell coming from her room, though only the diarist seems to notice it. Lucy is gradually becoming weaker and weaker. There is, of course, an irony in the name Lucy - the same as Dracula’s victim - although at one point in the novel the diarist sneers at a teacher who suggests she might enjoy Stoker’s book.

The thing is, the narrator is unreliable, much like the one in Justine Larbalestier’s Liar. There are hints throughout the book that she is not quite right in her mind, that, as with the governess in The Turn of The Screw, it might all be in her head. She does seem to find evidence for her beliefs – very compelling evidence – but is she telling the truth, even in her diary? I was expecting a twist at the end – and there was, so make sure you read it all the way to the end, including the “Afterword”. And, to give the author credit, there are clues throughout the novel. She isn’t unfair to her readers.

I’d recommend this book for good readers from about sixteen up.

There are many references in it to classic supernatural fiction, but the one I would suggest handing the reader afterwards is Carmilla, which is mentioned several times and with good reason.

And please- read it BEFORE you see the movie. However good it is - we'll have to see - it may not be able to throw out the same clues.

BLOOD FEUD By Alyxandra Harvey. London: Bloomsbury, 2010.

This is a sequel to My Love Lies Bleeding, set only a few days later. The vampire Drake family are now the royal family of the vampire community – that part of it, of course, which is not connected with the Hounds, the Host or the nutty Hel-Blar. The Host, led by evil vampire Montmartre, has been trying to capture Solange, now Princess Solange, the only girl born to her family in nine hundred years, so that Montmartre can be the next king. In the last novel, Solange managed to survive her change to vampire state (it’s a genetic thing in her family) with the help of her friend Lucy, a vampire hunter who became Solange’s boyfriend and a party of Hounds, led by French girl Isabeau St Croix.

Isabeau, as we learn in this book, had survived the French Revolution and her time in the streets of Paris, only to be turned into a vampire in London, by evil British vampiric earl, Greyhaven, who had then left her buried for two hundred years before she was rescued by the Hounds and brought to America (in this world, vampires don’t seem to have any special problems with crossing water, any more than they vanish from mirrors). The previous novel was centred around Solange and Lucy; this one is about the blossoming romance between Isabeau and Solange’s brother Logan.

Montmartre hasn’t given up, of course. And Isabeau discovers that Greyhaven is still around and helping him.

The author has taken trouble over vampire culture and legend. I suppose there would be some if vampires were born as well as made. Some things I found a little strange. The Hound culture seems to be very ancient, connected with female shamans – shamankas – and dogs, but, though it’s set in America, there doesn’t seem to be any Native American connection.

Of course, there were people in North America before the Native Americans – they may have been responsible for killing off all the prehistoric animals whose remains have been found. Maybe they were even vampires – who knows? But the Hounds seem to speak Welsh! This needs some explanation and perhaps this will happen in the next novel. And I’d like to know how genetic vampires age. The family matriarch, a mediaeval Frenchwoman, is still around, somewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else that old. Isabeau still looks eighteen, but she was turned. Will Logan stay eighteen? Will his mother stay Queen forever unless someone stakes her? It’s no wonder Tolkien made an “out” for his immortal Elves, or they, too, would have had the problem of Mum and Dad being around forever, telling you what to do! (As it was, 2000-year-old Arwen still had to do her father’s bidding).

Never mind. The series is fun. It takes itself a whole lot less seriously than many others of this genre. Logan is turned on by the fact that Isabeau can really kick butt. And vampires stake each other! Isabeau rolls her eyes at those pretentious vampires who carry polished stakes, when her comrades just sharpen sticks. There are cheeky references to such things as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, though there are probably a lot of teenagers out there who haven’t heard of Buffy(Pity about that).

The first book has been popular in my library and I have every intention of putting this one in as well. In fact, there's a student waiting for it right now...

THE WILDKIN’S CURSE By Kate Forsyth. Sydney: Macmillan, 2010.

This is a so-called “companion volume” to The Starthorn Tree, which I haven’t read, but it doesn’t matter. It can be read as a stand-alone story, though it is set some years later.

The novel is set in a world in which there are different types of people – the aristocratic starkin, the lower-class hearthkin and the wildkin, who are more or less human, but with an Elvish feel about them –pointed ears and magical abilities. There are Faerie-type beings in the forests and the air, who are associated with the wildkin. In the first novel, a group of teenagers set off on a quest to rescue the brother of one of the characters, who was in an enchanted sleep. This time, the children of those characters are on a quest to free wildkin Princess Rozalina, whose starkin father is keeping her locked up in a tower and has plans for her. The fate of the entire country depends on what they do – but Princess Rozalina is dangerous, though not intentionally. Her prophecies always come to pass. Always.

Kate Forsyth is the author of a large number of award-winning children’s fantasy novels and it’s not hard to see why they won prizes. She creates characters you can care about. I don’t generally like quest novels, but this one is not about an elf, a long-lost prince a bad-tempered dwarf and a couple of bickering warriors going after a magical object. The characters are human. They love and hate, they get tired and cold and hungry.

She has also worked carefully on her cultures and background. The society is a strange mixture of Middle Ages and eighteenth century France. She uses whatever bit of history is convenient for her story. Somehow, it works. And it works, also, as a cracking good adventure.

Excuse me. I’m off to find a copy of The Starthorn Tree, so I can see where it all began.

SILAS AND THE WINTERBOTTOMS By Stephen M. Giles. Sydney: Macmillan, 2009

On a tropical island called Sommerset, rich – and nasty - old Uncle Silas Winterbottom is dying. He has been out of touch with the family for years. Now three younger Winterbottoms, Milo, Isabella and Adele, have been summoned to the island, told that he will be leaving his fortune to one of them and has not yet decided which one.

Each of the children has his or her own agenda – but so does Uncle Silas. And his agenda has nothing to do with giving away his fortune to any of them…

This is an over-the-top Gothic tale with tongue planted firmly in cheek. None of the characters is particularly believable, but they’re not meant to be. It’s just a little hard to believe that all this stuff could happen in the present day, even with all the explanations about why no one could so much as get on the phone let alone use the Internet, but then this is not the first book of which this can be said and at least this writer does explain it, unlike some others. And it is deliberately over-the-top.

Kids are likely to enjoy the exaggerated characters and storyline, including Uncle Silas's pet crocodile.

If they do enjoy it, there’s a sequel. Stand by.

LEVIATHAN By Scott Westerfeld. Illustrated by Keith Thompson. New York: Simon Pulse, 2009

Imagine a world in whuch Charles Darwin discovered DNA way back in the 19th century. It might be somewhat like Leviathan, an adventure set at the very beginning of World War I, in a world where genetic engineering is in full swing – but only in Britain and a number of other countries allied with it. Some prehistoric animals, such as woolly mammoths, have been brought back from extinction, but the genetic engineering has mostly been used to create living technology. Double-muzzled dogs are used to sniff for hydrogen in the giant living airships. “Mammothines” are used for transport. Krakens are useful to the British Navy.

Most impressive are the airships, created from whale DNA and home to an entire ecosystem that keeps them going and strange creatures from stingless bees to “flechette” bats, which eat figs containing metal flechettes and then excreting them to fight the enemy.

In the Austro-Hungarian Empire live the “Clankers” whose technology is more like our own, though they use “Walkers” that look more like something out of the Star Wars movies than like the tanks in our world.

The two protagonists are Deryn, a British girl who has disguised herself as boy to be able to join the navy and fly in an airship, and Alek, the (fictional) son of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, whose assassination started the war in both universes. The two meet when Deryn’s ship, Leviathan, is grounded in the Swiss Alps. The two groups have to use their combined technology to survive, with the help of Darwin’s scientist grand-daughter (and yes, she was a real person, though she didn’t travel with a pet Tasmanian Tiger) who herself is on a secret mission. Be warned: it ends on a cliffhanger, with another volume promised.

I must say, Scott Westerfeld is one of the few writers who could convince me that this sort of technology would be around so early, but then, he was also the only writer who ever convinced me that vampires might be possible, if their condition was based on the real world of parasites. The idea of living technology is not original; Harry Harrison did it in his Eden series of novels, in which the dinosaur-killing comet never hit and the more intelligent dinosaurs developed their own civilization based on genetically-engineered living technology.

But the Eden novels took the ideas in a different direction. And this one has the charm of the steampunk genre, along with the alternative universe “what if one thing in history had been different…?”

This is a ripsnorter of an adventure, beautifully illustrated by Keith Thompson, who has contributed gorgeous plates of the kind produced in books published at the time in which the novel is set, and endpapers which feature an elaborate map of Europe, showing where Clanker and Darwinist technology is used.

I’m sure it will be fine in paperback, but if you can get hold of the hardcover for yourself or the young adult in your life, do so, for the full experience.

On Subscription Renewals and Special Offers

Last year I renewed a subscription for my library, a magazine the kids love to read. We got a special offer, $49.95 for twelve issues! This year, we got another "special offer" - the same amount for a whole ten issues! Yay! But ONLY if we subscribed NOW. Two months ahead. It took me ages to get through to the publishers to clarify. They kept answering every question except the one I had actually asked: what happens if I don't take advantage of your fabulous offer? Do I pay more but still get 12 issues? Are you cutting back to ten issues a year? And whoever was replying refused to give me a name to speak to. It may be I was hearing from more than one person, but still...

Finally, someone admitted that they were cutting down to ten issues a year and I had to renew, because they STILL haven't told me what I have to pay if I leave it till August, the date we really are due and I have had enough of this back and forth.

I have to take my hat off to this company's marketing division, though :"Let's send them a whiz-bang special offer and hope they don't notice we've cut the goods back AND we get all the interest on the payment in the meantime." Take from your customers and make it look like you're doing them a favour. As far as I'm concerned, I would have preferred to get a message saying, "We're cutting back, but if you renew now we can keep it at the old price." I would still have taken up the offer, but not had all the annoyance.

Ah, well.

Addendum: Today I got in to work and found a new message from the company offering TWELVE issues for the same price as the previous one. After I'd faxed through the order for the ten.

I rang up the company and spoke to a nice gentleman who fixed it for me and promised an invoice in a few days. I got his name. When you get a competent person on the other end, you don't want to lose them.

ASIM Back Issues

If you're reading this and live in Australia, Andromeda Spaceways is selling random back issues - a bundle of twenty for $60, including postage. That works out at $3.00 a copy. Even if you subscribe, you can always give them away to friends and family. We're trying to raise some money and get rid of back issues before Aussiecon 4. The issue we're taking there will be #47. I've arranged the art with the wonderful Greg Hughes, who has agreed to do all the art for that issue, including the cover, and there will be some very good stories in there. But we need to get rid of some back issues!

I don't usually promote stuff here, but we've all been working hard on this magazine and it's worth promoting.

if you're interested, go take a look at the web site on

THE BOY/FRIEND By R.M. Corbet. Girlfriend Fiction 19. Sydney: Allen and Unwin 2010

Robert (R.M.) Corbet has written fiction for young adults for some time. His last Girlfriend Fiction novel, the romantic comedy Fifteen Love, was actually a re-packaged earlier novel, but this one is brand new. Like Fifteen Love, it is straight romantic comedy rather than a novel with some romance included.

Somewhere in the suburbs of Melbourne (Brunswick?) live best friends Maude and Lou (named for Louis Armstrong, in his musical family). They have lived on the same street all their lives, built a tree-house together and spent hours under the now-cut-down willow trees on the banks of the Merri Creek. Unexpectedly, Lou has asked Maude on a date. Thrown off-balance, she hasn’t taken it seriously, hurting Lou’s feelings.

What now? Does she want him after all? How does she compete with the gorgeous new member of his experimental punk rock band? Or the other female member of his band, who has extremely long legs and is an expert in setting up equipment? What does she do about the clingy Andy?

Of course, this is Girlfriend Fiction. All goes well, with the help of Lou’s sister, a rusting old BMW and a bunch of big hairy bikies.

Mr Corbet certainly enjoys writing over-the-top fiction – and who can’t remember the boy/girl friendship that changed when the boy suddenly noticed you were a girl? I still have the first gift I was given by such a boy, red-faced with embarrassment, when we were twelve…

George Ivanoff's book signing

George Ivanoff, author of the novel Gamer's Quest, which I have reviewed on this blog, has asked me to let it be known that he will be doing a book signing on the weekend (see below). George is a very funny, entertaining speaker and with luck, he will read from his novel - he also has some actor training.

If you have any children or teens in your life and want a birthday gift or very early Yuletide present, this might be a good time to go along.

Eastland is in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and you can get there easily by train - you can see it from Ringwood train station.

Where and when:

Location: Angus & Robertson Ringwood bookstore (Shop L026a) in Eastland Shopping Centre, Victoria
Date: Saturday 8 May 2010
Time: 11.30am-12.30pm

Right book for the right person

I deal with this every now and then: finding a book for a student who doesn't like reading. Last year, it was Jacinta and a Girlfriend Fiction Book. As it happens, she read two books, willingly, that term. Perhaps she hasn't read any more since then, but you never know. One of the books was my crime book, Crime Time.

After parent-teacher night this time, a year 10 girl came to see me. She told me, lip quivering, that she was under orders to read more. She had come to - shudder! - borrow a book.

I asked her, first, what she had last read and enjoyed, which I usually do to help me.

"I've never read a book in my life!" she wailed. "No, Miss, it's true! Well, except for primary school..."

And then she muttered that, actually, she had read something that morning, during her teacher's absence from Literacy class, that she wouldn't mind borrowing, if she had to read a book.

Guess what it was?

Crime Time: Australians behaving badly. :-)

Well, it has done very well in libraries. School libraries especially. I am very flattered to know that a girl who avoids reading is willing to read my book.

Pity bookshops didn't know how to display and promote it.

A Book With My Name On The Cover

It's always exciting when you first see the possible covers for your book. Well, to be honest, I was horrified with some of the initial plans for my last one, Crime Time: Australians behaving badly, but the final product was terrific. Perhaps too terrific; it looks like an adult book till you open it up, so bookshops kept putting it into the adult true crime section, where it was a lot less likely to sell. And if they had thought it was for kids, they would have been horrified. Innocent little dears shouldn't be offered this sort of thing! But the students at my school grabbed it the minute they saw that gruesome picture on the front. And school librarians knew what their library users wanted; I think I will do quite well in Education Lending Right for this one. The cover of my Allen and Unwin books ranged from a library image of a roaring monster for the first one, through a woman with a test tube (cliche!) for the women scientists book to a delightful bewildered-looking cat and a spy with a maginifying glass for the spies book, Your Cat Could Be A Spy.

Now I've been sent three possible covers for my new werewolf novel, formerly Bisclavret, now Wolfborn. One, which I rather liked, was a blue cover clearly influenced by the cover for Melina Marchetta's Finnikin Of The Rock, had a silhouette of a wolf howling in front of a full moon with leaves and forest around. The second, which I believe the publishers favour, was red with a photographic wolf which, unfortunately, seems to be fading into the white background. I liked this least. A third had a photographed silhouette of a wolf against a bleak landscape and splashes of blood. Despite my own feelings on the matter, I've been showing these around and I've put them up in my library with the new books, asking students to vote on them. So far, the overwhelming vote has gone to the third one. The kids love it. They assure me that's the one they, personally would pick up, of the three. My bookseller said that was the one librarians would be most likely to take, but he is carrying copies of the covers on his rounds and asking for opinions. My friend Bart, a teacher-librarian at a large private school, has offered to show them there.

Whichever cover with my name on it ends up in the bookshops, I am very excited.

As always.

This year's Hugo nominees

I found this list on the Aussiecon 4 web site. No harm in spreading the news. Some British writers, especially in the short dramatic presentation, with all those Dr Who episodes. The wonderful Charles Stross, whom I have just discovered in the last few months - and others. One Australian artist, Shaun Tan - and as a teacher-librarian I am thrilled to see his name there, because I know him best as an artist/book illustrator for children/young adults, who produced the wonderful book "The Arrival" which told a beautiful, moving story without a word of text.

I also notice that there are a couple of writers who have been in Andromeda Spaceways, though with different stories. Eugie Foster has been published in ASIM a number of times. Rachel Swirsky has been in ASIM also, as has Lawrence M. Schoen.

Of course, we're planning to bring some back issues to Aussiecon. :-)



The 2010 Hugo and John W. Campbell Award Nominees

864 Total Ballots Cast

BEST NOVEL (699 nominating ballots)

Boneshaker by Cherie Priest (Tor)
The City & The City by China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America by Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
Wake by Robert J. Sawyer (Ace; Penguin; Gollancz; Analog)
The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade)

BEST NOVELLA (375 nominating ballots)

"Act One" by Nancy Kress (Asimov's 3/09)
The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean)
"Palimpsest" by Charles Stross (Wireless; Ace; Orbit)
Shambling Towards Hiroshima by James Morrow (Tachyon)
"Vishnu at the Cat Circus" by Ian McDonald (Cyberabad Days; Pyr; Gollancz)
The Women of Nell Gwynne's by Kage Baker (Subterranean)

BEST NOVELETTE (402 nominating ballots)

"Eros, Philia, Agape" by Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09)
"The Island" by Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2; Eos)
"It Takes Two" by Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three; Night Shade Books)
"One of Our Bastards is Missing" by Paul Cornell (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Three; Solaris)
"Overtime" by Charles Stross (Tor.com 12/09)
"Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster (Interzone 2/09)

BEST SHORT STORY (432 nominating ballots)

"The Bride of Frankenstein" by Mike Resnick (Asimov's 12/09)
"Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh (Asimov’s 1/09)
"The Moment" by Lawrence M. Schoen (Footprints; Hadley Rille Books)
"Non-Zero Probabilities" by N.K. Jemisin (Clarkesworld 9/09)
"Spar" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09)

BEST RELATED WORK (259 nominating ballots)

Canary Fever: Reviews by John Clute (Beccon)
Hope-In-The-Mist: The Extraordinary Career and Mysterious Life of Hope Mirrlees by Michael Swanwick (Temporary Culture)
The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study of Children's and Teens' Science Fiction by Farah Mendlesohn (McFarland)
On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn (Wesleyan)
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms by Helen Merrick (Aqueduct)
This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is "I") by Jack Vance (Subterranean)

BEST GRAPHIC STORY (221 nominating ballots)

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? Written by Neil Gaiman; Pencilled by Andy Kubert; Inked by Scott Williams (DC Comics)
Captain Britain And MI13. Volume 3: Vampire State Written by Paul Cornell; Pencilled by Leonard Kirk with Mike Collins, Adrian Alphona and Ardian Syaf (Marvel Comics)
Fables Vol 12: The Dark Ages Written by Bill Willingham; Pencilled by Mark Buckingham; Art by Peter Gross & Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred, David Hahn; Colour by Lee Loughridge & Laura Allred; Letters by Todd Klein (Vertigo Comics)
Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm Written by Kaja and Phil Foglio; Art by Phil Foglio; Colours by Cheyenne Wright (Airship Entertainment)
Schlock Mercenary: The Longshoreman of the Apocalypse Written and Illustrated by Howard Tayler

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION - LONG FORM (541 nominating ballots)

Avatar Screenplay and Directed by James Cameron (Twentieth Century Fox)
District 9 Screenplay by Neill Blomkamp & Terri Tatchell; Directed by Neill Blomkamp (TriStar Pictures)
Moon Screenplay by Nathan Parker; Story by Duncan Jones; Directed by Duncan Jones (Liberty Films)
Star Trek Screenplay by Robert Orci & Alex Kurtzman; Directed by J.J. Abrams (Paramount)
Up Screenplay by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter; Story by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, & Thomas McCarthy; Directed by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter (Disney/Pixar)

BEST DRAMATIC PRESENTATION - SHORT FORM (282 nominating ballots)

Doctor Who: "The Next Doctor" Written by Russell T Davies; Directed by Andy Goddard (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "Planet of the Dead" Written by Russell T Davies & Gareth Roberts; Directed by James Strong (BBC Wales)
Doctor Who: "The Waters of Mars" Written by Russell T Davies & Phil Ford; Directed by Graeme Harper (BBC Wales)
Dollhouse: "Epitaph 1" Story by Joss Whedon; Written by Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon; Directed by David Solomon (Mutant Enemy)
FlashForward: "No More Good Days" Written by Brannon Braga & David S. Goyer; Directed by David S. Goyer; based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer (ABC)

BEST EDITOR, LONG FORM (289 nominating ballots)

Lou Anders
Ginjer Buchanan
Liz Gorinsky
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Juliet Ulman

BEST EDITOR, SHORT FORM (419 nominating ballots)

Ellen Datlow
Stanley Schmidt
Jonathan Strahan
Gordon Van Gelder
Sheila Williams

BEST PROFESSIONAL ARTIST (327 nominating ballots)

Bob Eggleton
Stephan Martiniere
John Picacio
Daniel Dos Santos
Shaun Tan

BEST SEMIPROZINE (377 nominating ballots)

Ansible edited by David Langford
Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace, & Cheryl Morgan
Interzone edited by Andy Cox
Locus edited by Charles N. Brown, Kirsten Gong-Wong, & Liza Groen Trombi
Weird Tales edited by Ann VanderMeer & Stephen H. Segal

BEST FAN WRITER (319 nominating ballots)

Claire Brialey
Christopher J Garcia
James Nicoll
Lloyd Penney
Frederik Pohl

BEST FANZINE (298 nominating ballots)

Argentus edited by Steven H Silver
Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
CHALLENGER edited by Guy H. Lillian III
Drink Tank edited by Christopher J Garcia, with guest editor James Bacon
File 770 edited by Mike Glyer
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith

BEST FAN ARTIST (199 nominating ballots)

Brad W. Foster
Dave Howell
Sue Mason
Steve Stiles
Taral Wayne

THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL AWARD FOR BEST NEW WRITER (NOT A HUGO AWARD) (356 nominating ballots)

Saladin Ahmed
Gail Carriger
Felix Gilman *
Seanan McGuire
Lezli Robyn *
* Second year of eligibility

IN LONNIE’S SHADOW By Chrissie Michaels. Melbourne: Ford Street Publishing, 2010

In the 1990s, there was an archaeological dig in some historic lanes in Melbourne’s Central Business District. Thousands of bits and pieces from the 19th century, when people lived there, turned up. It has only been in recent years that people have started moving back into the CBD and those are mostly the ones who can afford the horrendous prices of city property, but a century ago there was a large migrant and working-class population living there.

In the Melbourne of the 1890s recession live four young friends: Lonnie, Daisy, Carlo and Pearl. Lonnie is working as a stable hand and about to ride in an illegal midnight race through the streets – a race he has just discovered is fixed. Daisy is a Salvation Army lass and seamstress with no parents and a dark memory that only surfaces in her sleep. Carlo drives a fruit cart and has ambitions to open an ice cream factory. Pearl has been sold into prostitution and is trying to escape from a particularly nasty madam. There are three intertwining stories and each chapter is headed by a description of an item found in the archaeological dig. Each object is mentioned, if only in passing, in thr course of the chapter.

The use of the objects found in the dig is a nice touch. There’s also a mention of the Parliamentary mace that went missing around this time – and who is to say it didn’t happen this way?

It works very well as an historical novel, if you can find some teens who like straight historical fiction, as opposed to historical fantasy. There is a strong flavour of the period in which it happened – and if you happen to live in Melbourne, as I do, it’s fascinating to imagine what your city might have been like in those days – long after the gold rushes, about twenty years before the First World War. The chapters are short and easy to read.

But you really need to persuade kids to read historical fiction these days. There are always some, but the genre has been out of fashion for a long time, which is a shame.

Talk the teenager in your lfe into reading this. It's worth it.

GIRLFRIEND FICTION #17 and #18: DEAR SWOOSIE by Kate Constable and Penni Russon, THIRTEEN PEARLS By Melaina Faranda. Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2010

Girlfriend Fiction seems to be going strong. Unlike earlier series written to appeal to a YA female audience, these are not always romances and are often humorous. Some of them are written by male authors – Barry Jonsberg, Scot Gardner and R. M. Corbet have been responsible for some of them (although Mr Corbet’s novel, Fifteen Love, a romantic comedy about music and tennis, was a re-packaged edition of a previously-published straight YA novel). Some of the novels are better than others, but the students at my school read them all and fight over who gets them next.

Dear Swoosie is a humorous novel which reminds its young readers that their parents were also teenagers once. India and Poppy, while serving a detention in the school “attic” discover a series of letters written twenty years ago by two girls who address each other as “Swoosie”, are competing for the love of a gorgeous boy and turn out to be their mothers. Said gorgeous boy is Poppy’s father. The two women have not been on speaking terms since. But Poppy’s parents have broken up and India’s father was a short-term relationship and after some argument, the girls decide to get Poppy’s father back together with India’s mother, the girl who lost the fight over him so long ago.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of misunderstanding, two irritated boyfriends, tarot cards, an annoying Principal and junior students who believe they’re both vampires.

It’s an entertaining book that girls should have a great giggle over.

The setting seems to be the Melbourne suburb of Northcote, at a school that is probably a state, rather than private, school.

As an adult who notices things kids might not, I’d like to point out that in the Victorian state school system, at least, even the Principal can’t force kids to do Saturday detentions, nor can she make them dress up as vampires, even to reassure the younger kids – especially not if she went to school with the students’ parents, who dislike her intensely. Of course, it might be a private school.

I’ll just suspend disbelief, for the sake of a highly entertaining novel – the young readers at whom it’s aimed probably won’t notice anyway and won’t care if they do; they’re better at suspending disbelief than adults are.

Thirteen Pearls takes place in the tropical far north of Queensland. Edie Sparks has been building a boat to go around the world like her teen heroes Jesse Martin and Jessica Watson. But boat-building is expensive and she needs $4000 to finish it. When her unpleasant uncle, who owns a pearl farm, asks her to come and babysit his four-year-old stepson, she agrees immediately. The job is, of course, a lot harder than she had expected and the child’s mother, a mail-order bride, is overseas for an indefinite time.

But there are two hunky boys working on the island. Will she end up with gorgeous Eurasian Kaito, heir to a pearling empire, or blonde surfer type Leon, who is saving to travel overseas to see a backpacker chick with whom he had a holiday romance?

That is, if her little cousin Aran doesn’t drive her crazy first?

This one is a standard, though well-written, teen romance. If you’ve read enough of them, you know quite soon which boy she’s going to end up with. Which is okay, because teenagers like things to be predictable in their romances.

But it has an interesting background, as does Melaina Faranda’s previous novel Big Sky – perhaps even more so, because it’s set in the part of Australia where the author lives. There is enough description to tempt the reader to drop everything and go there – and there is plenty of humour to keep you going.

Yes, the girls will like it. This one, along with Dear Swoosie, will go on the shelves at my library very soon and will probably be out on loan before one day is over.

WITH A SWORD IN MY HAND By Jean-Claude van Rijkeghem and Pat van Beirs. Translated by John Nieuwenhuizen. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010

We don’t know a lot about Margeurite de Male, last heiress of the Counts of Flanders. We do know what she probably looked like; the book’s endpapers show her portrait and if this is the typical flattering mediaeval nobility portrait, she must have been truly plain. We know who she married and when and how long she lived.

Other than that - who can say? The heroine of this novel, Margeurite is presented as strong, stubborn and intelligent. She hates embroidery, rides her father’s retired war-stallion, secretly trains in the use of a rapier and swears a lot. She trips up her governess with dried peas so that she can run out to have adventures with the squires. She notices boys, and goes through the pangs of being dumped.

Who can say it wasn’t just this way? Whether or not it happened like this, we feel we’re right in the fourteenth century. We can almost smell the stinks, hear the noises in the streets of Bruges, where Marguerite and her friends from the castle sneak out to watch, enthusiastically, as petty thieves and other such criminals are executed. Marguerite sees nothing wrong in this; after all, these people have had the attentions of a priest, so they’re in heaven after their horrible deaths, aren’t they? We shudder at the detailed description of the plague as it returns and spreads.

This is a beautifully-written novel, beautifully translated by John Nieuwenhuizen who, as well as being an experienced translator, also has plenty of understanding of young people and reading, from his long time in schools.

Give this to teenage girls who have had enough of the vampires.

GUARDIAN OF THE DEAD By Karen Healey. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010

Ellie Spencer’s parents have left her at a boarding school in Christchurch on New Zealand,’s South Island, and gone on a world trip to celebrate Ellie’s mother’s recovery - or at least remission - from cancer. Ellie doesn't know it, but she has magical abilities, triggered by her encounter with gorgeous Mark, who is more than he seems.

Meanwhile, she’s helping her friend Kevin, a university student, with his production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as fight choreographer. Ellie may be big and not-too-attractive to boys, but she does have a black belt in tae kwon do.

But Elizabethan fairies have nothing on New Zealand ones. Especially when “Titania” is after Kevin. And she isn’t even the worst of them. Mythological beings from the distant past of New Zealand, before even the arrival of the Maoris, have plans. They have lost their immortality and they want it back. And they don’t care who else dies so they can get it. Ellie and Mark’s time to save the day is strictly limited - and Mark, let’s face it, is not what he seems to be...


A nice thriller/horror tale with a touch a of humour. Girls, especially, should enjoy this. What they will think of the slight twist at the end, I can’t be sure. The truly nasty curse on Mark really should have required the heroine to make a hard decision, but hey, she’s too busy saving the day to be limited to saving Mark - and she does save him. Sort of. Using a different mythology, as she has learned that you bring your own myths with you. Hopefully, young readers will check out the Greek myths and the European fairy lore thrown into the mix.

Check it out.

Old style Trek fiction

Last weekend I started having a browse around to see if any of the classic works of Star Trek fan fiction I loved reading had been published on-line. I actually found a fabulous web site which was dedicated to preserving these and had a number of my favourites. And I contacted Jean Lorrah, who used to teach mediaeval literature and write stories about Spock's parents, Sarek and Amanda.She did sell a number of novels way back when, but now, in her retirement, has gone for the e-books for children and is having a go at screenplays. I wish her all the best in this area.

I haven't written fan fiction in years. It's not just that people started handing me money to write, but that suddenly, after about 150 stories - literally! - I had run out of things to say. I think I stopped in the middle of a Robin of Sherwood story where someone from our time goes back into the past from the modern Nottingham Goose Fair and deiscovers that Robin and his men are speaking early Middle English and can't understand a word he says (and vice versa!). I'd just been to the Nottingham Goose Fair myself.

However, I still love reading the stuff, and have hundreds of fanzines with which I don't intend to part.

I discovered fan fiction existed when I read Star Trek Lives! and thought I'd have a go myself. But I also wanted to find those stories. Some of them, I did find, because they werre re-printed in the New Voyages anthologies. Some were borrowed from friends who had been in fandom a lot longer than I had.

I have been re-reading some of the fanzines under my bed and on my study book cases and some still stand up, while others I can't believe I paid for.

One of the zines I borrowed was Spock Enslaved, which everyone was desperate to read.

Even then, I found it the funniest thing I had ever read. It had a cover with a half-nude Spock chained to a pillar. When I got into Blake's 7 fiction, I wrote a story in which Avon is chained to a pillar on a matriarchal world and has to be rescued by teleport, still chained to the pillar. It was published in Susan Batho's "naughty" fanzine and that wonderful writer-illustrator Lana Brown did a delightful Svon chained to a pillar which not only made it to the cover but was re-used in following issues.

Out of curiosity, I Googled "Spock Enslaved" - no text publication as far as I can see, but lots of discussion, including whether or not it was slash fiction. Not that I can recall. It was, in fact, Mary Sue - ultra-Mary Sue of the Sweet Young Thing Dies Pregnant With His Child variety. Which, incidentally, makes its way into original Trek on TV, only "The Paradise Syndrome" was a lovely episode, Mary Sue or not.

I admit that stories like "Spock Enslaved" are guilty pleasures for me, however I laughed at the time.

I remember all the ones we wrote for "Spock", the Austrek fanzine, back before Paramount walked in and closed down Aussie zines. Probably I'd wince if I saw some of the stories I wrote back then, some with friends. I remember how we all followed a series about Spock and Chapel by an anonymous writer who turned out to be Diane Marchant and continued writing them after she lost interest. Of course, that series was finished off by "Morva Shepley", wasn't it, Morva? :-) As I recall, Chapel ended up leaving Spock and running off with the greengrocer - yes? It's been a while. It certainly gave us a sense of perspective.

And those were the days when we had to type them up on manual typewriters and so think about them before we submitted.

I know that you only have to do a Google to get as much up-to-date fan fiction as you like now, but for me, the originals are the best. I am going to print out and curl up with some of the stories I've actually found at that web site and maybe have a binge of my fanzine collection during the term holidays.