You might also remember that Jet was the good girl shadow power who struggled with shadow overcoming her mind, as apparently all shadow powers do. And Iridium was the jaded ex-superhero turned rogue Robin Hood. The two were formerly best friends from their school days but Jet now thinks of Iridium as a bad guy who isn’t quite as malevolent as true villains.

Okay, so now in Shades Of Gray there’s a new super-villain Doctor Hypnotic who can manipulate minds. And without the mind control transmitter, there’s lots of new villains on the loose. So Jet and Iridium have to work together to get things under control, with the help of Iridium’s former hero and villain father who has been in prison for some time.

While a fun read, a lot of Shades Of Gray felt like a repeat of Black And White with a new bad guy but similar plot devices. Corp-Co is still manipulating things behind the scenes. Jet and Iridium still have a testy relationship. Neither of them seem truly grown up.

And… it turns out I don’t have much to say about the book. I kinda hate that. Not really the book’s fault that I didn’t really engage with it though. So this is one of those times when I’m posting pretty much exclusively so I remember that I read the book.

Well, I still don’t have a professionally designed layout. But I decided to switch things up a bit to highlight book covers a bit more. Just a bit more graphic pizzazz than I’ve previously gone for. If you were there for the early days of my old site, Rat’s Reading, you might remember that I stuck with a very minimalist style for quite a long time. My tastes have changed, and here we are.

If you are reading this via RSS do click through, check it out, and provide some feedback. In particularly, I’d really like to know what you think of the color scheme. Are parts hard to read with the colors I picked? Is it too quiet? Tell me about that or anything else you like/don’t like about the layout.

The first chapter explains the authors’ theory that the defining feature of modernism is pluralism rather than secularism. In other words, we’re not becoming more secular, we’re just sticking people of different faiths in closer proximity. On the latter, that’s a big duh. On the former, while I agree with the authors that secularism isn’t the driving force that pundits predicted it would be, it’s pretty hard to extrapolate that kind of trend very far into the future. One thing about sociological predictions: they rarely hold up in the long term. Our cultural direction is Brownian motion on the surface of the Earth.

The second chapter divides responses to plurality into three camps: exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist. Roughly, that translates into those who admit no quarter to the possibility they may be wrong and some who allow that they may be wrong about everything. The pluralist group divides their positions into those that are fundamental those which are not core. Basically, they are exclusivist about some things and inclusivist about others. In other words, people apply the buffet rule of religion; they take what they like and leave the rest. Though some people retreat in the face of so many choices to the comfort of absolutism.

Chapter number three covers the problems with relativism. The big one being that pure relativism denies any kind of facts. Which, duh.

Chapter number four covers the problems of fundamentalism. They differentiate fundamentalism from traditionalism. The latter is simply a rebuttable assumption that tradition should be followed. Fundamentalism is, in their words:

an attempt to restore the taken-for-grantedness of a tradition, typically understood as a return to a (real or imagined) pristine past of the tradition.

The only way this works are forms of authoritarianism. Either society-wide, which causes culture wars. Or by getting people to voluntarily commit to groups of believers. The latter method requires self-reinforcement, frequently through shaming and cutting off outsiders. The problems with both should be obvious.

Chapter five, Certainty And Doubt is a soliloquy on just what those two things are, combined with some lengthy disquisition on what Calvin thought they were. If this were a football game, now’s the time to go get a snack and use the restroom.

Then they take on the limitations on doubting. But we need some way to agree on basic rules, they argue! Our options, according to them: divine commandment, natural law, sociological order, and biological survivability. Or, they propose a new way: when a sufficient number of people develop the perception that something is universal. Which is pretty much what we do, and their subsequent discussion throws up it’s hands and says that it doesn’t resolve serious disagreements like those over abortion. Because this method doesn’t allow us to apply rules we all agree one.

Which brings us the final chapter, in which the authors call for a politics of moderation. What is that? I’m not sure they say. It involves human freedom generally. And something about an ethic of responsibility as opposed to an ethic of attitude. Neither of which it defines except by examples of capital punishment and immigration. And that moderation is somewhere in the middle.

Short of too complicated parsing of pseudo-intellectual bullshit, the authors end up with a call for people to be more in the middle of current controversies rather than on the edge.

I felt really cheated by this book. There’s no how here. The why that was promised on the back never materializes here either, other than that the authors think relativism and absolutism is a bad thing. But you know, the world has survived a lot of absolutism, though very little of relativism being in charge. Why we won’t continue to survive is never addressed. Why we need moderation, particularly the politics of moderation they never define, is never clear.

Basically, this book is a lot of blather.

Ganymede is the fourth book in Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century series, the first of which was a breakout hit. I loved Boneshaker. While I didn’t enjoy the subsequent books quite as much as the inaugural book, they were all a lot of fun. Unless Ms. Priest really whiffs, I’ll continue to buy new entries in the series. I expect good adventure mixed with a fair bit of diversity in the cast. Clockwork Century lures the I don’t like politics and political correctness set in with the story and makes them like that which they are afraid of.

Ganymede follows Andan Cly, a dirigible captain from Boneshaker. His goal is to establish a dirigible station in Seattle, one that isn’t run by less than legal pirates. To do that, he needs the money from one or two big jobs. One picking up supplies for the head of the biggest drug supplier in the U.S., and the other will be for a former flame in New Orleans, Josephine Early.

Josephine Early is a black woman and the madam at a house of prostitution. But she’s also a fifth column in the Confederacy for the Union. Her associates have found the Ganymede in the waters of Lake Ponchartrain. The Ganymede is a submarine developed by a Confederate engineer, but lost to them due to infighting. Ms. Early intends to deliver it to the Union, but hasn’t been able to because piloting it is too difficult. Which is where Andan Cly comes in. Taking the submerged Ganymede through the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico should have a lot in common with flying his dirigible. Of course, there’s also the matter of the Texas army that occupies New Orleans and sneaking a truck-sized object by them.

I enjoyed Ganymede quite a bit. I didn’t expect everyone to get captured the the Confederate allies, Texas, then get summarily executed. But given that some measure of success was going to happen, there’s a fair amount of tension as to whether or not they’ll survive the journey. The Ganymede has a very limited fuel and air supply. All the previous pilots have drowned, and they didn’t have the Texian army hot on their heels.

Josephine Early is clearly in charge of the whole operation, outranking Andan Cly and even her military brother who runs the guerrilla band protecting the Ganymede. Even in a story where the military is the center of things, there’s plenty of room for women. In addition, Ganymede includes one of the few transsexual characters I’ve encountered in an adventure minded S.F. story. She isn’t played for laughs nor is her sexuality a tragic characteristic that dooms her existence.

Sponsors may use Posts for any purpose in connection with the promotion of the Contest, including but not limited to displaying the Posts, or any portions thereof, of the Finalists (as defined herein) …

Several other clauses have language similar to the part emphasized above (emphasis mine, not theirs). I am not a lawyer, so I don’t know if the new language allows the use of submitted materials for other purposes through other clauses. Nevertheless, even if they could use the material without compensation, the changes signal that they don’t really intend to. Which goes a long way in my opinion.

They are still excluding derogatory material, and a whole bunch of other things, which means I don’t think this is really an award for good book blogging. Some of the best blogging about books I’ve seen is quite negative, for instance.

Just now I’ve read an article at Stacked Books that brought up another reason I hadn’t even thought of why the format isn’t something I like. I hated the constant promotion that got Starship Sofa a Hugo a couple years ago. The podcast is a pretty good podcast, but there was a strong campaign online that the owner didn’t discourage, and I saw a lot of Tweetering and whatnot pushing to get them a Hugo, and it got old really fast.

Also, the change in terms brings up something I wonder about that isn’t often addressed online. Someplace can change the terms to whatever they want and not tell people? I don’t think any of the entrants to the contest are going to complain about these new terms, but it would have been ugly had they changed them to something more onerous and tried to apply it to previous entries. That could have gotten ugly. Luckily, their management seems to be decent, so it’s not an issue here.

A few years ago I started a bit of a stir when I criticized the awards given by Book Blogger Appreciation Week. The year after that, B.B.A.W. cleaned up it’s awards process. No longer were payola bloggers eligible and they made some changes so that people running B.B.A.W. wouldn’t receive awards.

And now, I am in the position of crying foul on another supposed set of awards for book bloggers. Goodreads and the Association of American Publishers are sponsoring the so-called Independent Book Blogger Awards, though the official terms call it a contest rather than an award. And it’s those terms and conditions that have a huge problem that I’m sure few of the entrants noticed:

By entering this Contest, Entrant agrees that the Entry Materials, including all Posts, become the property of Sponsors and will not be returned to Entrant.

and

Entrant grants Sponsors the non-exclusive right to edit, reproduce, distribute, publish, license, and create derivative works of the Posts in whole or in part, in all forms and media now or hereafter known, including material in digital and electronic media, and translations and adaptations, in any language throughout the world and in Sponsors’ sole discretion. Entrant agrees not to bring, support, or authorize any lawsuit or claim against Sponsors, their affiliates, or any other person, on the grounds that any of Sponsors’ use of the Posts, or any derivative works, infringe or violate any of Entrant’s rights therein.

Entrants are effectively signing away publishing rights to Goodreads and the Association of American Publishers for any of the posts submitted to be judged, without compensation. If they want to publish a best of book blogging book, or use the posts to publicize their products, they get to do so. And you, the entrant, don’t get paid for that.

That’s the biggest issue. I’m also a little peevish about a few other things. These aren’t independent awards. Goodreads and the A.P.A. are hardly independent. Posts that are entered can’t include profanity. This post can’t be entered into their fucking contest. These posts also can’t be derogatory about the contest sponsors or any affiliated entity or person, say a publisher or author or Goodreads. Guess that this rules out this post right there. There’s that independence thing. Guess you are dependent if you enter after all. Posts entered cannot have not won any previous awards. I kinda want to take one of those crappy meme-ish awards that were all the rage on book blogs a few years ago and give it to every entered post, so that they will all be ineligible.

And lastly, the awards have a catch-all clause that allow them to disqualify entrants for whatever. Sponsors further reserve the right, in their sole and unfettered discretion, to reject and disqualify any entry for any or no reason. Please note, this is not the judges deciding in their subjective opinion that something is good or bad. It is Goodreads and the A.P.A. deciding who even gets to be viewed by the judges, all of whom are unknown at this point.

Goodreads and the A.P.A. are not really the organizations I would be looking to decide what is good reviewing, when I’m writing about their products. Much as I think B.B.A.W. is irrelevant, they are in a far better position to be conducting awards for book bloggers than someone who has a financial interest in seeing us promote their crap.

Another five years later, Defending Jacob became available through LibraryThing’s EarlyReviewers program. This is his best yet. It will definitely vie for the position of my favorite legal thriller ever. I have only two criticisms. First, a kind of bland title. And second, it’s hell waiting five years between Mr. Landay’s books.

Defending Jacob will get compared with Presumed Innocent a lot. For one, the marketing put out by the publisher references Scott Turow’s book. They are trying to pick up fans of that book. And if you like Scott Turow fiction, I’m betting you’ll like William Landay fiction. But beyond the marketing, there are a lot of common elements. The main character is a district attorney. He has a resentful subordinate. Instead of the D.A. himself being accused of murder, in this case it’s his son. And the lawyer turns his inside knowledge of the justice system toward defending his family. But there are layers of things going on here that make it more than Presumed Innocent’s tale of the justice system at war with one of it’s own members.

Andy Barber is the A.D.A. His son Jacob is a classmate of the murdered boy, and he initially conceals the fact that he discovered the body as well as other pertinent facts. So he looks pretty guilty, but there’s no evidence for him committing the murder itself.

Where things get interesting is that Andy Barber’s father is doing time for a murder. He’s had no contact with him for decades because he resents what his father did to the family. He also obsesses a lot over whether or not he himself has a propensity to violence because of his father. Now that Jacob is involved with a murder, he questions his heritage even more. This focus seemed a little forced at first, but the build-up is necessary.

The legal drama is far less interesting than Presumed Innocent. But this is less an actual legal thriller than it is a psychological story. The relationship between Andy and his wife, his father, his son, and himself are what are really important, not Jacob’s courtroom maneuvering. The central question for all of these relationships is What kind of man is Andy Barber?

The plot feeds that very well. One of my problems with a lot of crime fiction is that the text seems to telegraph who the bad guy is, or whether or not someone did something. If the key question above is settled too early, the rest of the book becomes superfluous. William Landay did a superb job of making everything interesting at the same time that he keeps all the balls in the air. Toward the end, the plot twists multiple different directions to keep the reader confused. All of the turns made sense, and all of them surprised me!

Jacob stays a cipher throughout most of the book, but I suppose that’s necessary in order to prevent revealing whether he’s a murderer or not. The character of everyone else gradually solidifies, first Andy’s father, then his wife, and finally Andy himself. It was a very satisfying conclusion.

Salvage The Bones is another book I picked up through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I grabbed this for two reasons: it has an awesome cover, and the novel is a little different than what I normally read. The week after I received it, Ms. Ward read at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle, so I attended. Due to traffic, I arrived about 15 minutes late and missed the reading portion, if there was one. Ms. Ward was answering questions posed by about six people. None were actually about the book, since no one had read it yet. 60 days later, a lot of people were reading Salvage The Bones; it won the National Book Award.

Salvage The Bones is a first person account of twelve days in the life of a poor rural black family in Mississippi leading up to Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in 2005. The jacket copy hypes the hurricane, but the characters don’t spend a lot of time focusing on the upcoming storm. Their lives revolve around family, dogs, and surviving. The narrator, an adolescent teen girl named Esch, also must come to terms with her possible pregnancy and the one man who could be the father of her child. Hurricane Katrina is a huge event, but this is not a story about surviving against the elements. It’s more of a story about surviving against the totality of their environment.

I actually read the book months ago, but I’ve been struggling with this review, irrespective of my travel schedule. It’s very well written, the characters are engaging, and the kind of people portrayed are a worthy story to tell. All the way through the book I was impressed with so much, and yet I just didn’t enjoy the book overall. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I haven’t made a whole lot of progress.

It isn’t a problem with the characters. I loved them. Esch’s brother Skeetah keeps a dog for fighting. And even though dog fighting pisses me off, his obstinate pursuit of whatever he thinks his dog needs is noble. When Skeetah brings Esch along to steal cow dewormer from a neighbor’s barn, I was rooting for him.

What I’m wondering is if I was wanting them to succeed too much. Salvage The Bones does not tell a story of success. The books tells a story of survival. The family survives in the face of Hurricane Katrina. They endure through debilitating poverty. They’ve already withstood the tragic death of their mother. Ms. Ward doesn’t turn this into an unlikely story of thriving against the odds. I wanted so much for good things to happen for them, but that never comes. I think it would have been wrong, and disappointing in another way.

The best analogy that I have is various friends of mine who haven’t succeeded. It is so tough to watch their continual struggles and be able to do nothing to help them. Sometimes, I’ve had to distance myself because participating in their lives became too painful. I felt similarly for Esch. Bad shit was going to happen. The words are fixed; I can’t help her. So I’m stuck riding along with her life, so to speak. It’s not pleasant to be powerless to help the powerless. In the real world, ugly suffering is something I have the luxury of facing when I want to usually. Reading through Salvage The Bones reminded me just how much of an option that is for me.

It’s a pleasure to read the story. At the same time, Salvage The Bones is tough for the very same reasons.

So where do fans participate in discussions of the fantastic these days? Blogs. SF Signal. Blog of the Fallen. Neth Space. Hundreds of others. SF Signal alone has become a major player in What People Are Talking About™. Blogs are obviously not the only place where we talk about science fiction. There are lots of places like conventions and book clubs that also drive lots of discussion. But blogs are increasing in importance as traditional venues decline.

All this is a leadup to a post by Renay made on Lady Business on SF blog gender coverage. Renay did something I’ve wanted to do but have been too lazy to pursue. She tallied the book reviews on a number of prominent science fiction blogs and counted the number of reviews of authors that were female as compared to the reviews of authors that are male. The results:

• Group blogs: 25% women
• Female bloggers: 58% women
• Male bloggers: 19% women

Overall the reviews included 42% female authors, 57% male authors, and 1% unknown authors. The highest percentage of female authors covered by a male blogger in Renay’s sample was 33%. The lowest percentage of female authors covered by a female blogger was 46%. That indicates that men are covering one set of books and women are covering a different set, with some overlap. We’re playing in our own backyards mostly, instead of the park.

The following chart best illustrates the disparity:

Gender Breakdown by Blog (credit: Renay/KJ)

Men dominate a lot of the science fiction awards, get published more, and get discussed more. I don’t say this is a problem because I care about women’s careers (though I do) or because of a concern about justice and fairness (though it is). This is a problem for me specifically because I want to read great stories. If literature by men is what gets talked about, I’m going to miss great literature. That women are missing from discussions among men is a problem for male readers as much as it is a problem for female writers. We all lose.

Three years ago I made the decision to add a rule of thumb to my reading choices: For every book by a white male that I finished, I would start a book by someone who was not white and male. My rule isn’t ironclad. It just means that I take a look at my shelves frequently and try to pick out the unread books by women or people of color when my instinct is to go for something familiar. I am nearing the start of year four of this and female authors are becoming familiar to me rather than a category I have to actively seek out. Sweet! A new book by Cherie Priest! Oooh, I hear that Nalo Hopkinson has something coming out. I took The Russ Pledge, essentially.

• Nerd Redefined
• Fantasy Cafe
• Wis[s]e Words
• Val’s Random Comments
• Ian Sales
• Martin McGrath
• Fabio Fernandes

I found lots of people posting about the Russ Pledge, but substantially fewer who actually pledged. I know I did not, thinking my rule of thumb (which I’ve posted about) was enough. One of the benefits of taking the Russ Pledge publicly is that it makes for finding people who care about reviewing women’s writing easier.

I’d like to also compile a list of bloggers who write a substantial amount about female authors so folks can also follow their blogs, but that will take a substantial amount of work and will have to come at a later date.

Please, my dear 3 readers, suggest additional blogs that are either making the effort publicly, or who review women’s writing lots.

Finding and reading bloggers who care is only a small thing though. Lots of people for whatever reason aren’t going to explicitly try to change this, but they can still be enlisted in the effort. There has to be additional things that could be done to encourage more diverse reviewing. Awards? Scholarships? If you had an organization and a budget and a mandate to change people’s behavior (whether you agree that it’s a problem or not), what ways would you do it?

My haul:

The South African edition of Lauren Beukes’ Moxyland. I already have her book, Zoo City, though I haven’t yet read it.

Milk and Quickies, a self-published Indian comic book. Our targets are those of you sitting on the pot and looking for a funner alternative to the morning paper before you start the day. How could I not bid on that?

Kristine Kathryn Rusch‘s space opera series beginning with Diving Into The Wreck.

The second book in the Dark Matter anthology series that collects speculative fiction written by black writers. I read the first a couple years ago. This one will be signed by this year’s WisCon guest of honor Andrea Hairston who contributed to the book. (I also won an item donated by the other WisCon guest of honor this year, Debbie Notkin. But that’s not book related, so there’s no cover to post.)

Stephen Blackmoore‘s City of the Lost.

Chesya Burke‘s Let’s Play White.

A short collection of steampunk stories written by writers from Singapore: The Steampowered Globe.

Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery.

And lastly, Somewhere Beneath Those Waves by Sarah Monette.

The auction is still over but they are still selling t-shirts and taking donations. I picked up one of the shirts at WisCon last year. Nearly every time I wear it someone strikes up a conversation with me over what it means. It’s a great conversation starter.

But I have to take a break from my hiatus to remark on the passing of John Christopher a couple of days ago.

John Christopher was my introduction to science fiction. I read every book of his that the local library would carry. On re-reading the Sword of the Spirits series a couple of years ago, I was amazed by how brutal it was. I didn’t remember that from my youth. If the book banners had ever caught wind of that…

In 7th grade, my English teacher assigned us to write a letter to a favorite author. I wrote something about a trend I thought I saw in his books, though I don’t remember what it was now. Even then I liked pulling stories apart. Of all the people in my class, I was the only person to get a personally written letter back; everyone else got a form letter. He not only wrote the letter, but he actually engaged with my argument, with which he disagreed.

Others came to S.F. through C.S. Lewis Chronicles of Narnia or Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. My introduction was the White Mountains. Unlike other books I loved as an adolescent, I loved Mr. Christopher’s books as much later in life as when I read them the first time.

When my nephews get old enough, I will attempt to lead them astray with books by John Christopher.

The world won’t have John Christopher writing for them anymore, and that’s a pity. But I have his books, so I will not grieve.