Story of the week: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
I've been reading lots of excellent novellas lately and my new story of the week — Binti by Nnedi Okorafor — continues this trend. This futuristic story follows Binti, a sixteen-year-old woman of the Himba people in Namibia, as she leaves Earth to study at a university on a distant planet.
Binti is conflicted about her choice to leave her homeland because leaving is almost taboo among her people. This conflict intensifies when Binti's spaceship is attacked by hostile aliens, an attack that forces her to make decisions which will affect the entire future of not only humanity but countless other alien races.
Binti is an exciting science fiction story set in a future like nothing I've ever read in the SF genre. And to tie in with the comments I made a few days ago about gateway stories for bringing new readers to science fiction, Binti is just such a story. Binti can be read and enjoyed by both people who haven't previously read science fiction and by long-time genre readers.
That's a very difficult feat to pull off, but Nnedi Okorafor succeeds perfectly with Binti.
Don't fear readers discovering SF/F through non-Golden Age authors
As John Scalzi said, I kicked a small genre hornet's nest yesterday with my comments about the fossilization of science fiction and fantasy literature. The comment which seemed to resonate the most is that young people are not finding their way to SF/F through the genre's classic authors like Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien.
Among the people responding to and generally supporting this view are Adam-Troy Castro and Scalzi, who added that "The surprise to me is not that today’s kids have their own set of favorite authors, in genre and out of it; the surprise to me is honestly that anyone else is surprised by this."
Because of this attention I want to expand on my comments about these classic authors. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein — the Big 3 as they're called — were my introduction to science fiction, while Tolkien didn't introduce me to fantasy but was a close runner-up. But I first read these authors decades ago as a child. I also found their works in my grandfather's Golden Age SF collection at a time and place when finding any genre literature was difficult (at least in the rural area I grew up in).
I love Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein and Tolkien but expecting their works to resonate with new readers is ridiculous. With luck new readers will come to love SF/F through new authors and then discover these classic authors. But don't be shocked if that doesn't happen.
In addition, new readers may be exposed to the genre through adaptations of these authors' works. My kids, for example, love the film versions of Tolkien's novels. But they have not enjoyed the written versions of his stories, even though they generally love fantasy literature.
A few years ago I was on a SF/F panel about bringing new readers into the genre. I mentioned that SF needed more gateway novels, at which point the other author on the panel snorted and said we don't need new gateway novels ... the Heinlein juveniles are still perfect.
That is the type of attitude which people should fear because it will kill our genre. But new readers not discovering SF/F through the classic authors you grew up on — that's nothing to worry about.
The fossilization of science fiction and fantasy literature
Update: Thanks to everyone who read and shared this post. I've written a follow-up post on why genre fans shouldn't fear new readers discovering SF/F through non-Golden Age authors.
I'm tired of genre fans who create & read nothing new or exciting & complain today's SF/F they isn't as good as during the golden age.
More exciting SF/F stories are being written today than ever before. But these fans would never know it.
No one still discovers the SF/F genre by reading Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, or Tolkien. (1 of 2
They discover new authors then, maybe, go back and read the classics of the Golden Age. More likely they'll see the films instead.
Science fiction & fantasy has conquered the world. But many genre fans want to keep out the genre lovers who didn't grow up immersed in SF/F
But all that does is make our genre irrelevant to the people who are consuming SF/F films, TV shows, games, comics, and stories.
Science fiction is the more ironic of literary genres--supposedly worships the future but lives firmly cemented in the past.
Novel of the week: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman
The Devil sent me Silver on the Road, the new novel by Laura Anne Gilman. The book appeared on my doorstep one day in a nondescript brown envelope (suggesting the Postal Service might be in league with said Devil, but that's a exploration for another time).
I opened the envelope, wondered who sent me the book, then tossed it onto my to-read pile. Maybe, I thought, reacting as I do to any strange book which shows up unannounced in my life. Maybe I'll read it.
Glad I did. And bless the Devil or whoever sent the book to me because my new novel of the week is this captivating rewriting of the history of the American West.
Except in Gilman's reimagined mix of fantasy and history, the United States — which is only a generation away from independence — doesn't hold sway over the lands west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rockies. Instead, the West is ruled by a mystical creature the rest of the world curses as the Devil.
Except rules is the wrong word because the Devil doesn't rule. He simply keeps the Americans, English, French and Spanish from moving into the West. The Devil has also set a few simple rules which keep the peace among the West's various residents, including the different Native American nations, settler groups, demons, mystical creatures and wandering magicians.
The Devil's most important rule is to not give offense to others, meaning stay out of others' affairs unless asked. But telling the rest of the world to leave the West alone doesn't fit with ideas of manifest destiny and a duty to convert the heathens, so the West is under constant threat of invasion and destruction.
Silver on the Road is told through the eyes of Isobel, a sixteen-year-old human girl raised in the Devil's household. Isobel is sent across the West to learn about the land and to be the Devil's Left Hand, his eyes and out-reached power keeping at bay the world powers who covet this magical land. But as she travels Isobel can't help but question the deal she's made with the Devil and wonder what it will do to both her life and the lands and people around her.
I've enjoyed Laura Anne Gilman's previous novels and stories but with Silver on the Road she creates an entirely different level of fiction, an exciting mix of world creation and character study and realignment of fantasy and history. Part road novel and part coming of age story, Silver on the Road is well written and insightful.
Even though Silver on the Road is the first part of a series — the novel's subtitle is The Devil's West, Book 1 — I found this story as satisfying as a stand-alone tale. I look forward to the sequels and highly recommend this novel to others.
Story of the week: "The Bone Swans of Amandale" by C.S.E. Cooney
Two months ago I said I generally disliked fairy tales, so imagine my surprise when I fell in love with Priya Sharma's reworking of Rapunzel in her short story "Blonde." Still, I figured that story would be the exception which still reaffirmed my overall hatred of fairy tales.
Except now I've also fallen for C.S.E. Cooney's novella "The Bone Swans of Amandale," a delightful reworking of "The Juniper Tree" and "The Pied Piper" with a good dash of swan princesses thrown in. Cooney's story takes fabulous liberties with all of these fairy tales and tropes, melding them into a heart-touching yet fun story narrated by a rat named Maurice.
Yes, the novella is narrated by a rat. Likely the best rat to ever narrate a fairy tale. You'll love Maurice even as he gnaws the flesh off dead bodies, as any good rat of the Middle Ages will do.
Perhaps the reason I've long hated reworkings of fairy tales is because most authors merely retell the original stories in modern settings or with different characters, a perfect recipe for banality. But in Sharma's "Blonde" and Cooney's "The Bone Swans of Amandale" the original fairy tales and tropes are mere touch-stones for deeper explorations of life and fantasy. Sharma and Cooney are not content to retell a fairy tale. Instead, they create something totally new which resonates with what came before but isn't beholden to it.
And both authors do this with such wonderful language. Just as Sharma is known for her beautiful short story writing, so too is Cooney known for her lyrical style. "The Bone Swans of Amandale" is a joy to read, with phrases and descriptions which absolutely delight (more so because they're uttered by a rat).
As a side note, Cooney says she wrote "The Bone Swans of Amandale" after seeing a Mercer Mayer illustration of rats — perhaps this one? — in the living room of Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner. For good measure, a comment Theodora Goss made to Cooney then inspired the swan princess character in the story. As Cooney says, "I defy you to spend any amount of time around Theodora Goss and not start hallucinating about swan princesses."
With a backstory like that, you can imagine how deep the fantasy roots reach with Cooney's novella.
"The Bone Swans of Amandale" was originally published several months ago in Cooney's short story collection Bone Swans. The novella is highly recommended, as are all the stories in the collection.