1laytonwoman3rd
If you’re looking to fill your genre wild card spot with some SFF this year, consider checking out the work of either N.K. Jemisin or Rebecca Roanhorse. Both women are writing award-winning, game-changing SFF, and reading them will help add racial and cultural diversity to your AAC experience.
Born in Iowa in 1972, N.K. Jemisin studied psychology, counseling, and education before she began publishing SFF short stories and novels in the mid-2000s. She is the first person to win a Hugo award three times in a row (for each of the novels in her Broken Earth trilogy) and has been a rallying voice against the hateful attempt by a vocal alt-right minority within the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to suppress POC and LGBTQ SFF writers and rig award voting against them. She also notably runs a successful Patreon campaign to gather and maintain enough patrons pledging monthly financial support that she quit her counseling job and focuses on writing full time.
The Broken Earth trilogy (beginning with The Fifth Season) is probably her most popular work (it being the trilogy that made Hugo history). It is set on a planet which experiences catastrophic climate change every few centuries, and Jemisin has described the trilogy as work that explores “what it takes to live, let alone thrive, in a world that seems determined to break you — a world of people who constantly question your competence, your relevance, your very existence.” Among Jemisin’s other work are the Inheritance Trilogy and the recent short story collection How Long ‘til Black Future Month?
Further Resources:
N.K. Jemisin’s website
Vox article about Jemisin’s threepeat at the Hugos, including video of Jemisin’s acceptance speech
An episode of the Book Riot Podcast including an interview with Jemisin about her use of Patreon to support her writing
Rebecca Roanhorse was born in Arkansas in 1971 and is of Ohkay Owinghey Pueblo and African-American descent. She studied religion and theology, and has a law degree. Her short fiction has won both Hugo and Nebula awards, and her debut novel Trail of Lightning was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula as well. The first book of Roanhorse’s Sixth World series, Trail of Lightning is set in North America after apocalyptic climate change, features primarily Navajo characters, and is informed by Navajo traditional stories. Roanhorse also recently published a Star Wars novel, Resistance Reborn, which is a bridge novel between the films The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
(NB: Recently there has been some criticism of Roanhorse’s use of Navajo spirituality in Trail of Lightening, especially as Roanhorse is not Navajo herself. See this Twitter thread, for instance, as a starting point for exploring this criticism.)
Further Resources:
Rebecca Roanhorse’s website
A Lightspeed Magazine interview with Roanhorse about her Sixth World series
A video interview with Roanhorse about her Star Wars novel
**********
ABOVE POST courtesy of the estimable Laura, PhD, also known as @lycomayflower, and "my kid".
As brilliant as it is, please note the rules for the Wild Card are very flexible. It's meant as an "out" if you don't want to read the current month's selected author in the American Authors Challenge. So use it as you will.
Born in Iowa in 1972, N.K. Jemisin studied psychology, counseling, and education before she began publishing SFF short stories and novels in the mid-2000s. She is the first person to win a Hugo award three times in a row (for each of the novels in her Broken Earth trilogy) and has been a rallying voice against the hateful attempt by a vocal alt-right minority within the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America to suppress POC and LGBTQ SFF writers and rig award voting against them. She also notably runs a successful Patreon campaign to gather and maintain enough patrons pledging monthly financial support that she quit her counseling job and focuses on writing full time.
The Broken Earth trilogy (beginning with The Fifth Season) is probably her most popular work (it being the trilogy that made Hugo history). It is set on a planet which experiences catastrophic climate change every few centuries, and Jemisin has described the trilogy as work that explores “what it takes to live, let alone thrive, in a world that seems determined to break you — a world of people who constantly question your competence, your relevance, your very existence.” Among Jemisin’s other work are the Inheritance Trilogy and the recent short story collection How Long ‘til Black Future Month?
Further Resources:
N.K. Jemisin’s website
Vox article about Jemisin’s threepeat at the Hugos, including video of Jemisin’s acceptance speech
An episode of the Book Riot Podcast including an interview with Jemisin about her use of Patreon to support her writing
Rebecca Roanhorse was born in Arkansas in 1971 and is of Ohkay Owinghey Pueblo and African-American descent. She studied religion and theology, and has a law degree. Her short fiction has won both Hugo and Nebula awards, and her debut novel Trail of Lightning was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula as well. The first book of Roanhorse’s Sixth World series, Trail of Lightning is set in North America after apocalyptic climate change, features primarily Navajo characters, and is informed by Navajo traditional stories. Roanhorse also recently published a Star Wars novel, Resistance Reborn, which is a bridge novel between the films The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.
(NB: Recently there has been some criticism of Roanhorse’s use of Navajo spirituality in Trail of Lightening, especially as Roanhorse is not Navajo herself. See this Twitter thread, for instance, as a starting point for exploring this criticism.)
Further Resources:
Rebecca Roanhorse’s website
A Lightspeed Magazine interview with Roanhorse about her Sixth World series
A video interview with Roanhorse about her Star Wars novel
**********
ABOVE POST courtesy of the estimable Laura, PhD, also known as @lycomayflower, and "my kid".
As brilliant as it is, please note the rules for the Wild Card are very flexible. It's meant as an "out" if you don't want to read the current month's selected author in the American Authors Challenge. So use it as you will.
2richardderus
Wonderful choices, Doctor Flowerkid's Ma.
3laytonwoman3rd
Yeah, well, Dr. Flowerkid gets all the credit...she wrote the post. (I DID ask her to.) I'm clueless about this genre, for the most part.
4justchris
Also, Roanhorse is GOH at WisCon in 2020, along with Yoon Ha Lee, author of Ninefox Gambit, which was nominated for a Hugo in 2017. And Jemisin has been a regular at WisCon for years, organizing the POC Dinner there.
5katiekrug
N.K. Jemisin's novel The Fifth Season is on sale for $3.99 on Kindle today...
6klarusu
The Fifth Season was one of my contenders for favourite book last year. One of those that I want to go back and re-read from the beginning, knowing what I now do having finished it.
7quondame
>1 laytonwoman3rd: I've read and enjoyed both, though N.K. Jemisin's world was not fun for me to visit.
8Caroline_McElwee
I'm going to read the first in NJ Jemisin's Broken Earth series.
9laytonwoman3rd
Please note the Roanhorse section of >1 laytonwoman3rd: above has been edited to add a note about some recent criticism of her use of Navajo spirituality in Trail of Lightening .
10justchris
>9 laytonwoman3rd: Thanks for sharing those links n your update, Linda. I was at the WisCon awards banquet last year when they announced Roanhorse as one of the GoH for this year, and someone at my table mentioned some of the concerns you raised. Following the links you provided, I found this opinion piece particularly helpful: https://newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/opinion/trail-of-lightning-is-an-appropr...
Of course, I also note that (totally valid!) criticism of a Native WOC appears to be getting more attention than similar instances of white people committing literary cultural appropriation. I read Trail of Lightning. It was well written and interesting, but too violent for my taste, and I can also see why the Diné community is upset. I did wonder why she didn't pull from her own cultural heritage...
Of course, I also note that (totally valid!) criticism of a Native WOC appears to be getting more attention than similar instances of white people committing literary cultural appropriation. I read Trail of Lightning. It was well written and interesting, but too violent for my taste, and I can also see why the Diné community is upset. I did wonder why she didn't pull from her own cultural heritage...
11laytonwoman3rd
>10 justchris: Having just recently finished reading Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, I am very much grappling with the white-man-memorializing-the-Native-mythsandculture problem.
And to give credit where due, the update, like the original post, is not my doing, but that of my brilliant offspring and first advisor on all things related to cultural appropriation, @lycomayflower.
Thanks for your link. This is a very tough subject.
And to give credit where due, the update, like the original post, is not my doing, but that of my brilliant offspring and first advisor on all things related to cultural appropriation, @lycomayflower.
Thanks for your link. This is a very tough subject.
12Caroline_McElwee
Here's a piece from today's Guardian on NK Jemisin:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/02/nk-jemisin-its-easier-to-get-a-boo...
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/02/nk-jemisin-its-easier-to-get-a-boo...
13m.belljackson
Because I'm no fan of gruesome murders, dystopian or otherwise,
my SF search led to what appeared to be a safer choice: BEST OF SCIENCE FICTION 8.
Unfortunately, the book opened with "Boy and His Dog,"
featuring some of the most gruesome imagery yet encountered on our planet.
If interested, just check my Review for the barely 2.0 star rating.
my SF search led to what appeared to be a safer choice: BEST OF SCIENCE FICTION 8.
Unfortunately, the book opened with "Boy and His Dog,"
featuring some of the most gruesome imagery yet encountered on our planet.
If interested, just check my Review for the barely 2.0 star rating.
14weird_O
I didn't expect to take so frequent advantage of Challengemeister Linda's open-ended "wild card" option in the 2020 American Author Challenge. But so far, I've played it three times. I expect to play it several more times til the year is through. I'm out of sync with the honorees, I guess.
I should have played the card in January, when I bailed on Cold Harbor. Also in February when I couldn't connect with Grace Paley. My head was somewhere other than where Ms. Paley's was. March honored David McCullough, and I had saved The Johnstown Flood against just such an occasion. I had a Francine Prose novel on the shelf for April, but my enthusiasm for it expired by the end of chapter two.
At this point, I rescanned the list of 2020 honorees, vowed to eschew denial, and jot down possible wild cards. I came up with the following authors; I have TBRs by each of them and I think each is worthy of challenge status.
I've already played the three authors topping the list for April, May, and June. That's where I am. Comments on the books I read should follow.
I should have played the card in January, when I bailed on Cold Harbor. Also in February when I couldn't connect with Grace Paley. My head was somewhere other than where Ms. Paley's was. March honored David McCullough, and I had saved The Johnstown Flood against just such an occasion. I had a Francine Prose novel on the shelf for April, but my enthusiasm for it expired by the end of chapter two.
At this point, I rescanned the list of 2020 honorees, vowed to eschew denial, and jot down possible wild cards. I came up with the following authors; I have TBRs by each of them and I think each is worthy of challenge status.
Carl Hiaasen
Richard Preston
Martin Cruz Smith
Connie Willis
Michael Lewis
Robert Heinlein
Ibram X. Kendi
N. K. Jemisin
Robert Harris
Katherine Ann Porter
Walter Isaacson
David Halberstam
Jill LaPore
David Sedaris
Dave Eggers
I've already played the three authors topping the list for April, May, and June. That's where I am. Comments on the books I read should follow.
15weird_O
Carl Hiaasen is the first Wild Card author I read (for April). Here's my report.
# 32. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen Finished 4/18/20
The Weird ReportTM
To say that Native Tongue is a typical Carl Hiaasen is to mislead, in that "typical" is too often a pejorative. With Hiaasen, "typical" is laugh-out-loud, head shaking, raucous, outright fun. His plots and the characters that animate them are over the top...and yet very close to truth and reality.
In Native Tongue, what powers the action is a theme park in the Florida Keys, a cheesy low-rent DisneyWorld. The impresario of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills is Francis X. Kingsbury, a man made wealthy through condo and resort development on environmentally sensitive land that crowds out wildlife, including endangered species, and pollutes coastal waters. Corruption at all levels of government, of course, enable Kingsburg's projects. What no one knows is that Kingsbury, formerly of New York City, is a beneficiary of the Federal Witness Protection Program, under the auspices of which he was whisked from a federal courtroom, in which he testified against fellow mobsters, to Florida. The mobsters betrayed want him dead (once they find him) but an awful lot of Floridians do too.
Molly McNamara is one such, and she isn't reluctant to take a low road to her goal. The book begins with two low-life numbskulls, driving away from the Kingdom and pitching two ratlike critters out of their pickup's windows. It turns out that Molly hired the pair, Danny Pogue and Bud Schwartz, to steal the two blue-tongued mango voles—the last two of the species, saved from extinction by Mr. Kingsbury's minions. They were supposed to be delivered to Molly. She's not happy when they arrive at her condo without the voles.
Mere gunshot wounds can't break up this trio. Molly, Danny, and Brad amble in and out of the storyline right up to the end.
Joe Winder is another. After getting fired from his last newspaper job for being just a little bit opinionated in his reporting, Joe takes a PR job at—most naturally—Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. Joe's self-assigned mission is to bring the kingdom down, by hook or crook. The menace he must dodge is Pedro Luz, the kingdom's security chief, a muscleman so enamoured of steroids that he drags an I.V. stand around with him so he can suck his preferred mix from an I.V. bag.
There's more, but I'll leave it for you to encounter as the story progresses. Hiaasen generates my preferred sort of comfort reading. This 'in gets two thumbs up from me.
About Hiaasen: A native Floridian, Carol Hiaasen writes a column for the Miami Herald (and has since 1986), a newspaper he joined as a reporter in the mid-1970s. He's written 19 novels and a half-dozen YA books, all in the so-called "humorous crime fiction" genre and usually focusing on environmental and political corruption. His columns have been collected into three nonfiction books.
His only brother Rob Hiaasen, an editor and columnist at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, was killed in a mass shooting at the newspaper's office on June 28, 2018.
# 32. Native Tongue by Carl Hiaasen Finished 4/18/20
The Weird ReportTM
To say that Native Tongue is a typical Carl Hiaasen is to mislead, in that "typical" is too often a pejorative. With Hiaasen, "typical" is laugh-out-loud, head shaking, raucous, outright fun. His plots and the characters that animate them are over the top...and yet very close to truth and reality.
In Native Tongue, what powers the action is a theme park in the Florida Keys, a cheesy low-rent DisneyWorld. The impresario of the Amazing Kingdom of Thrills is Francis X. Kingsbury, a man made wealthy through condo and resort development on environmentally sensitive land that crowds out wildlife, including endangered species, and pollutes coastal waters. Corruption at all levels of government, of course, enable Kingsburg's projects. What no one knows is that Kingsbury, formerly of New York City, is a beneficiary of the Federal Witness Protection Program, under the auspices of which he was whisked from a federal courtroom, in which he testified against fellow mobsters, to Florida. The mobsters betrayed want him dead (once they find him) but an awful lot of Floridians do too.
Molly McNamara is one such, and she isn't reluctant to take a low road to her goal. The book begins with two low-life numbskulls, driving away from the Kingdom and pitching two ratlike critters out of their pickup's windows. It turns out that Molly hired the pair, Danny Pogue and Bud Schwartz, to steal the two blue-tongued mango voles—the last two of the species, saved from extinction by Mr. Kingsbury's minions. They were supposed to be delivered to Molly. She's not happy when they arrive at her condo without the voles.
"…[T]ell me what happened."
Before Bud Schwartz could stop him, Danny Pogue said, "There were holes in the box. That's how they got out."
Molly McNamara's right hand slipped beneath her bathrobe and came out holding a small black pistol. Without saying a word she shot Danny Pogue twice in the left foot…
"You boys are lying," Molly said.
Mere gunshot wounds can't break up this trio. Molly, Danny, and Brad amble in and out of the storyline right up to the end.
Joe Winder is another. After getting fired from his last newspaper job for being just a little bit opinionated in his reporting, Joe takes a PR job at—most naturally—Amazing Kingdom of Thrills. Joe's self-assigned mission is to bring the kingdom down, by hook or crook. The menace he must dodge is Pedro Luz, the kingdom's security chief, a muscleman so enamoured of steroids that he drags an I.V. stand around with him so he can suck his preferred mix from an I.V. bag.
There's more, but I'll leave it for you to encounter as the story progresses. Hiaasen generates my preferred sort of comfort reading. This 'in gets two thumbs up from me.
About Hiaasen: A native Floridian, Carol Hiaasen writes a column for the Miami Herald (and has since 1986), a newspaper he joined as a reporter in the mid-1970s. He's written 19 novels and a half-dozen YA books, all in the so-called "humorous crime fiction" genre and usually focusing on environmental and political corruption. His columns have been collected into three nonfiction books.
His only brother Rob Hiaasen, an editor and columnist at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, was killed in a mass shooting at the newspaper's office on June 28, 2018.
