Tentacles and Tiptrees

There will be a couple of posts in quick succession today, since a lot has happened in the past couple weeks but it doesn’t seem like it should all be lumped together.

So. Awards! In chronological order!

Ancillary Justice was awarded the Kitschies Golden Tentacle for best debut. This is very much an honor. Just its being on the shortlist was amazing. Here’s that list:

A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

Stray by Monica Hesse

Nexus byRamez Naam

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Those are some fabulous books! And someone (more than one someone!) thought Ancillary Justice belonged on that list. Chuffed doesn’t even begin to describe it.

My awesome UK editor Jenni Hill attended the ceremony, and accepted my (completely adorable) tentacle trophy on my behalf.

And then! Because that was somehow not sufficient awesome! The Tiptree winner and honor list have been announced. The winner is Rupetta by N.A. Sulway. Which I have not read, but I am looking forward to reading it. I generally try to pick up a copy of the Tiptree winner(s) when I’m at Wiscon, if I don’t already have one. Which I usually don’t–I look forward to the Tiptree announcement partly because it’s so often awarded to a book that I have never heard of and am glad to be introduced to.

So that is, of course, its own kind of awesome, but cast your eyes over the honor list. Yes, Ancillary Justice is on it. Nicola Griffith’s Hild is too, and Electric Lady (my book is on a list with Janelle Monae!!!) and “Heaven Under Earth” by Aliette de Bodard and more things, some of which I am unfamiliar with but that won’t be true for long if I can help it.

So, happy award dance!!!!

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

Tentacles and Tiptrees

There will be a couple of posts in quick succession today, since a lot has happened in the past couple weeks but it doesn’t seem like it should all be lumped together.

So. Awards! In chronological order!

Ancillary Justice was awarded the Kitschies Golden Tentacle for best debut. This is very much an honor. Just its being on the shortlist was amazing. Here’s that list:

A Calculated Life by Anne Charnock

Stray by Monica Hesse

Nexus byRamez Naam

Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Those are some fabulous books! And someone (more than one someone!) thought Ancillary Justice belonged on that list. Chuffed doesn’t even begin to describe it.

My awesome UK editor Jenni Hill attended the ceremony, and accepted my (completely adorable) tentacle trophy on my behalf.

And then! Because that was somehow not sufficient awesome! The Tiptree winner and honor list have been announced. The winner is Rupetta by N.A. Sulway. Which I have not read, but I am looking forward to reading it. I generally try to pick up a copy of the Tiptree winner(s) when I’m at Wiscon, if I don’t already have one. Which I usually don’t–I look forward to the Tiptree announcement partly because it’s so often awarded to a book that I have never heard of and am glad to be introduced to.

So that is, of course, its own kind of awesome, but cast your eyes over the honor list. Yes, Ancillary Justice is on it. Nicola Griffith’s Hild is too, and Electric Lady (my book is on a list with Janelle Monae!!!) and “Heaven Under Earth” by Aliette de Bodard and more things, some of which I am unfamiliar with but that won’t be true for long if I can help it.

So, happy award dance!!!!

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

Links

So!

Con or Bust is still going on–it runs till the 23rd. Please consider consider bidding on something if that’s within your abilities and/or means! There are quite a lot of really awesome things. I started scrolling through to pick some out, but there are so many–handmade jewelry, handknit scarves, signed books….just lots of fabulous things.

You can, among other things, bid on a signed copy of Ancillary Justice.

***

The SFF neighborhood has been nonstop hilarity for the past week or two. Readers of this blog who follow such things (or who have had following such things thrust upon them) will have seen it already, and those who don’t, well, you’re probably better off for it. I will only say that there are some writers whom I have long admired, in whom I am now disappointed.

***

In a previous post, I said that I was looking forward to Alex Dally MacFarlane’s tor.com column on non-binary SF. Her first post was an introduction, and in her second she looked at Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh. I read Mission Child several years ago, at someone’s recommendation (I don’t recall whose) and enjoyed it very much. I believe it’s (sadly) out of print, but my local library had it, and I’m sure you could find it used online. (When looking for used books, I have so far had good experiences with Better World Books and with Alibris.)

And this week, it turns out, she’s written about Ancillary Justice.

I admit I’m a bit surprised, because I honestly don’t think it’s a particularly good example of non-binary SF. For the most part, I think the pronoun thing does what I meant it to do. But I never did think that “she” could genuinely function as a gender-neutral pronoun. That wasn’t actually the point. Which, of course, has its own drawbacks–if I had been in a different place, when I began writing, I would no doubt have started with a slightly different aim. And while I might or might not have still used “she” as a default (my reasons for wanting to use it still stand) I almost certainly would have made some changes in my approach.

Still. Ancillary Justice is the absolute best I could make it at the time that I wrote it, and there really isn’t more I could ask for or do than that. Well, okay, I could add lots of readers who enjoy the book, and smart critics like Alex to write interesting, nuanced posts like the one on tor.com today.

I would also like to echo Alex’s call for “More like this!” The most awesome thing, I think, would be for a bunch of other writers to say “Wait, why didn’t she….” and then write stuff, and for publishers and editors to say “Huh, Leckie’s book did okay, let’s try this!”

That right there would be the awesomest.

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

Links

So!

Con or Bust is still going on–it runs till the 23rd. Please consider consider bidding on something if that’s within your abilities and/or means! There are quite a lot of really awesome things. I started scrolling through to pick some out, but there are so many–handmade jewelry, handknit scarves, signed books….just lots of fabulous things.

You can, among other things, bid on a signed copy of Ancillary Justice.

***

The SFF neighborhood has been nonstop hilarity for the past week or two. Readers of this blog who follow such things (or who have had following such things thrust upon them) will have seen it already, and those who don’t, well, you’re probably better off for it. I will only say that there are some writers whom I have long admired, in whom I am now disappointed.

***

In a previous post, I said that I was looking forward to Alex Dally MacFarlane’s tor.com column on non-binary SF. Her first post was an introduction, and in her second she looked at Mission Child by Maureen F. McHugh. I read Mission Child several years ago, at someone’s recommendation (I don’t recall whose) and enjoyed it very much. I believe it’s (sadly) out of print, but my local library had it, and I’m sure you could find it used online. (When looking for used books, I have so far had good experiences with Better World Books and with Alibris.)

And this week, it turns out, she’s written about Ancillary Justice.

I admit I’m a bit surprised, because I honestly don’t think it’s a particularly good example of non-binary SF. For the most part, I think the pronoun thing does what I meant it to do. But I never did think that “she” could genuinely function as a gender-neutral pronoun. That wasn’t actually the point. Which, of course, has its own drawbacks–if I had been in a different place, when I began writing, I would no doubt have started with a slightly different aim. And while I might or might not have still used “she” as a default (my reasons for wanting to use it still stand) I almost certainly would have made some changes in my approach.

Still. Ancillary Justice is the absolute best I could make it at the time that I wrote it, and there really isn’t more I could ask for or do than that. Well, okay, I could add lots of readers who enjoy the book, and smart critics like Alex to write interesting, nuanced posts like the one on tor.com today.

I would also like to echo Alex’s call for “More like this!” The most awesome thing, I think, would be for a bunch of other writers to say “Wait, why didn’t she….” and then write stuff, and for publishers and editors to say “Huh, Leckie’s book did okay, let’s try this!”

That right there would be the awesomest.

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

James A. Harre, Sept 24, 1924–Feb 16, 2014

James A. Harre, my father in law, passed away early this Sunday morning. He had prostate cancer (those of you with prostates, please do not wait until you’re having severe problems to get checked) and was in hospice care, at home with his family.

He was a great guy, cheerful and friendly. He loved to fish, and days before he died he told us he was looking forward to the opening of trout season. We all of us knew he wouldn’t be doing any more fishing, but that’s the kind of cheerful guy he was.

He was also a voracious reader, particularly of science fiction. When he first came home from the hospital, he asked me if I could get my hands on a copy of the sequel to Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, which he had read and enjoyed very much. I have to thank Rachel, and Ellen Wright at Orbit, for helping me get a copy of that, and the third in the trilogy, to give him before he died. He was very, very pleased to have them. The idea that he might actually be able to read them was, let us say, optimistic. But that wasn’t the point.

His obituary is here, and is as inadequate as all such things are.

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.

James A. Harre, Sept 24, 1924–Feb 16, 2014

James A. Harre, my father in law, passed away early this Sunday morning. He had prostate cancer (those of you with prostates, please do not wait until you’re having severe problems to get checked) and was in hospice care, at home with his family.

He was a great guy, cheerful and friendly. He loved to fish, and days before he died he told us he was looking forward to the opening of trout season. We all of us knew he wouldn’t be doing any more fishing, but that’s the kind of cheerful guy he was.

He was also a voracious reader, particularly of science fiction. When he first came home from the hospital, he asked me if I could get my hands on a copy of the sequel to Rachel Bach’s Fortune’s Pawn, which he had read and enjoyed very much. I have to thank Rachel, and Ellen Wright at Orbit, for helping me get a copy of that, and the third in the trilogy, to give him before he died. He was very, very pleased to have them. The idea that he might actually be able to read them was, let us say, optimistic. But that wasn’t the point.

His obituary is here, and is as inadequate as all such things are.

Mirrored from Ann Leckie.