Thomas Armstrong

Today I heard the sad news that Thomas Armstrong passed away on Saturday. I first met Tom in January 2009 at the ceremony for the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Awards where my novel took first prize and his took second. After that we often met at literary events. There’s an entire tag dedicated to him on this blog. Some posts are a mere passing mention, but there are three worth reading, my three part interview with Tom back in late 2010. I strongly recommend them. You may never heard of Thomas Armstrong before today, but if you read those posts you will see why he was an important voice among the Caribbean literati.

Rest in peace, Tom. Thank you for your insight, your writing, and the love you had for my country.

SF Crossing the Gulf

The last episode of my podcast series with Karen Burnham went up on SF Signal last Thursday. I was at first slightly peeved that there was another cool thing to blog about that would have to wait until I got back from Toronto, but the delay ended up being profitable. Thanks to Cheryl Morgan and Karen Burnham, we now have a cleaner, better audio for Episode 6 (The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell).

All the podcasts can be accessed via the link http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/category/columns/sf-crossing-the-gulf/ but they show up in reverse chronological order, as tagged posts are wont to do. This gives me an excuse to list them here separately with relevant comments and links.

Episode 1: A Discussion of Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” and Others

Click here for my post on this blog introducing the podcast in general and this episode in particular. I included library links for My Bones and My Flute and The Rainmaker’s Mistake.

Episode 2: Edgar Mittelholzer’s My Bones and My Flute

My deepest regret for this podcast was the challenge to readers trying to find a 1950’s, out-of-print book. But Mittelholzer is a key West Indian author and I could not imagine starting a discussion on Caribbean SF without him. You can read about the lengths I went to in order to secure a copy.

Episode 3: Discussion of Greg Egan’s “Crystal Nights” and Others

Running out of time for Ted Chiang during Episode 1 proved an advantage as we spent Episode 3 comparing and contrasting his work with Greg Egan’s.

Episode 4: Discussion of Erna Brodber’s The Rainmaker’s Mistake

Click here for a reading and interview with Erna Brodber, and links to other interviews, reviews and resources.

I was afraid this would be too challenging, but Karen took to it like a duck to water and shared with me some important insights into this literary work from the point of view of a non-West Indian and a genre reader.

Episode 5: Discussion of Greg Egan’s “The Planck Dive” and Others

I had to urge Karen not to be modest about the fact that she has spent over three years researching Egan’s fiction. With her knowledge of Egan’s entire fictional universe(s), she stopped me from making assumptions based on the snapshot of a single short story. We acknowledge that we’ve missed out some of Egan’s best work because we chose stories available for free on the internet. We hope to make up for this in the future.

Episode 6: Discussion of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow

Oh, you have no idea the pangs this episode gave us. We loved the book, we were in awe of the author, and we spoke with fluid eloquence (relative to previous podcasts!) about our love and awe. But Karen was moving house and the change in the usual setup resulted in some distressingly poor audio. We actually decided, very sadly, to re-record the podcast, but bad weather (I cannot podcast during heavy rain and/or thunder!) and continuing tech issues made that impossible. Karen did her best to manually improve what we had. However, I am very happy to report that Cheryl Morgan recently performed some added cleanup and with their combined efforts we now have a fresh upload of a podcast that should be much easier to listen to.

Episode 7: Discussion of Curdella Forbes’s Ghosts

I thought Karen would find this easier and more enjoyable than The Rainmaker’s Mistake and I was wrong (though thankfully not badly wrong). I think there is more in there for the reader who knows West Indian history, culture and literature and gets the little hits of nostalgia and recognition at the right moments. Nevertheless, Karen was very appreciative of the author’s talent and put it into the slipstream category with The Rainmaker’s Mistake. Overall verdict on Caribbean SF? Readable, enjoyable, layered, literary and well worth the effort.

Episode 8: Season One Wrap Up

We made it to the end, and we finally found a graphic for the podcast! You may already know that Karen Burnham’s internet moniker is Spiral Galaxy. The photo shows the Whirlpool Galaxy interacting with its companion NGC 5195. We decided this interaction was a symbol of clear boundaries vs fuzzy boundaries, the linear vs the elliptical … which is a good way of differentiating between hard SF and Caribbean SF as well as different reader/critic approaches to understanding them. I won’t be changing my moniker to Elliptical Galaxy just yet, but it pleases me to think that there might be a curve and a swerve and a cycle to how I tell and read stories as well as a certain lack of defined boundaries that might be a challenge or a delight.

SF Crossing the Gulf: Ghosts by Curdella Forbes

For the seventh episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we discuss Ghosts by Curdella Forbes. I liked Ghosts when I first read it, and I liked it even more after our discussion. It was published August this year and is available at the publisher and at the usual online bookstores. Recommended for lovers of literary SF in general and slipstream in particular.

This is the last book of our podcast series as our final episode will be a rambling wrap-up of all that has gone before.

Hugo Awards and SF Crossing the Gulf Episode 4

First of all, congratulations to all the Hugo award winners, and special congratulations to the winner of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, E. Lily Yu!

(For the record, these are not belated congratulations, these are extended congratulations. I have been congratulating by tweet and email since Sunday.)

Secondly, it’s Wednesday-fortnight again and that means podcast! I’m delighted to be discussing The Rainmaker’s Mistake by Jamaican writer and sociologist Erna Brodber. I thought Karen Burnham would find it challenging – hah, she didn’t! And she loved it and we hope you do too. You can listen to the podcast here at SF Signal, but before you do, it’s worth visiting The Spaces Between the Words for an interview with Erna Brodber that will enhance your podcast experience.

Episode Three: SF Crossing the Gulf

Here it is.  We could have spent a lot more time talking about Greg Egan’s short stories and how they compare to Ted Chiang’s work, but we stayed strong and more or less kept to time. However, we will continue talking about Egan and Chiang … not in the next episode, but the one after that.

Next episode (in two weeks) we’re looking at Caribbean SF again: Erna Brodber’s The Rainmaker’s Mistake. I invite you all to listen to the marvellous reading and interview by Erna Brodber at The Spaces Between the Words and check out the other links to interviews and reviews. It will be good preparation. Again, if you haven’t read the book, don’t worry. This is the kind of book that we could summarise and spoil to the max and you’d still find it new and surprising when you read it.

My Bones and My Flute

Here it is! Episode 2 of SF Crossing the Gulf is up. We discuss Edgar Mittelholzer’s My Bones and My Flute. I was very excited to see what my colleague Karen Burnham would make of this book and I was delighted by her response.

An interview and an invitation

Brad R. Torgersen, 2012 nominee for the Campbell Award, is interviewing the other Campbell nominees on his blog. So far he has an interview with Mur Lafferty and with yours truly. Go look!

The next episode of SF Crossing the Gulf will soon be released. Usually we warn listeners that we plan to be very spoilery and advise reading the book or stories in advance. This time we are discussing My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer, which is out of print but available at libraries (the link provided leads to WorldCat, one of the biggest if not the biggest library catalogue search engines). We’ll provide a summary of the novel before our discussion and fill in details as we go along, so in this case you will not need to have read the book in advance. Mittelholzer is a great start point for anyone new to Caribbean SF, so I invite all novices to come and listen. I also invite the Mittelholzer specialists, those who are more than well-acquainted with Caribbean literature, to listen and ensure that I don’t misrepresent him too badly. I’m looking forward to having a vigorous and illuminating discussion in the comment thread afterwards!

The Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize

I mentioned the Hollick Arvon Prize in my Day Three post about the Bocas Lit Fest. This year it will be awarded in fiction, next year will be for non-fiction, and 2015 will be the year for poetry.

Now we have details, and I have been meaning to post them for some time! Please go to the Bocas Lit website to download the full guidelines and an entry form. Here are some highlights:

The Hollick Arvon Caribbean Writers Prize is an annual award which allows an emerging Caribbean writer living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean to devote time to advancing or finishing a literary work, with support from an established writer as mentor.

….

To be eligible for entry, a writer must:

1.    be of Caribbean birth or citizenship, living and working in the Anglophone Caribbean and writing in English
2.    be over the age of 18 by 30 September, 2012
3.    have had at least one piece of creative writing of no less than 2,000 words published.

This prize is an amazing opportunity for new writers hoping to launch a career:

The Hollick Arvon Prize, with a total value of £10,000 (approx. US$16,000), consists of:

1.    a cash award of £3,000 (approx. US$5,000)
2.    a year’s mentoring by an established writer
3.    travel to the United Kingdom to attend a one-week intensive Arvon creative writing course at one of Arvon’s internationally renowned writing houses
4.    three days in London to network with editors and publishers, hosted by Arvon, in association with the Free Word Centre and the Rogers, Coleridge & White literary agency.

The deadline is 30 September 2012, 6 pm Trinidad & Tobago time. Please spread the word.

Podcast! But wait, this is a special one.

When Karen Burnham (NASA engineer by day, SF reviewer and podcaster by night) approached me to ask if I would be interested in doing a podcast with her, the ‘yes’ couldn’t fly out of my mouth fast enough. We have a lot in common, including a first name, a degree (BSc Physics) and a hobby (martial arts/fencing). I was eager to tackle my to-read list and take some recommendations and, more importantly, do so in a meaningful way that would expand my appreciation of the craft of writing and the literary and scientific merits of speculative fiction. And so the podcast SF Crossing the Gulf came to be.

You can find it here, kindly hosted by SF Signal, and it will also be available via RSS feed and iTunes. Our first episode gives a little intro on what we plan to do, and then we get into the meat of the matter, the short fiction of the truly estimable Ted Chiang. The post also gives a link to a free pdf of the main story we’re discussing, a photo and sales link for the short story collection Stories of Your Life and Others, and a list of the works we plan to discuss in upcoming episodes.

Getting hold of the science fiction should be easy; laying hands on the Caribbean speculative fiction may be a little more challenging. My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer is out of print at the moment but is available at libraries. The Rainmaker’s Mistake by Erna Brodber is available at the usual online bookstores but, if they run out of stock, libraries (especially academic libraries) are probably your best bet. Our future choices should be easier to find.

Karen’s a podcasting pro, but I’m still a bit new to this. Bear with me and keep listening; I’ll improve with time and practice!

 

Podcast updates

The Readers Summer Book Club interviewed me about Redemption in Indigo. I may have mentioned The Best of All Possible Worlds briefly, in passing. Click here for the podcast.

I was invited to the SF Squeecast where I chose to squee about the new novel by Curdella Forbes, Ghosts. How much did I like Ghosts? Click and listen to find out. Bonus entertainment: I run the Squeecast’s traditional silly questions gauntlet.