The Mumpsimus

The start of a new term and then a huge computer disaster caused me not to post a link here to my review of Nnedi Okorafor's first short story collection, Kabu Kabu , which Strange Horizons  recently published. Here, for anyone who missed it and is interested, it is . The first paragraph, to give you a sense of it all: Nnedi Okorafor's first short story collection begins and ends with tales that evoke histories and challenge orthodoxies. "The Magical Negro" liberates an unfortunate cliché of fantasy fiction to go his own way, and so plants a sign in the narrative ground to let us know that these journeys, though fantastical, will seek some roads less traveled. "The Palm Tree Bandit" (first published  here  at  Strange Horizons  in 2000) reconfigures a different sort of mythos, shaking up the cartography of West African folktales to open some paths for women to play around with symbols and tools too often reserved for men. Both stories are narrative mani...

I will be at Readercon 23 in a few weeks. It's the one convention I attend every year, and I'm especially excited about this year because the panels are especially interesting, the guest list is awesome, and one of the guests of honor is Peter Straub, whose work I am in awe of and who is among the most delightful people to hear on panels or in interviews or readings or, really, anywhere. (Honestly, if Peter Straub were a train conductor, I'd follow him from car to car. He'd get freaked out and call the police, and I'd get arrested for being a weirdo, but it would be so worth it!) Also, we get to celebrate 50 years of Samuel Delany's work. And we give out the Shirley Jackson Awards ! Before posting my schedule, I wanted to note the Readercon Book Club selections for this year. These are panel discussions of specific books, a "classic" and a recent work of fiction and nonfiction each. This year's are:

My brain doesn't seem to want to participate in year-end roundups this year, as every time I try to think about what books or films or music or legumes I've encountered, I mostly go blank. I seem to have lost the capacity to link such experiences to the experience of time in annual chunks. I wouldn't in any case be able to write a "best of the year" post because I've spent a lot of this year catching up with stuff from other years (well, no old legumes -- that would be gross...). Probably still a hangover effect from my years as series editor for Best American Fantasy. However, some books, at least, do come to mind as things I haven't posted enough about here, and which I would like to recommend. So if you get some good giftcards or something during the holidays and feel impelled to buy something; or if you happen to want some stuff to look for in the library, here are a few titles (arranged alphabetically by author) I've thought rewarded the time...

The end of summer continues to be busy for me (in good ways), and I've neglected a few things I should have linked to. Actually, I've probably neglected many things I should have linked to. For now, though, just a few... I'm continuing to explore Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics over at Gestalt Mash , one issue each week. Last week was issue 5, "Passengers" ; this week issue 6, "24 Hours" . And for Amazon.com's Omnivoracious blog, I interviewed Nnedi Okorafor , author of the wonderful novel Who Fears Death . (And Nnedi has just been interviewed over at Tor.com , too.) Finally, my favorite internet item this week: a film called "Words" , presented as an extra feature to a Radiolab program .

Rain Taxi has now posted my review of Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death on their website.

My latest Strange Horizons column has just been posted , and it's a sort of meditation on four books: Reality Hunger by David Shields, Narrative Power edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, and Vanishing Point by Ander Monson. All four books are well worth reading, thinking about, arguing with. I especially hope that in the wake of Paul Di Filippo's review of Who Fears Death in the B&N Review that the column will offer an alternative way of evaluating the novel. For the way Di Filippo read the book, I think his assessment is valid, but he read it in the most narrow and silly way possible, the way someone who's only ever read science fiction would read. And I know he hasn't only read science fiction, so I'm perplexed at the assumptions he applies. I agree with his desire for fewer savior of the world/universe/everything characters, and in fact once wrote another SH column about it , but I think there's abundant evidence in...

I just finished writing a long review for Rain Taxi of Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death , and it's one of those rare books that I just want to recommend to everybody.  It's going to the top of my list of really good science fiction/fantasy novels that can be safely given to people who think they don't like SF, but it's also a book that can be appreciated both by people who merely want to read an engaging story and people who want more than just a good story.  I had so much fun writing a review of Who Fears Death because it is, among other things, very much a book about textuality and storytelling -- about how the stories we tell, the words we use, the structures and vantage points we select, affect our perception of the world.  I kept thinking of some of M. John Harrison's books and the way they throw our readerly expectations and habits back in our face.  Some of the pleasure, though, in reading Harrison is masochistic ("Yes, master, flog me again f...