It occurs to me that this year I’ve spent plenty of time on fantasy, while neglecting science fiction. A trend likely to continue until 2014 at least....

So for today, let’s spend a little time redressing the balance, and talk about hard SF by women.

Defining hard science fiction, rather like defining epic fantasy, is a tricksy business. (Or hobbit.) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction itself acknowledges the potential impossibility of any rigorous definition, concluding only:

“[T]the most important thing about it is, not that it should include real science in any great detail, but that it should respect the scientific spirit; it should seek to provide natural rather than supernatural or transcendental explanations for the events and phenomena it describes.” [Link.]

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This is a novel about a time-travelling serial killer from the 1930s, his victims, the girl who survived him, and a burned-out murder-beat journalist. It’s competently, even excellently, written, makes brilliant use of a non-linear narrative to create and build tension, wears its American Literature influences proudly on its sleeve—

And for me, despite its technical competence, The Shining Girls is ultimately a frustrating mess of a novel, one whose climax falls apart under the weight of nested paradoxes.

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We’ve arrived at the end of our brief focus on Martha Wells. I shall be disappointed if she needs further introduction (aside from those books of hers I’ve covered in this space, you should all go read City of Bones and The Death of the Necromancer right now, I mean right away people, what are you waiting for, they’re right there—ahem), so without further ado, let me present Martha Wells: the author of thirteen novels, mostly recently the Books of the Raksura (The Cloud Roads, The Serpent Sea, and The Siren Depths, Night Shade Books) and Emilie and the Hollow World (Angry Robot Books).

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Emilie and the Hollow World is Martha Wells’ thirteenth and latest novel, hot off the presses from Angry Robot/Strange Chemistry. It’s also Wells’ first novel marketed to the YA demographic, and speaking personally, I was interested to see how Wells would approach a different audience.

She doesn’t disappoint.

Emilie, the sixteen-year-old eponymous hero, has run away from home after an argument with her guardians. Her reasons are defensible; her forward planning skills, less so. When her plan to stow away on the steamship Merry Bell to reach her cousin goes awry (a small case of mistaken identity—mistaken for a thief), she finds herself on the wrong ship. The Sovereign has fought off attackers just in time to set out on its own journey, one which will take it out of the world Emilie knows... perhaps forever.

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There are two ways I can go about writing this instalment of our Martha Wells focus....

...No, wait, there’s really only one way. Because I cannot pretend to be anything other than utterly in love with Wells’ Wheel of the Infinite, her fourth novel. Originally published in 2000, by Eos (HarperCollins), I first read it in some dim, misty far-away past... possibly in my second year in college, so not really that long ago. I don’t remember having such a strong positive reaction on my first reading, which explains why this is the only the first time I’ve reread it since. Perhaps, like many things, it improves with time.

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There’s a small problem with reviewing a series that has run (thus far) to eight instalments and an ancillary spin-off: by the ninth volume in direct descent (to whit, this one, The Lost Fleet: Beyond The Frontier: Guardian), the reviewer can assume that unless the author has chosen to do something radically different, readers who’ve come this far already have a fair idea of whether or not they want to keep going.

Although perhaps it should be said that new readers shouldn’t plan on starting here.

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Florian gestured in exasperation. “It’s like you’re two people. One of them is a flighty artist, and I like her. The other one is bloody-minded and ruthless and finds scary things funny, and I’m not sure I like her very much; but whenever we’re about to die, she’s the one who gets all three of us through it alive.” She pressed her lips together, then asked seriously, “Which one are you? I’d really like to know.” [p379]

We first meet Tremaine Valiarde in Wells’ The Wizard Hunters at nine o’clock at night, in a library, while she’s trying to find a way to kill herself “that would bring in a verdict of natural causes in court.” Tremaine is the daughter of Nicholas Valiarde, who starred in The Death of the Necromancer. This is the same Ile-Rien of The Element of Fire, but centuries later, and now it is menaced by a powerful, seemingly-unstoppable enemy. The Gardier came, it appears, from nowhere, with no intention but conquest: the war has been going on for the last three years and the Rienish are on the verge of being overrun. Tremaine is summoned out of her library by the sorcerer Gerard, because she possesses a magical sphere—made for her by her Uncle Aristide as a child’s plaything—that may be the key to Ile-Rien’s last chance to hold off the enemy. Dropped—in some cases literally—headfirst into danger, her stubborn, ruthless, and above all loyal streak drives the other characters forward, time and time again.

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Many critics, many reviewers, I think, find it difficult to talk plainly about the things that they love and the reasons why they love them. The temptation exists to direct your attention primarily to its flaws, to minimise or to justify the ways in which it falls short of objective perfection. (Not that objective perfection is a thing that exists, except theoretically.) It is possible to speak of flaws objectively, and of technique. Speaking of what you love and why you love it—speaking honestly—exposes yourself. It’s a form of intellectual nakedness.

This lengthy preamble is my way of talking myself around to confronting Martha Wells’ first novel, The Element of Fire.

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Today we’re joined by Karen Healey, acclaimed New Zealand author of Guardian of the Dead, The Shattering, and When We Wake—two of which I’ve reviewed right here on Tor.com, so it should come as no surprise that I think she’s an excellent writer. She’s agreed to answer a few questions, so without further ado:

[Let’s have some answers...]

In the autumn of last year, the SWM column spent some time discussing three overlooked writers of SF. Now I’m at liberty to let you all in on my cunning plan this year.

I’m going to spend a little time each season to focus on four writers whose range includes what I consider epic fantasy. Starting later this month, several posts will look at the work of Martha Wells; in July there’ll be a handful of posts on Kate Elliott; in October, a look at Sherwood Smith’s Inda series; and in December, the fantasy of Tanya Huff.

Provided I can keep to schedule and TPTB keep giving me rope with which to hang myself, of course.

Other things I would like to bring to you this year, time and resources permitting: some focus on SFF debuts by the female-identified since January 2012; perhaps a post or two on single-author short fiction collections, and a month in which I highlight interesting work by Australian/NZ authors that hasn’t achieved widespread international recognition—although that will depend on whether or not I can get reading copies.

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Is there any narrative structure more predictable than that of the classic zombie story? A small band of the few, the brave, the lucky fight to escape or to contain the mounting zombie threat. Our heroes’ numbers keep diminishing, and meanwhile, the shambling armies of the undead keep growing. Even if our heroes survive/clear/escape the quarantine zone, it’ll only be to discover that the zombie threat isn’t over.

Marry that to a shallow, mouthy college student protagonist, straight out of the wish-fulfilment school of character creation, whose on-again off-again love interest is dark, brooding, and intermittently an asshole, and you add the predictability quotient of pulpy urban fantasy to the predictability quotient of zombie plague.

[Plague Nation is a shambling zombie of a book]

Today we’re joined by Marie Brennan, who’s kindly agreed to answer some of my importunate questions. Some of you, no doubt, are already familiar with her work: her first two novels, Warrior and Witch; her four-book Onyx Court series of historical fantasy out of Tor (Midnight Never Come, In Ashes Lies, A Star Shall Fall, and With Fate Conspire), and her Lies and Prophecy from the Book View Café.

Most recently, her A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir of Lady Trent has hit the shelves. If you haven’t read it already, you should all go read it as soon as you can.

[And now, some questions are answered!]

Let’s digress, today, and talk about a videogame.

Okay, so it’s not much of digression for some of you lot. But me, I play maybe two or three games per annum. Four, in a bumper year. Five—if something wild and strange has happened, maybe.

At the time of writing, I’ve spent much of the past four days sleeping and playing Dishonored. And I want to look at it in a limited way from a feminist viewpoint: not necessarily a theoretically advanced viewpoint, but my own experience of playing it.

[Some spoilers.]

The epigraph of Higgins’ debut novel is a line from the poetry of Osip Mandelstam*: The wolfhound century is on my back/But I am not a wolf. This image, as metaphor, is one that forms the novel’s thematic underpinnings: a contest between hunter and prey in which definitions are fluid, in which the world itself is fluid, in conflict with the cold, rigid requirements of the totalitarian state of the Vlast.

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Watson: Any luck?

Holmes: Luck is an offensive, abhorrent concept. The idea that there is a force in the universe tilting events in your favor or against it is ridiculous. Idiots rely on luck.

Watson: So that’d be a no.

Elementary, 1.05, “Lesser Evils”

Let’s be honest. I never understood the Sherlock love. Jeremy Brett will always be the form and image of Holmes for me, and while the Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Watson films are thigh-slapping entertainment, I’ve never managed to watch more than half an hour of Cumberbatch’s Holmes. I’m aware that in these parts of the internet that may make me an aberration....

But Elementary? On the face of it, it’s fairly run-of-the-mill mystery television: the plots range from the somewhat strange to the bafflingly over-complicated: too much murder, not nearly enough fraud and theft and roller derby. So why do I like it? Why, in fact, is it about the only television show I’ve followed, in the latter part of 2012 and the first part of 2013?

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Aliette de Bodard’s recent novelette On A Red Station, Drifting, struck me so much to heart that I asked her to join us for a few questions about her work and the genre field. As the author of three novels (Servant of the Underworld, Harbinger of the Storm, and Master of the House of Darts, collected as Obsidian and Blood last year) and myriad short stories, a winner of the 2010 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction, and someone who featured prominently on the Locus 2012 Recommended Reading List, she knows whereof she speaks—and let me just say that if you haven’t read her short fiction (particularly last year’s “Immersion” and “Scattered Along The River Of Heaven,” both online at Clarkesworld), well, what the hell are you waiting for?

Go. Read. We’ll be here when you get back.

[Back? On to the answers!]

In the comments to Sleeps With Monsters: Epic Fantasy is Crushingly Conservative? one of the participants suggested that, if epic fantasy is held to be conservative (the discussion on what constitutes epic fantasy and whether or not it is conservative remains open), perhaps we should discuss whether urban fantasy is “crushingly liberal.” For the sake of alliteration, another commenter suggested licentiously liberal—so that’s what we’ll argue today.

Let’s start from the same principles as we did last time. How do we define “urban fantasy”? What counts as “liberal”? Liberal, it appears, possesses a straightforward definition, at least according to the dictionary.

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Necessary Ill, Deb Taber’s debut novel (out of Aqueduct Press) is a difficult read, but a worthy one. Difficult, because it asks hard questions and refuses easy answers; and because it demands you extend your sympathy to all sides: mass-murderers, liars, haters, the wounded and the bereaved and the betrayed.

In another novel, Jin, one of our two protagonists, might be a villain. In a future where the human race seems doomed by resource depletion and overpopulation, Jin is a “spreader,” a creator and disperser of plagues designed to cull the population in the hopes of obtaining equilibrium between the demands of human consumption and the available resources. Jin is part of an underground community of genderless individuals (neuters, or “neuts,”) who fear violence at the hands of the rest of humanity, yet who nonetheless endeavour to help the prospects for humanity’s long-term survival through research, medicine—and yes, carefully targeted diseases.

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I’ve been thinking about a question asked by @Gollancz on Twitter. “Epic Fantasy is, by and large, crushingly conservative in its delivery, its politics and its morality. Discuss. And why? (Oh why?)” [7:20 pm DST, Feb 20, 2013.]

Following, and participating in, some of the conversation that followed—which either took the statement for granted or argued that it was an incomplete characterisation of the subgenre—several things occurred to me. The first is that we keep having this conversation, over and over again, without defining our terms. How do we define “epic”? What counts as “conservative”? (It’s a word with multiple axes of interpretation.)

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