Archive for Guest Post

Martial Arts and Me: 5 Reasons Why I Love ‘Em

Recently, I was invited to attend Natcon, New Zealand’s national Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention as a guest of honour. As such, I was also asked to put forward some panel suggestions. One of the first that occurred to me arose out of an earlier post here on Orbit about the grand symbiosis between fantasy and history. But I didn’t want to just repeat that discussion, so I’ve added in an extra wrinkle, focusing on weapons and armour, battles and military tactics in the historical context—another fascination that arises, not just out of my love of history, but from my martial arts background.

I am not sure why I’ve always loved martial arts. As kids, my brothers and I were always making ourselves toy swords, bows and arrows, and wooden guns so we could run wild and whack each other with them. I suspect this experience probably established the first element of my love for martial arts—their physicality. The martial arts are all about knowing your own physical strength and limitations, learning those of others, and finding sneaky ways to deal to those with superior strength. Physicality and sneakiness lead straight to the next reason I have always enjoyed martial arts—they’re really fun. I’ve practiced a number of different martial arts and found a great spirit of camaraderie in all of them. And in “aikido, the early years” (aikido is the martial art I have practiced longest) training always wound up with a session of “elbow-waza”, i.e. bending our elbows as we all raised a glass together at the pub. (more…)

The Cuddle Factor

If you want to make a monster sympathetic, give it fur.  Fur is the dividing line between a monster you can feel a little empathy for and one that you want to see die.

It’s not an exact science.  E.T. was bald, but then again, he wasn’t a monster.  He was just a little lost guy from outer space.  If an alien or otherwise bizarre creature is in your story and doesn’t eat anyone, their fur (or lack thereof) is less important.

In the classic film Alien, a ruthless predator kills the crew, one-by-one.  Sure, the xenomorph is terrifying from top-to-bottom.  Its reproduction method, its acid blood, that weird little mouth that pops out of its bigger mouth, these are all things designed to make it a strange, unearthly beastie.  But when you get right down to it, the xenomorph is just an animal.  It isn’t malicious.  It’s just doing what comes naturally. (more…)

A Little Bit About—the Sir Julius Vogel Awards

Recently, the Orbit team—thank you, Orbit team!—posted that The Heir of Night (The Wall of Night 1) had been shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel Award.

But it occurred to me that although Orbit blog readers are switched-on SFF folk, not everyone will necessarily have heard of this award from the far side of the world. So “just in case”, here’s a little background.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards are a reader-voted award made annually under the auspices of SFFANZ, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Association of New Zealand, to recognise achievement in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by New Zealanders or New Zealand residents. Like other science fiction and fantasy awards around the globe, the Sir Julius Vogels include both professional and fan categories for various forms of writing, artwork, dramatic presentation, and editing.

The Award itself was designed by Weta Workshops, which has been involved with the making of a large number of major films, most famously The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The reason why it’s called the Sir Julius Vogel Award, when Sir Julius was a nineteenth century NZ prime minister—is because he is also held to be NZ’s first speculative fiction author, publishing a novel called Anno Domini 2000 – A Woman’s Destiny in 1889. The premise of the book is one where women have achieved suffrage (which NZ actually enacted in 1893, just four years later) and gone on to hold major positions of authority in politics, law and industry. Given that shortly after 2000, NZ’s prime minister, as well as our governor general, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the chief executive of NZ’s largest private company, were all women, Sir Julius’s speculation is now held to be uncommonly prescient … (more…)

Fiction to Film

Film adaptations – love ‘em, hate ‘em, the truth of the matter is, they’re loud, they’re big, they’re successful and they’re probably coming to a screen near you.  The advent of CGI in the last few years has led to an explosion of science fiction and fantasy movies, spearheaded to a large degree by Lord of the Rings and the Marvel Comics lot deciding to cash in on a good thing… now when you think of summer blockbuster, you can fairly reliably count on not just running, jumping, chasing, but you can probably also hold out for the destruction of New York by alien ship or the fall of civilizations.

I’m not going to re-tread the old arguments of book vs. film here.  There are pros and cons either way and frankly the two mediums are so different in so many respects that it seems like a rather futile bit of ground to wander over.   For my part, I should declare that I actually prefer the film of Lord of the Rings to the book, love comic book adaptations… when they’re done well, that is… and am delighted to discover that the occasional CGI fuelled bit of science fiction movie making is in fact, slipping through the net and coming up on screen with the odd bit of an idea behind it. (more…)

The Warrior

The Warrior is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in my novelette from Mean Streets). The story takes place between Small Favour and Turn Coat.

Once upon a time, when moving into a new neighborhood, I spent a few days meeting the new neighbors. Nothing big, just visits to say hello, introduce myself to the other family with children my son’s age, another family with a high-school-aged daughter who often babysat for the other families on the street, the usual sort of thing. I had a bunch of innocuous interactions with them that didn’t look like anything special – at the time. Fast-forward five years. Over the next few years, I came to learn that some of the most inane, unimportant little things I had done or said in that time had impacted several of my neighbors in enormous ways. Not necessarily good or bad, but significantly, and generally in a positive fashion, or so it seemed to me.

If I’d chosen different words to speak, or timed my actions only slightly differently, it might well have altered their lives – and if I hadn’t been paying close attention, I might not have realized it had happened at all. It was my first real-life lesson in the law of unintended consequences – and the basis of my belief that big, important things are built from small and commonplace things, and that even our little acts of petty, everyday good or evil have a cumulative effect on our world. A lot of religions make a distinction between light and darkness, and paint portraits of dramatic battles between their champions.

But maybe the ‘fight on the ground’ is a lot more common than we ever really think. It happens every day, and a lot of the time we might not even be aware that it’s going on – until five years later, I guess. Our smallest actions and choices matter. They tell us about who we are. That was the idea I tried to carry into The Warrior. That, and the idea that what seems like a good thing or a bad thing might not be either, seen from another point of view. Many readers were upset with Michael’s fate at the end of Small Favour – how horrible that a character who was basically so decent got handed such a horrible fate. But judge for yourself how tragic it was from his point of view …

Doomed

Powerlessness is the foundation of most horror stories.  Whether they’re about monsters or madmen or even worse, the notion that we are not in charge of our own destiny is what makes most horror work.  It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about purely fantastic dangers like Freddy Krueger and vampires or if we’re staying in more realistic territory with murderers and natural disasters.  If a character must confront their own powerlessness, you’ve got yourself a horror story.

This is why Alien is a horror story, and Aliens is an action adventure film.  In one, a crew of poorly armed, non-combat astronauts are slaughtered by a sneaky predator.  In the other, a squad of soldiers blasts scores of aliens.  It’s true that the soldiers in Aliens are facing some long odds, but though they are in desperate straits, they can still fight back.  They might all die, but they are sure as hell going to take a lot of the enemy with them.  And in the end, it all boils down to Sigourney Weaver in a power suit grappling with the alien queen.  Certainly, not an easy victory, but a victory nonetheless, through guts, determination, and a handy dandy airlock. (more…)

A Tale of Two Cons

I was talking with my greengrocer about where I was disappearing off to over the Easter weekend, and he listened to the sort of stuff that goes on, raising a skeptical eyebrow. Then he said: “A few years ago, I would have said you were mad, but I caught myself looking at this advert in my tropical fish magazine for a Fish Fair in Germany and thinking whether I could afford to go.” Neon tetras or science fiction: a gathering of disparate people with a shared but niche interest, meeting together for a short but intense period of time to celebrate everything fishy/skiffy, and then go back home where no one understands you and you indulge in your passion either ignored or mocked.

Okay. Let’s talk about the paradigm-shifting elephant in the room from the outset. The internet. I’m pretty certain it’s been as revolutionary for the tropical fish community as it has been for fandom. I remember the first time as a baby scientist that I emailed someone whose paper I’d been reading, back in the early days of JANET, UNIX line commands and glowing green-screen terminals. I wanted some more technical information – before, it’d have been a letter, a formal barrier to communication, slow and time-consuming – now the answer came flashing back from half a world away. Anyone in my tiny specialisation was no further than a short walk down the corridor to the computer room. I was abruptly, immediately, not alone. (more…)

It’s My Birthday, Too

It’s My Birthday, Too is a short story from my new Dresden Files anthology Side Jobs (originally in Many Bloody Returns, edited by Charlaine Harris). The story takes place between White Night and Small Favour.

I’ve met people who are sweeter and nicer and more likeable than Charlaine Harris – but I really can’t remember when. Every author I’ve ever talked with who knows Charlaine just couldn’t be happier about the success of her books and the HBO series True Blood. She’s that nice. I can’t even bring myself to be jealous. She’s that nice. So when she invited me to contribute, I said, ‘Heck, yeah!’

Using a birthday theme (since the book, originally, was supposed to be published on Vlad Dracula’s somethinghundredth birthday) was sort of a challenge. Birthdays are about families. Whether they’re a biological family or one that’s come together by choice, it’s your family who gathers to celebrate the anniversary of you. It’s kind of a profound thing, when you think about it.

But Dresden hadn’t ever really associated his birthday with that kind of joy – only with the knowledge that he’d never really had a family. So I decided to do a story about Harry coping with the unfamiliar role of being the guy celebrating the life of his half brother. I found a very good mall in Chicago that I could demolish with the usual Dresdenesque shenanigans, set the story against the backdrop of a vampire-ish LARP, and knocked this one out over the course of about three weeks.

Sympathy for Cthulhu

A. Lee Martinez's latest novel, Chasing the Moon, out this month

H.P. Lovecraft suggested that reality as we know it is all the deranged fever dream of an incomprehensible horrific monster sitting at the center of creation.  The monster’s named Azathoth, and he’s the closest thing to a benevolent force you’ll find in the Lovecraftian tradition.

The entire premise of Lovecraftian horror is built on this notion.  The universe is too large and mysterious for the human mind to ever understand, and those who do understand even a piece of the real “truth” will eventually be driven to madness.  And they’re the lucky ones.  Insanity or ignorance.  These are your choices, according to Lovecraft.

Choose wisely.  Or whatever.  Not like it really matters in the end.

Cheerful fellow, that Lovecraft. (more…)

Feminine Fantasy

Anyone who’s ever read my books will discover, perhaps to their surprise, that I tend not to write heroines.  And sure, this is a habit I’m currently in the process of breaking, but as it’s been such a long-running thing, I figured I’d take this time to talk about why.

Women and fantasy have always had a curious and complicated relationship.  On the one hand, we’re a very large part of the reader’s market, but on the other hand, we tend not to embrace the geekiness in a particularly overt way.  Certain aspects of the genre – zombies and spaceships, mainly – are still considered largely a male-dominated preserve, while others – women having unwise relationships with vampires, for example – rake in the female readers like hungry pigeons to breadcrumbs in the park.  That said, at those few science fiction and fantasy events I’ve been to where writers are invited to mingle en mass, I’m regularly reminded of just how few female writers there are in this genre – or at least, how few turn up for the free crisps and bits of cheese on a stick.  As a girl discovering her innate geek, I did indeed endure those painful teenage years where the idea that I might like science fiction and fantasy books somehow made me outside the accepted norm of youthful female behaviour.  The cliché of the female fantasy fan is hardly a glorious one, often implying pale skin, bad hair, a dress sense worthy of a mortician and quite possibly a thing for Star Trek, only two of which I actually had – the dodgy complexion and bad hair – and that through too much time spent on the London underground and not enough sun.  Even now, when I announce that I am an avid fantasy reader, I often find myself on the receiving end of comments from my non-genre counterparts along the lines of, ‘oh, like elves and stuff?’ and the explanation of why this is a ridiculous way of understanding the genre usually takes more time than we have.  To go that one step further and declare that I’m not just a reader, but I write this stuff, for actual cash as well as glee, tends to produce an expression that I can only really summarise as ‘does not compute’ and usually a hasty retreat from further conversation on the subject.
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