{"id":6581,"date":"2012-07-17T22:14:06","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T03:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6581"},"modified":"2012-07-17T22:43:39","modified_gmt":"2012-07-18T03:43:39","slug":"the-other-half-of-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?p=6581","title":{"rendered":"The Other Half of the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I made three appearances in this year’s Readercon: I gave a talk about transhumanism, I was part of a panel that discussed time travel and — last but very decidedly not least — we officially unveiled the SF anthology I am editing<\/a>. We now have a publisher, as enthusiastic about the project as we are: Candlemark and Gleam<\/a>, headed by Kate Sullivan. Kay Holt of Crossed Genres<\/a>, my co-editor in this venture, put together a neat flyer for which she did artwork that reminds me of black-figure Attic vases.<\/p>\n

The anthology will bear the title The Other Half of the Sky<\/em>. Here’s what I said in my outline:<\/p>\n

“Women may hold up more than half the sky on earth, but it has been different in heaven: Science fiction still is very much a preserve of male protagonists, mostly performing by-the-numbers quests.<\/p>\n

The Other Half of the Sky offers readers heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they\u2019re fully human: Starship captains, planet rulers, explorers, scientists, artists, engineers, craftspeople, pirates, rogues\u2026<\/p>\n

As one of the women in Tiptree\u2019s \u201cHouston, Houston, Do You Read?\u201d says: \u201cWe sing a lot. Adventure songs, work songs, mothering songs, mood songs, trouble songs, joke songs, love songs \u2013 everything.\u201d Everything.<\/em>“<\/p>\n

The panel flowed like a sea swell. Four of the authors invited to participate in the anthology (Sue Lange, Ken Liu, Vandana Singh and Joan Slonczewski) discussed it along with Kay and me. Alex Jablokov, another of the invited authors, was also there to lend moral support. We discussed why we embarked on the venture, why we think it covers less-trodden ground and how each author conceived their story within the framework I constructed.<\/p>\n

Each participant brought up unique and interesting items pertinent to the larger concerns of the anthology. Among them: interactions with aliens that play out differently from the standard “colonize\/annihilate” mode; the reciprocal influence of language and perceptions; the fact that you can have space opera with “regular” people as protagonists, rather than Chosen Ones; the complex requirements for space travel and their intersection with our needs on this planet.<\/p>\n

The audience was eager to know when the anthology will appear (spring 2013, barring unexpected obstacles) and asked if we plan a series! So we seem to have struck a chord — maybe even a new melody on the old instrument. I want to thank everyone who helped create this intricate tapestry of a discussion.<\/p>\n

Image:<\/strong> art for the anthology flyer for Readercon by Kay Holt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I made three appearances in this year’s Readercon: I gave a talk about transhumanism, I was part of a panel that discussed time travel and — last but very decidedly not least — we officially unveiled the SF anthology I am editing. We now have a publisher, as enthusiastic about the project as we are: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,10,13,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biology-and-culture","category-science","category-science-fiction","category-space-exploration","category-writing-and-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}