Women of Genre Fiction challenge - completed

There is a lot of good discussion right now in the science fiction community about under-represented groups. I won't weigh in on anyone else's opinions, but here's mine.

When I was a kid I didn't have a lot of friends. We moved around a lot and I wasn't very good at fitting in at new schools. So I read a lot. Books didn't reject me and when I was reading I didn't need anyone else. I eventually made friends where I was, but they were always uneasy relationships. I always felt on the verge of being rejected. Even now that little voice inside me that talks on behalf of my social anxiety tells me that my friends, who I am otherwise quite confident in, are just putting up with me.

Books have always been an escape from that feeling. They were sources of new worlds to learn about and distractions from the real world. In them there were people like me to reassure me that I wasn't alone and people unlike me to remind me that we are all unique. When I was a kid I needed more of the former than the latter and I was lucky that there are lots of books with people like me. There were even more books where boys were the protagonist. In fact, there are gobs of young-man's-epic-journey books or men's adventure stories.

I seek out books written by women because I know, for sure, that the author has the life experiences to empathize with woman and see them as vital and valuable human beings, to see me as a valuable human being. Female authors are also examples to me, showing me that my creative works can be as good as a man's and can be taken as seriously. And by seeking them out and recognizing their worth I am contributing to that equality. All of that on top of getting to read the amazing stories that spring from their heads.

Men might seek out books written by women for different reasons. Perhaps those reasons are similar to why I seek out books written by people of different racial, cultural, gender, and sexual identities than my own. I like to learn about other people's experiences. I like to be taken out of my own head and surroundings and into someone else's. Authors who have different views of the world are in the best position to expose me to stories, characters, and settings that are foreign to me.

For the past two years, as part of the Worlds Without End Roll Your Own challenges I have challenged myself to read 12 books by 12 woman authors that are new to me. It's a surprisingly easy challenge as there are lots of women whose works I haven't read and more and more women debuting every year.

In 2014's challenge I took on some legendary books:

• Cyteen by CJ Cherryh
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin.

I also found some new books that I loved:

• Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
• The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne
• The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
• Zoo City by Lauren Beukes.

In all, I only outright disliked one book, Children of Men by PD James

Last year's success made this year's challenge an imperative and I am once again happy with the results.

This year I found:

• Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy which not only made me rethink my avoidance of high fantasy but also was one of the most satisfying endings I've ever read

• Pat Cadigan, whose book Synners feels like a part of me now.

• Elizabeth Bear and, while Dust wasn't my favorite book this year, I loved the casual inclusion of lesbians and genderqueer characters.

• Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring, which has been on my list forever. Everyone must be hanging on to their copies because I check the used bookstore every time I go. I loved how the book was about an immigrant community in Toronto and so mixed Afrocaribbean elements against a familiar urban backdrop. Peter Jay Fernandez did an excellent job narrating the audiobook and if I ever get my hands on a physical copy I'll probably still hear his voice.

• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor. It's a great example of how expectations can shape a book experience. This is a big-picture book. Though it zooms in on scenes and follows a few characters, this is the story about Lagos, not the individual characters. Once I understood that I liked it better.

• Redemption in Indigo by Karen Lord. Another great audiobook. The book is written as a folktale told orally, so audio is the way to experience it.

• The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I keep thinking I should describe this book in some other way than "relaxing" and "a story of friendship" because that makes it sound boring, but it was both of those things and not at all boring. A lot of books are sold based on their intensity, and I love some of those books, but this one is perfect in the way it helped all of my worries and thoughts melt away while I lived the lives of the two main characters.

• The Strange and Extraordinary Tale of Mirror and Goliath by Ishbelle Bee. After several months my rage at this book is starting to subside and I'm terrifically tempted to read the sequel even if it renews my fury. Someone please tip me in one direction or the other.

• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Yet another great audiobook. It might not be the most groundbreaking book, but I loved how the protagonist won by being reasonable and not a jerk.

• The Buried Life by Carrie Patel, Revision by Andrea Phillips, and The Alchemy of Stone. All of which I liked well enough, but not enough to stay fresh in my memory even after a few months.

Having finished this challenge already feels great. The next official "reading level" for the 2015 Women of Genre Fiction was 24 books, and I won't quite make that, but I do have 7 more books on The Spreadsheet that are new-to-me women authors:

Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind (already read)
Doomsday Morning
Memory of Water
The Bohr Maker
The Snow Queen
The Three
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sing

Any recommendations on which of these to read first or female authors I should make sure to read?

Review: Synners by Pat Cadigan

Published in 1991
Awards: Nebula award nominated, Arthur C Clarke award winner
Challenges: 12 in 12, Women of Genre Fiction

I have often joked at work that I can't wait for the day when I can just plug in and let my company use my brain-power while I entertain myself with a book. It's a fun thought, but Synners explores what that might really be like. What if we could get information out of our heads as easily as thinking? What if we could experience things virtually by inputting sensory information directly into our brains? For Gina, Gabe, and Visual Mark the invention of "sockets" in conjunction with brain mapping lets that happen. At first they use it to create immersive "movies" and music videos, but soon it becomes clear how much they have to "change for the machines", a phrase used by several characters to describe their feelings about technological advances.

The three main characters, each a creator of virtual reality entertainment, have different reactions to sockets. Gina is the least accepting of the technology. She is already used to chasing Visual Mark around in real life, pulling him out of drugged stupors and trying to steer him in productive directions. She long ago gave up the idea of them as a couple, but still sees their lives as permanently and intimately twined. She receives sockets to try to maintain her connection to Mark when the large corporation they work for decides they are giving Mark sockets whether she comes along or not. Her relationship to the sockets is adversarial. Though she creates music videos when needed, she makes no effort to soften the impact of her thoughts. If they want a fall in the video, she makes sure it is a terrifying fall.

Mark is on the far other end of the spectrum. He has always been extremely creative and used drugs as a way to temper his own thoughts. Now that he has sockets he abandons his body and learns to use the technology around him as his senses and limbs. He can finally get his visualizations out of him in all of their glory.

Gabe is somewhere in between. Before the sockets he spent most of his time with virtual companions in a virtual world he'd cludged together and which mutated in unexpected, but desirable, ways. He was used to his companions and the technology he had to interact with them. He turned out just enough work to stay employed. When sockets made the technology he was used to obsolete, he had a hard time adjusting. They promised him that it would be easier to create virtual scenarios, after all, it only took a thought, but he found it hard to master his own thoughts. He used to fit so comfortably into the world he had created. The creation of the world, once catalyzed did not require his intervention, just his participation. After the sockets he stood in his own way when creating things that required his concentration. The sockets demanded that he be the ever-present master of his imaginings.

What is interesting about these characters as a set, especially to the reader who may live to see such technologies, is that they are all middle-aged. They have history and complications that younger characters do not. They remember when virtual reality and brain manipulation technologies were in their infancy and those of their generation that were going to wash out already have. They are survivors who don't spend their day blissed out on their own brain implants or slaves to their datafeeds. The stratification of society into mindless consumers, renegade innovators, ultrapowerful elites, and survivors, is a hallmark of cyberpunk. In a lot of cyberpunk books, the hero is one of the renegade innovators, i.e. hackers, but Cadigan chose the survivors instead and it makes the characters more relateable.

'Ah. I thought you looked like you needed, um, change for the machines.' Gabe shrugged self-consciously; he could feel the entire common room watching. 

The man's smile was unexpectedly broad and sunny. 'That's a good way to put it. How did you know? [...] My whole life has been, "Okay, change for the machines." Every time they bring in a new machine, more change.' 

-Synners (SF Masterworks edition) pg 105

Cadigan also has a way with words that twists the reader to see things in a new light. For example, the phrase "change for the machines" which is echoed throughout the book was first introduced in a scene shortly after Visual Mark's small music video production company was acquired by Diversification Inc, a huge conglomerate. He wanders into an employee meet-and-greet to use the coffee vending machine and after a while of patting himself down Gabe offers him "change for the machines". Mark immediately latches on to that phrase and has a private epiphany about the nature of humanity as it relates to immersive technology. The reader is privy to the slow unfolding of this epiphany.

This isn't the only example of the beauty of Cadigan's writing, but it is the most easily encapsulated. I originally picked up this book because I heard Cadigan speak on a panel at Lonestarcon 3 (that year's Worldcon). Now I can't wait to reread Synners and then tear through everything she's published hoping to absorb just a little of the magic into my own writing.