Words

Being bilingual for as long as I can remember, I've always been acutely aware of how one's perceptions and interpretations of reality are shaped by language. Concepts, worldviews, ideas, perspectives are emphasized, reinforced, ignored, overlooked, dismissed, transformed, valorized, maligned etc. by language itself.
One of the things I like about English is the ease with which neologisms are constructed and accepted -- if a new word is needed, it can be built from pre-existing linguistic elements imbuing it with immediate contextual meaning. (Conversely, one of the things I dislike about French is its static nature and the slow, reluctant way it eventually, maybe, condescends to accept neologisms.)
Sure, even in English, the full gamut of perspectives isn't possible, but the language is more flexible, more responsive, more interactive, "cooler" in the McCluhanesqe sense of "cool medium".
Anyway---
All this preamble only because I want to share two relatively uncommon (English) neologisms I particularly like.

1. Mechanomorphism (and derivatives, such as "mechanomorphic")
Adherents to the scientific worldview and its claims to "objectivity" are often quick to condemn as "anthropomorphic" any suggestion that other animals experience emotions and are active, sentient agents in the world. This is particularly handy when scientists want to torture nonhuman animals in order to, say, test the effects of perfume on humans. The assumption is that "anthropomorphism" is a distortion of reality, whereas "non-anthropomorphism" is "scientific".
But science, like any other matrix with which we can look at the world, come with its own set of unexamined assumptions.
In Eileen Crist's excellent book Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and the Human Mind (Temple University Press, 1999) I was introduced to the term "mechanomorphism" -- which is what many scientists (and others who share a similar worldview) do when they automatically liken nonhuman animals to machines and deny them intelligence, emotion, and agency, no matter how much evidence points towards these characteristics. Because the "proof" of such things is not easily quantifiable or indisputable, but then again neither is the proof of their absence. Nevertheless, common use of language makes "anthropomorphism" the intellectual failing, and not the mechanomorphism that many so manifestly commit.
Most animals are built pretty much the same way, at least compared to, say, machines. Yet language makes it easier for scientists to equate nonhuman animals with machines (for example the common use of "it" to refer to animals) rather than recognize that all animals, including humans, experience a similar (if species-specific) range of emotions and thoughts.
So let's hear it for the word "mechanomorphism" -- a very good word to describe a widespread intellectual failing. But let's condemn mechanomorphism itself for facilitating the perpetuation of suffering, torture, and abuse.

2. Monosexual (and derivatives, such as "monosexuality")
My companion taught me to dislike the word "bisexual", and once I thought it through I realized that she was right to condemn that word.
I've long hated the artificial homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy, as if we had to choose, to label, as if we couldn't simply be sexual, with no further precision necessary. Sure, we might have preferences and tendencies, and there may be sexual characteristics that turn us on or whose absence turn us off -- but labels are still so unpleasantly static and restrictive. And we change, we change constantly -- we don't need yet more social labels to make it even harder to roll with the changes as they come.
Also, the use of the term bisexual also implies, rather problematically, that there are only two genders.
So let's hear it for the world "monosexual" -- a word to describe that odd sexual quirk of explicitly identifying oneself as only being attracted to one gender.
Everyone else is just sexual.
Thanks to Carla Speed McNeil for introducing me to this very useful word in the story notes of her book Finder: Mystery Date (2004)

Fantasy: 50 Favourites, 1966-2001

I'm supposed to be writing a review of Susanna Clarke's outstanding and wonderfully odd debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. My deadline is fast approaching, but I can't seem to get a grasp on how to best communicate my enthusiasm for this book.

Reviewing this fantasy novel has my mind swimming in thoughts about fantasy in general, and, compulsive listmaker that I am, I started to formulate a list of my 50 favourite fantasy books as a companion list to my earlier 50 favourite crossgenre noirs: 1950-1999. Expect more such lists in future.

My unusual noir list has sparked some discussion on Ed Gorman's blog, at Rara-Avis, and at another blog or two -- but, if anything, this fantasy list might be even more idiosyncratic.

Traditional fantasy -- whether quests, sword & sorcery, Arthurian, ghost stories, elves, folkloric, fairies, etc. -- generally holds little interest for me, and yet I love the idea of unfettered imagination implied by the term "fantasy".

I thus decided for this list to concentrate on contemporary fantasy, from 1966 (the year of my birth -- I can't get more subjectively contemporary than that!) to 2001 (anything more recent still needs time to ferment to prove its canonical durability).

What I found interesting was that the period from 1984 to 1995 accounted for 30 of the 50 selections -- certainly a golden age of fantastic fiction if ever there was one. Things tapered off in the late 1990s, but then picked up with a vengeance in 2000, with 2000 and 2001 racking up four titles each. A quick glance at my favourites from 2002 and 2003 and at my reading so far in 2004 shows that this trend is continuing, with excellent fantasy books by Paul Di Filippo, Jeff VanderMeer, Shelley Jackson, Bentley Little, China Miéville, Daniel Quinn, Lucius Shepard, Tom Piccirilli, Andrew Fox, Ashok Banker, Minister Faust, Gene Wolfe, and, of course, Susanna Clarke.

So, without further ado, here are my 50 favourite fantasy books: 1966-2001.

1. Roger Zelazny - This Immortal (1966)
2. Philip José Farmer - A Feast Unknown (1969)
3. R.A. Lafferty - Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970)
4. R.A. Lafferty - The Devil Is Dead (1971)
5. Michael Moorcock - The Dancers at the End of Time (1972-76)
6. Tanith Lee - Night's Master (1978)
7. Michael Moorcock - Gloriana; or, The Unfulfill'd Queen (1978)
8. R.A. Lafferty - Archipelago (1979)
9. Jonathan Carroll - The Land of Laughs (1980)
10. Gene Wolfe - The Book of the New Sun (1980-82)
11. Timothy Findley - Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984)
12. Barry Hughart - Bridge of Birds (1984)
13. Lucius Shepard - Green Eyes (1984)
14. Robert Silverberg - Gilgamesh the King (1984)
15. Garry Kilworth - The Songbirds of Pain (1984)
16. Geoff Ryman - The Warrior Who Carried Life (1985)
17. Gene Wolfe - Soldier of the Mist (1986)
18. Tom Holt - Expecting Someone Taller (1987)
19. Lucius Shepard - The Jaguar Hunter (1987)
20. Gene Wolfe - The Urth of the New Sun (1987)
21. Tanith Lee - The Book of the Damned (1988)
22. Rachel Pollack - Unquenchable Fire (1988)
23. R.A. Lafferty - Sindbad: The Thirteenth Voyage (1989)
24. Gene Wolfe - Soldier of Arete (1989)
25. Lucius Shepard - Kalimantan (1990)
26. Jonathan Carroll - Outside the Dog Museum (1991)
27. Theodore Roszak - Flicker (1991)
28. Lucius Shepard - The Ends of the Earth (1991)
29. R.A. Lafferty - Iron Tears (1992)
30. Kim Newman - Anno Dracula (1992)
31. Will Self - Cock & Bull (1992)
32. Lucius Shepard - The Golden (1993)
33. Jonathan Carroll - From the Teeth of Angels (1994)
34. Christopher Moore - Coyote Blue (1994)
35. James Morrow - Towing Jehovah (1994)
36. Gregory Maguire - Wicked (1995)
37. Christopher Moore - Bloodsucking Fiends (1995)
38. Kim Newman - Famous Monsters (1995)
39. William Browning Spencer - Résumé with Monsters (1995)
40. William Browning Spencer - Zod Wallop (1995)
41. Paul Di Filippo - Ciphers: A Post-Shannon Rock-n-Roll Mystery (1997)
42. Michael Moorcock - Legends from the End of Time (1997)
43. Richard Calder - Malignos (2000)
44. Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
45. Joe Lansdale - High Cotton (2000)
46. Robert Charles Wilson - The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)
47. J.G. Ballard - The Complete Short Stories (2001)
48. Jonathan Carroll - The Wooden Sea (2001)
49. Richard Lupoff - Claremont Tales (2001)
50. Ray Vukcevich - Meet Me in the Moon Room (2001)

2004 Sunburst Award

Cory Doctorow is the winner of the 2004 Sunburst Award for his excellent collection, A Place so Foreign and 8 More.
The jury this year was composed of Caterina Edwards, Yves Meynard, Lyle Weis, Michelle Sagara West, and me.
This is what we wrote about the winning book:
"A PLACE SO FOREIGN AND 8 MORE opens with Cory Doctorow's signature piece, 'Craphound,' which perfectly showcases the qualities that so impressed us: an energetic narrative drive; an infectious love of storytelling; intriguingly imagined outcast characters; unusual ideas explored with verve and intelligence; a charming wit; a desire to take chances rather than to retread safe ground; and a generous amount of chutzpah. This collection of nine stories is an excellent example of science fiction pushing forward and evolving, while casting a critically pertinent eye towards the past, the present, and the future."

This is the official process:
-first, we had to select a shortlist of 5 titles among all the eligible works of Canadian SF, fantasy, horror, and slipstream;
-second, we had to select a winner from that shortlist.

This is how it went.
-It was surprisingly easy to select the shortlist: of all the books that were eligible (and there were many; I didn't keep track of the number of books we read), only 13 titles appeared on the respective nomination lists of the 5 jurors.

-Of these 13 titles, 3 appeared on only one list each, so those were immediately eliminated, leaving us with 10 potential candidates. (I was one of the jurors who had nominated a title no-one else cared for -- I will recommend it here: Righteous Blood, by Cliff Burns, a collection of two disturbing and strange novellas; it was the only horror title to make the "long list" of 13; on the whole, the other jurors were not generally sympathetic towards horror fiction, whereas SF, fantasy, and slipstream all had across-the-board support.)

-Of the remaining 10 titles, 2 appeared on every juror's list, so those 2 were immediately placed on the shortlist.

-To determine the other 3 titles that would appear on the shortlist, we each ranked the remaining selections and tallied the votes; the top 3 would make it onto the list. From that round, 2 titles easily distinguished themselves in the voting -- the shortlist now had 4 of the requisite 5 titles chosen -- but there was a close call between 2 titles for the final spot. After a minimal amount of haggling, the number 5 spot was selected, and the jury sent the shortlist to the award committee, which then prepared a press release for the official announcement.

-The shortlist consisted of:
THE BONE HOUSE, Luanne Armstrong
ORYX AND CRAKE, Margaret Atwood
A PLACE SO FOREIGN AND 8 MORE, Cory Doctorow
INITIATION, Virginia Frances Schwartz
BLIND LAKE, Robert Charles Wilson

-In addition, the jury agreed that there was such consensus among us, that the other 5 titles that very nearly made it onto the shortlist deserved to be recognized, and so we suggested to the award committee that a list of 5 honourable mentions be announced; the committee agreed. The five honourable mentions are:
STRUCK by Geoffrey Bromhead
THE MERMAID OF PARIS by Cary Fagan
THE SALT ROADS by Nalo Hopkinson
A TELLING OF STARS by Caitlin Sweet
THE ASSASSINS OF TAMURIN by S.D. Tower

-Now came the task of choosing the winner. That was not so smooth. The biggest conflict occurred between me and one other juror on the process of selection. I wanted to use voting as a tool to guide a consensus choice, whereas that other juror wanted the winning selection to be decided by ranked vote only, the top vote-getter being the winner, whether or not every juror could stand behind that choice. It took quite a while and quite a few tense emails to sort that out. In the end, it all worked out, and a winner emerged.

-Despite that endgame tension, being on the Sunburst jury was a fun and enriching experience.

Congratulations to Cory Doctorow!
-- And everyone go read his outstanding award-winning collection A Place so Foreign and 8 More.