Last Fridays Poetry in Chicago

/ Sue Burke / 1 Comment

I’ll be reading at Last Fridays Poetry, August 29, 8 p.m., at Esquina Event Space, 4602 N. Western Ave., Chicago (corner of Western and Wilson Avenues). This is a small, very supportive event, and you’re welcome to come and enjoy or to read, even if you’ve never read in public before. We’ll be glad to see you.

I’ll be reading a work of my own, Marks of Time, and a poem by Amado Nervo, “En paz,” in Spanish and two different translations I made of it. This is my husband’s favorite poem in Spanish.

Expect another five to ten readers. Again, you could be one of them. There are no restrictions on what you can read, but please keep it brief.

A friend of mine, Mike, created this event as a friendly, creative, comfortable space. I have come to believe that not everyone gets to experience creative spaces as a regular part of their life.

What convinced me of that are the reactions I’ve seen at C2E2, the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo. It’s a huge event attended by tens of thousands of people where every kind of creativity is welcome, from costumes to visual art to writing to film-making and more. On the city bus going there, you can feel the joy among attendees. This is where they will finally find their people.

The world needs more exceptional spaces like that, large and small. For me, time spent with artists, writers, costumers, actors and other creators and seeing what they do always energizes me. That’s why I value Last Fridays. It’s like an oasis.

Calvary, bases, and other anachronisms

/ Sue Burke / 6 Comments

Recently I was reading a fantasy novel set in a parallel universe, and one character commiserated with another, saying, “You’ve suffered a calvary” — that is, she’d suffered a great ordeal. The word comes from the hill named Calvary where Christ was crucified, but the Messiah hadn’t come to that parallel universe, so no one could suffer a “calvary.” Nothing important had happened on Calvary Hill.

The word “peanut” came into use in English in 1802. The plant is native to South America. If you’re a writer, you need to know this.

In another book, set in medieval Europe, a friend remarked that someone “had his bases covered” — that is, he was prepared. This is a baseball expression, and baseball originated in the United States in the mid-1800s, so people weren’t covering their bases centuries earlier on a distant continent.

Yet another book, also set in medieval Europe, spoke of plans being “dynamited” by a setback. Dynamite was invented in 1867 by Alfred Nobel (who is also famous for prizes).

Speaking of medieval expressions, we all believe kings back then could shout: “Off with his head!” Actually, they probably didn’t, not even Richard III (1452-1483), because that exclamation comes from the play Richard III written by Shakespeare in 1592, and it was made popular in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in 1865.

Speaking of the Bard, the expression “lie low” also comes from one of his plays, as did “green-eyed monster” and “break the ice.” However, Lewis Carroll didn’t invent the “Cheshire cat” or “March hare”: these expressions originated a century or more before his book.

I pay attention to this because as a writer and translator, when I’m working with historical or fantastical material, I need to bear in mind that all words and expressions originate at a specific point in time and space, and they need to be congruent with the origin and setting of the work.

For help, check the Historical Thesaurus of English. It contains almost 800,000 words from Old English to the present day, primarily based on the Oxford English Dictionary.

There, I learned that “home run” only dates back to 1953. Additional research told me that home runs became more common around that year, so apparently athletes and sports writers needed to give a four-bagger an evocative name.

The lesson, for me, is to be sensitive, remain alert, do research — and expect surprises. The past is another country. They spoke differently there.

My votes for the Hugo Award Best Novella

/ Sue Burke / Leave a comment

This year’s Hugo Awards will be presented at the Seattle Worldcon on Saturday evening, August 16. The novella category includes works from 17,500 to 40,000 words, and half of the nominees were also up for this year’s Nebula Awards.

Here are my votes, based on my opinion of the strength of the storytelling, but as always you may have a very different opinion. All the stories are worth reading, and although I think Tordotcom has good taste, I wish more publishers were offering works at this length.

6. Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom) — Some space assassin-navigators are assigned to hunt down a space monster, then there’s a murder and a lot of quarreling among the four survivors. This would make a fun movie.

5. The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom) — A woman ventures into a dangerous forest to save two children from a monster. A grim story told with urgency.

4. What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire) — A cottage is empty, everyone is dead, and no one will talk about it. Then things get creepy.

3. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom) — The chain is about an ex-slave, the practice is about the chance to become something better, and the horizon the chance to get it. A lot of social justice, told with the distance of spaceships.

2. The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom) — Elephants and newly-revived mammoths face extinction from ivory poachers, but they have protectors. The story explores its ideas back and forth in time to dramatize a contest between greed and survival.

1. The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom) — Cleric Chih accompanies a bride to an arranged marriage. But something seems wrong — not to Cleric Chih but to the reader. It turns out the reader is right. Stories can deceive.

My votes for the Hugo Best Novelette Award

/ Sue Burke / Leave a comment

This year’s Hugo Awards will be presented at the Seattle Worldcon on Saturday evening, August 16.

Like other categories, novelettes have some overlap with this year’s Nebula Awards. Here are my ranked votes, and I based them on how original I thought the stories are. You may very reasonably have different criteria and choices. In fact, these two  reviewers made very different rankings.

6. “Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 59) — Two sisters reconcile after a long estrangement, each with her own secrets. A slow, personal story that takes a surprising turn toward the end, but for me, the emotions are too muted.

5. “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 58) — Friends try to meet, but they can’t find each other even though they’re in the same place. Then things get more eerie (no spoilers). Not quite horror but very unsettling.

4. “Lake of Souls” by Ann Leckie in Lake of Souls (Orbit) — A denizen of a distant planet suffers a crisis of identity and a planetary explorer struggles to survive. They meet, and this changes some things. Not a new idea, and in my opinion not developed in a new direction.

3. “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer (Asimov’s, September/October 2024) — Every now and then, Asimov’s publishes a story that isn’t exactly science fiction. A woman takes a hard look at her life and must set it right, but I saw the ending from a long way off.

2. “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed (Strange Horizons, Fund Drive 2024) — A wizard gets an apprentice, but there’s a problem — a monster-sized dragon problem. Well told with a little humor.

1. “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, May 2024) — The accidental discovery of a book printed on paper triggers an existential crisis in an electronic world with constant volatility. The understated storytelling style effectively delivers growing horror.