New Lambda Finalists

On the heels of my last post, the Lambda Awards have just posted the list of this year's finalists. Credit where credit is due, I discovered this from Science Fiction Awards Watch after a Google search.

LGBT SCI-FI/FANTASY/HORROR
Wicked Gentlemen, Ginn Hale (Blind Eye Books)
A Companion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (Tor Books)
Spaceman Blues: A Love Song, Brian Francis Slattery (Tor Books)
The Dust of Wonderland, Lee Thomas (Alyson Books)
Ha'penny, Jo Walton (Tor Books)

That's got to be a record for Tor. They've had novels appear before, but three out of five!

I may have to start browsing the bookshelves by publisher in more categories than just manga.

Spaceman Blues was edited by Liz Gorinsky, who came to talk to us at Clarion. So I may have to put that at the top of my shopping list.

There are many other categories, so you can see the full list of finalists here.

Which Science Fiction Writer Are You?

I'm posting a lot today. This seems to be a weekend for net-surfing, which tends to generate blog entries.

I didn't realize that the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had entered the 21st century and set up a blog. That's good to know. I'm sad I missed The Martian Child DVD competition, but I just borrowed it from the library yesterday and watched it today! So a bit of an odd coincidence, that. Good movie, go see it. Can't tell you if it's a good story, haven't read it. I was on a David Gerrold kick just a bit ago with his Dingilliad, which is another odd coincidence, and ties into the Awards of the previous entries. But anyhow, I am diverging off topic.

Found on the aforementioned blog is a link to a Which Science Fiction Writer Are You? test. So, okay, I bit.

Maybe I saw sexism because I was expecting to see sexism before I even clicked on the test? You tell me, when it comes up with the question:

5) Are you a total dork when dealing with the opposite sex?

• I'm so smooth, I couldn't possibly be a science fiction writer anyway.
  
• I'm happily married, so (thank god) I don't have to worry much about that sort of thing now.
  
• The ladies warn each other to avoid me when I'm drunk.
  
• I probably offend a lot more people than I realize I do.
  
• I just avoid people as much as possible.
  
• I am the opposite sex.
  

Answer number 3 pretty much assumes you are the 'opposite' of a 'lady'. Which I guess you could interpret to mean any number of things. But how do you read the final answer? Try telling an android that you're the opposite sex of the opposite sex and its collar will start beeping before it fries itself.

So should I be flattered that it gave me James Tiptree Jr. as my result? Or did my claiming to be the opposite sex mean my closest fit was now automatically a woman? And is the only female science fiction writer worthy of being an answer on this test the one with a male pen name?

I suspect Ursula LeGuin made the cut. Let me see if I can suss out the other possible answers.

Ah, there they are. They weren't too hard to find. My count yields 4 women out of 26 total. I think I'll leave it to you to guess who they are. Or to cheat and take a look at the possible results for yourself.

How do I think the test did at guessing who I was most like? Yea, okay, maybe given the 26 possible answers, Tiptree was the best fit.