eBook Review – Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer

Asymmetry is the latest of the top shelf Twelve Planets series to emerge from Twelve Planet Press.  It continues what I have found to be an outstanding showcase of Australian women writers in the speculative fiction field.

Thoraiya has been well supported by the team at Twelfth Planet Press for some time; she appeared in the anthologies, New Ceres Nights and Sprawl(her short, Yowie, won an Aurealis), had a novella, The Company Articles of Edward Teach (which won the Ditmar Novella Category in 2011) published as part of a double with Matthew Chrulew and now she’s produced Asymmetry.  Thoraiya also picked up a Ditmar this year for her The Wisdom of Ants published published in Clarkesworld.

So as you would expect this collection of shorts is worthy of someone who is generating a lot of good work.  There’s four stories, that showcase Thoraiya’s versatility within the genre and I would be stretched to find a less than brilliant one amongst them:

I fell into After Hours, a story of a young vet attached to a practice that has a special relationship with the nearby military base. They house and train “special” dogs.  It’s a sign of very good writing that a novel, let alone a short can draw you in and immerse you when you are tired. I had a distinct yearning for more of the interesting the world and characters Thoraiya has delivered here.  Very smooth and subtle writing, great characterization and a tantalizing idea. It’s hard to pull off a werewolf tale and make it fresh but Thoraiya does.

Zadie, Scythe of the West, could not be further from the setting of After Hours.  Thoraiya gives us a female dominated warrior society where to participate in battle a woman must have given birth for every life she takes.  This set up is not as desirous as some might think though and the emotional core of this story comes from the tension that this society creates around relationships and that despite having to give a life before you take one, war and killing is still horrendous and perhaps unjustified.  This short could I think spawn an entirely original Dark Fantasy series if Thoraiya were so inclined.

Wish Me Luck somehow manages to fuse a  steampunk-ish future with trans-dimensional travel where you pay your way with physically manifesting luck. It felt very Final Fantasy to me a fusion of science and magic, with pseudo-victorian trappings. Again entirely different to the preceding stories.

And rounding out the quartet is Seven Days in Paris, which is partly about counter terrorism and partly about human cloning.  It raises questions about the acceleration of organisms (tips its hat toward current issues on GMO) and what boundaries governments will cross when they think it necessary to save lives.  Somewhat evocative of the questions raised by Blade Runner.

I would be very surprised if this weren’t on the awards list next year.  The only regret I have after reading it was that it was so easily consumed. For a collection that is thematically about imbalance, Twelfth Planet Press has produced one of the most balanced collections I have come across in recent times.

 

Kudos to Amanda Rainey for cover design and Charles A. Tan for the eBook layout.

This review copy was made available by the publisher at no cost.

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Other Twelve Planet Reviews:

eBook Review–Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren

Book Review–Showtime by Narrelle M Harris

Book Review–Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti

Book Review–Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex

Book Review–Nightsiders by Sue Isle

eBook Review–Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Book Review–Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.

 

 

 

 

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Ditmars 2013 - Best Short Story

This is perhaps my weakest category so far, in that I have only read The Bone Chime Song – I fact I hope to rectify because a) short stories b) I think I actually own everything bar the Mudge.  I posted a review of Light Touch Paper Stand Clear here.  My thoughts on The Bone Chime Song as an opening story were:

The collection opens with Joanne Anderton’s The Bone Chime Song.  It’s a very good choice, the story - it’s content and execution is  indicative of an author on fire; Necromancy, and the love that dare not speak its name.  It’s a magical mood infused police procedural in a sorcerous setting.

 

But Jo’s up against Thoraiya Dyer, who’s impressed me since I read her work in New Ceres Nights. 

 

 

 

Best Short Story Nominees
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* “Sanaa’s Army”, Joanne Anderton, in Bloodstones (Ticonderoga Publications)
* “The Wisdom of Ants”, Thoraiya Dyer, in Clarkesworld 75
* “The Bone Chime Song”, Joanne Anderton, in Light Touch Paper Stand Clear (Peggy Bright Books)
* “Oracle’s Tower”, Faith Mudge, in To Spin a Darker Stair (FableCroft Publishing)

 

One thing before you go, I’ll let you know that I’ll be voting for a woman in this category.

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Asymmetry give away

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Cover Candy–Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer

Another beautifully understated cover by the talented Amanda Rainey and another wonderful collection from one of Australia’s talented crop of female writers.

I still don’t have a release date for it but it’s out sometime this year, coming in as volume 8 of the Twelve Planets Series.

Synopsis:

An Australian Air Force base patrolled by werewolves. A planet where wages are paid in luck. A future where copies are made of criminals to interpret their dark dreams. A medieval cavalry of mothers who are only permitted to take as many lives as they have created.

In every world, an imbalance of power. Something terribly askew between women and men, humans and wolves, citizens and constructs, light and dark.

In every world, asymmetry.

The TOC:

 

• Introduction -Nancy Kress

• After Hours
• Zadie, Scythe of the West
• Wish Me Luck
• Seven Days in Paris

You will be able to purchase this volume from Twelfth Planet Press shortly, but if you are interested in the concept of 12 volumes of speculative fiction from as selection Australia’s top female speculative fiction writers, go here.

It’s worth noting that Thoraiya is eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

H/T David McDonald

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The Aussie Invasion–Clarkesworld 75

Checkout the latest Clarkesworld which features some great content from Aussie writers Thoraiya Dyer and Lisa L. Hannett

There’s a good article about genre and literature, communication and subculture by Daniel Abraham, good enough to keep me reading on the laptop screen and to not have to resort to the ereader i.e. very though provoking.

You can read all Clarkesworld content online free but if you want to support the magazine and the writers and artists it features you can shell out for a subscription for your ereading device.

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Thoraiya Dyer on Authors and Social Media

Welcome to the third interview in the Authors and Social Media series; where I interview some of Australia’s most acclaimed speculative fiction authors.  Today we have Thoraiya Dyer a rising talent in the Australian Speculative Fiction scene, answering 5 questions on Authors and Social Media.

Sean:

1.How important do you view social media to selling your books or interacting with fans?

Thoraiya:
At this stage, with the short fiction I have out, I find the social media activities of my publishers, Twelfth Planet Press, Fablecroft, Aurealis, ASIM and others to be the vital ingredient in the sale of my stories. I think most people who buy TPP books are people who have encountered Alisa Krasnostein's personal blog, twitterstream, or business blog and who trust her taste in speculative fiction, so social media is obviously vital for Australian small press.

I have a website which I maintain, but no personal blog, Twitter or Facebook presence. I comment on other people's blogs and potential fans can sometimes get to know me that way, but more often I will get emails via my website and respond to those.

 

Sean:

  2. Do you or would you want to receive any guidance from your publisher/agent on interacting via social media, both in a technical sense or in a 'professional presentation' sense?

Thoraiya:

I haven't so far. Guidance would be fine, obligations would be not so fine. I think any agent or editor who instructed me to get on Facebook would be shocked by the vehemence of my reply. People are too careless with their personal information on social networks. I have only grudgingly recently joined Goodreads because books are one of my greatest joys and I can't
resist the site's usefulness.

 

Sean:

  3. There have been some recent examples of inexperienced authors reacting badly on the Internet in response to blog reviews e.t.c., what are your thoughts on being social media savvy? What advice would you give to new authors?

Thoraiya:

Remember that the internet is forever, and know your self. If you are an easy-going extrovert, an interesting blog with frequent updates can garner you an enormous audience and it would be crazy not to build yourself a Scalzi-like internet presence. If you are an introvert who lets your anger build slowly and then explodes in a fury at innocent onlookers, well. It is not helpful to a writing career.

There are lots of passionate people on the web, and Cat Valente is a good example of someone able to articulate very personal views so they are not offensive generalisations, but that is not my superpower. I am one of the people who, if they were on Twitter, might get wound up about climate change and the logging of old growth forests in Tasmania and suddenly screech, "EVERYONE WHO DIDN'T VOTE GREEN MIGHT AS WELL JUST STRANGLE MY BABY WITH THEIR BARE HANDS!", and then, hooray, I've alienated 90% of the planet who will never buy my work. Even if I try and delete it later, with RSS feeds, your one blog post can have hundreds of duplicates everywhere within seconds and you can never get rid of them all.

A tweet like that is patently not even true, because I didn't vote green in '07. Plus I have dearly beloved family members in Tasmania who are farmers and loggers and spit on the ground when a Greens politician walks past, but have clearly never tried to strangle a baby. The key is recognising my irrational outburst-type personality and not setting it amongst the pigeons. Blogging is not for me, but it probably is perfectly fine for you!

 

Sean:
  4. In my experience Social media breaks down normal communication conventions. People can be more familiar and 'take liberties'.  Have you experienced problems where this ease of communication has lead to followers/fans 'crossing the line' or has your experience been entirely positive?

Thoraiya:

I'm too new and unfamous for my own line to have been crossed, but I have been guilty of making others uncomfortable by being too familiar. You follow a person's blog, you start to believe that you know them. In some cases, it is just a person's facade that you know and sometimes they pour so much of their heart into it that you really do know them, but whichever one it is, they still don't know you.

Please allow me to publicly apologise to Richard Harland for running up to him at Worldcon with an excited grin, bellowing, "Hi, Richard, how are you?" with no explanation of who I was. I may even have said something like, "have you brought your Steampunk outfit that you wore at your London book signing?" which is something a stalker would say ("I KNOW WHAT YOU WEAR AND WHERE YOU GO!") But in my defence, it's not like it wasn't there on his website for everyone to see (I am still SO, SO sorry!), and people who put their home address and date of birth on their Facebook page might want to consider that the national imprisonment rate in Australia is 170 per 100 000 adults, and if you are a bestselling author with a million fans your chances of getting at least one felon are pretty good.

 

Sean:
  5. How vital is social media to the genre in which you write and how do you think social media will effect the way you write and interact in the future?

Thoraiya:

Oh, it's vital now for small publishers (See question (1)) and in the future, as e-books become the norm and more and more speculative fiction is bought on the basis of recommendations from social networks, the bigger a person's social media presence, the more searches they are going to turn up in and the more sales they will generate. To me, the more important thing for is that I not look back on the legion of potentially uninformed opinions I have splashed over the internet and cringe. I'm aware of the drawbacks of having my own website (which is under my control and not particularly easy to update); it is like holding up a business card on a park bench while everyone else has a skyscraper blazing with neon lights. But I hope that my fiction will speak for itself. I hope that anyone who is touched by my stories will come and sit on that park bench beside me.

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I’d like to thank Thoraiya for answering my questions and congratulate her on winning Best New Talent at the Ditmar Awards.  You can find Thoraiya at her site.

Her award winning novelette The Company Articles of Edward Teach, can also be found paired with The Angaelien Apocalypse by Matthew Chrulew in a Twelfth Planet Press Double, in both printed and ebook form -here.

You can also purchase other titles including Thoraiya’s work via Smashwords.

If you would like to see more in this series you can bookmark this page.  If you can’t bare to miss out on my adventures you can subscribe to the blog through a reader or Follow me on twitter.

While I have your attention : It’s Aussie Author Month and the folks at Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy News Site are doing some fundraising for Indigenous Literacy, check out their competition and donation pages.