I just finished Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey, and it made me think about some of the issues surrounding Jane Austen tributes / pastiches / homages.  There have been a number of these over the years (among which are the execrable Pemberley and P. D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley), and none of them really manages to get very ( Read more... )

"The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there"

Since readers can please themselves - de gustibus, and all that -- there's no immutable law that says that you have to recognize this. But it is true that if you can't put aside your own current views you will be cutting yourself off from most of the past.

Jane Austen valorized an ( Read more... )

 There has been discussion (notably at tor.com) regarding the relationship between mainstream novels (referred to misleadingly as "litfic", but I'll come to that) and Science Fiction.  Aside from revealing the deep insecurity that many commenters have regarding the relative status of the two fields, I've noticed several things that seem to be, well ( Read more... )