Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 14

Mother of Invention will feature diverse, challenging stories about gender as it relates to the creation of artificial intelligence and robotics. This ambitious anthology from award-winning Australian publishing house Twelfth Planet Press will be edited by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Rivqa Rafael.

From Pygmalion and Galatea to Frankenstein, Ex Machina and Person of Interest, the fictional landscape so often frames cisgender men as the creators of artificial life, leading to the same kinds of stories being told over and over. We want to bring some genuine revolution to the way that artificial intelligence stories are told, and how they intersect with gender identity, parenthood, sexuality, war, and the future of our species. How can we interrogate the gendered assumptions around the making of robots compared with the making of babies? Can computers learn to speak in a code beyond the (gender) binary?

If necessity is the mother of invention, what exciting AI might come to exist in the hands of a more diverse range of innovators?

Our Kickstarter went live today! 12 hours in of Day 1 and we’d already raised over $4000, that’s 20% of our target, thanks to 93 backers. That is so far beyond our expectations for the very first day, it’s humbling to see so many people running at us to pledge for a book that doesn’t even exist yet.

But it WILL exist, and we still need a lot more backers to make this happen. Don’t feel bad if the more extravagant tiers are beyond your reach — we’re going to need a whole lot of people picking up the basic $10 for the ebook level along the way as we build towards our goal, and we’d love you to be one of them.

If you can’t support the project financially, then tell your friends about it! Signal-boosting is just as important as money at this stage, to get the word out to as many people as possible. ESPECIALLY people who are into feminism, smart science fiction, and robots.

Phew. That’s enough hustle for today. Time to sleep. (I hope to wake up to 100+ backers…)

THE PACKAGING: Justice League International trade Vol Five

THE CREATIVE TEAM: Keith Giffen (Plot & Breakdowns), J.M. DeMatteis (Script), Bart Sears (Pencils), Pablo Marcos (Inks), Gene D’Angelo (Colors), Andy Helfer (Editor)

JUSTICE LEAGUE ROLL CALL: Captain Atom, Power Girl, Metamorpho, the Flash (Wally West), Elongated Man (Ralph Dibny), Animal Man, Rocket Red (Dmitri Pushkin), with Catherine Cobert and Sue Dibny in civilian support.

GUEST STARS: Ice, Jack O’Lantern, Owl Woman, Inspector Camus

THE STORY: Captain Atom starts yet another issue by reiterating the story so far: dead Nazi, “braces,” etc. They have at least figured out that their attackers from last month (now in matching comas) are former Global Guardians. Sue and Ralph call Ice, herself a former Global Guardian, who admits she hasn’t been in touch with her old teammates and doesn’t know what would have driven them to such behaviour — but she does tell them about Jack O’Lantern and Owl Woman being aligned with Queen Bee of Bialya.

A representative of the French government comes to meet Captain Atom, and gushes all over him in delight before realising he doesn’t speak French and storming out, offended. Catherine tries to explain to Cap how bad it looks that the JLE has no European superheroes in its ranks — Paris still reveres the Global Guardians who represented International diversity.

Wally, Ralph and Kara go undercover as tourists to visit the Dome (now a Global Guardians museum). Jack O’Lantern, still using the Dome as his headquarters, turns the mob of museum visitors against the JLE, and then accuses them of attacking civilians.

It turns into a catastrophic riot, and by the time Captain Atom gets on the scene, Inspector Camus is handling the situation as if this was an unprovoked attack on the Dome by the JLE. Jack and Owl Woman bug out, leaving a bomb behind, and the laws of unfortunate timing mean that Power Girl and Captain Atom’s blazing argument (in which he sarcastically suggests she might as well have blown the place up) appears to cause a massive explosion.

THE CHARACTERS: Captain Atom is front and centre again, but so world-weary and frustrated by life that I am quite enjoying his presence.

Wally, Kara & Ralph are all kind of terrible at this point.

It’s hard not to sympathise with Jack and Owl Woman, really, who are having the most fun of everyone in this issue.

Catherine and Camus have the benefit of being competent professionals while everything around them is literally exploding. Ditto Sue Dibny, who is the best, and really deserves better than Ralph’s doofy uselessness.

I really appreciate that this comic has finally acknowledged that Ice & Fire are former Global Guardians — we have seen so little of them in that context that it’s easy to forget that they know these people really well.

THE COMEDY: Once again the humour revolves around Americans being surprised at how badly they are thought of outside their own country. More than anything, JLE is a comedy of bureacracy, with real world issues intruding on more everyday superhero concerns. As with many of the JLI storylines, this snarky take on the behind the scenes work it takes to let superheroes do their job makes the comic feel a lot more adult and contemporary.

PR failings will be a constant bugbear for the JLE.

THE ART: Let us not speak of it. It burns. Why does everyone have such angry foreheads, like they all slept on wrinkled pillows?

THE KITCHEN SINK: I love the set up with the Global Guardians being a nemesis for the JLE — and fair enough, too. I may be very anti-Queen Bee given what’s happening at the same time in the JLA, but I am definitely pro the Global Guardians getting a little payback for losing their livelihoods. Darn you, Justice Leeeeague!

BONUS CHARACTER HISTORY: Power Girl (Karen Starr/Kara)

So I got a little confused last week.

I knew that post-Crisis Power Girl was Atlantean and not Kryptonian, but I had it in my head that this had not yet been revealed, mostly because she’s still wearing something pretty close to her old costume. (No boob window currently, you’ll notice, just a whole lot of pectorals making her low-cut top work for its cleavage).

Actually, the big reveal happened two years ago.

Pre-Crisis, Power Girl’s background was pretty simple: she was the Earth 2 version of Kara Zor-El/Supergirl, Superman’s cousin who also survived the destruction of their home planet, but due to a freak space something or other, arrived on Earth in suspended animation some time after her cousin, thus going from being old enough to babysit him, to being young enough for him to pat on the head and patronise.

Earth 2’s Superman was, like Batman, older than his Earth 1 counterpart, so this Kara was more of a daughter figure to he and his wife Lois, and she eventually took his place in the Justice Society when he retired. She was also a regular in Infinity Inc with other Next Gen superheroes like Helena Wayne’s Huntress.

Given that Earth 1’s Supergirl died during the Crisis of Infinite Earths (when the multiverse became a single fictional universe), it would have been easy enough to keep Power Girl as Superman’s cousin, but the Powers That Be were determined to make Superman more of a special snowflake by ‘simplifying’ his background and making him the sole survivor once again.

The solution was, as with almost all post-Crisis (and post-post-Crisis) narrative decisions, even more complicated: Power Girl was now to be written as an Atlantean, granddaughter of the manipulative sorcerer Arion, who had been given false Kryptonian memories to explain her excessive superpowers.

This was revealed in a Secret Origins comic (1987) and explored in great depth in a Power Girl mini-series (1987-88) which also built up Kara’s civilian life, running a successful software company Starrware under the name Karen Starr.

Like many of the post-Crisis retcons, this one wasn’t popular and was eventually un-retconned to reveal that Arion, one of the biggest jerks in the DC Universe, faked the whole memory thing and Kara was Superman’s Other Cousin after all.

Power Girl has become one of the poster women for the issue of sexist artwork in comics, particularly thanks to her iconic boobs (and sometimes: boob window) which are, like Black Canary’s fishnet tights, so thoroughly awash in history and nostalgia that they have come around again, being reclaimed as much as they are criticised.

Jimmy Palmiotti, who with Justin Gray and Amanda Conner created a brilliant short run of a Power Girl series in 2009-10, is interviewed here about, among other things, the history of PG’s breasts, and how it actually is different when a women draws them – http://comicsbulletin.com/jimmy-palmi...

EPISODE TWO: Sage Says 10 out of 10, Would Break Up With Again

Our favourite witchy rock band, Fake Geek Girl, are road-tripping to a magical music festival in a wi-fi free zone on the same weekend that the season finale of their favourite TV show drops. Can they avoid spoilers? Can Hebe, Holly, Juniper & Sage camp in tents for three days without murdering each other? Can coffee really fix EVERYTHING including missing band members, messy relationship drama and obsessive fan shenanigans?

Friendship is magic, but if you pile too much friendship on top of too much magic over one weekend, the results are bound to be explosive.

If you missed it:

EPISODE ONE: Hebe Plans For Failure

You can listen to the first two Belladonna University stories, Fake Geek Girl & Unmagical Boy Story, right here on Sheep Might Fly.

Fake Geek Girl (Belladonna University #1) is also available as a free ebook.

Unmagical Boy Story (Belladonna University #2) is available for sale from Kindle, Kobo, iBooks & more.

Thanks for listening to Sheep Might Fly. You can sign up to my author newsletter for updates, follow me on Twitter at @tansyrr or @sheepmightfly, find me on Facebook at TansyRRBooks, and if you like this podcast consider supporting me at Patreon where you can receive all kinds of cool rewards and exclusive stories for a small monthly pledge.

See you next week!

In which we launch new projects and Discover a new/old love for Star Trek. Bet you didn’t know how much we love Star Trek.

Get the new episode here!

What’s new on the internet?

Nebula Weekend means awards and other announcements!

Tansy announces the impending Kickstarter for Mother of Invention: A speculative fiction anthology of diverse, challenging stories about gender & artificial intelligence.

Alex reveals the cover of Luminescent Threads, the new book about Octavia Butler coming soon from Twelfth Planet Press.

Continuum Preview! Check out the program, because we’re all over it. The whole GalSub team will be at Melbourne for this year’s Continuum — if you’re planning to be there, block off three hours for our Galactic Suburbia-and-Twelfth Planet Press extravaganza including a fundraising bake sale and a pre-launch party for Luminescent Threads. (It’s like a baby shower but for a book, and you don’t have to bring gifts)

CULTURE CONSUMED:

Alisa: Santa Clarita Diet S1; Anne with an E; Luminescent Threads edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal, Twin Peaks.

Alex: Moana; Doctor Strange; Arrow; For the Love of Spock; Silent Invasion, James Bradley

Tansy: Percy Jackson & the Lightning Thief; The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells; The Sarah Jane Adventures (check out Tansy’s appearance on the Sarah Jane themed Splendid Chaps here)

All of us: Star Trek Discovery Trailer! We have a lot of feels.

Please send feedback to us at [email protected], follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook, support us at Patreon – which now includes access to the ever so exclusive GS Slack – and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Things I am doing in June:

1. Kickstarting Mother of Invention with Rivqa Rafael & Twelfth Planet Press

This one is such a passion project for me, I can’t wait to get stuck into all those stories about robots and hyper-intelligent computers and gender and feelings. It’s the most ambitious crowdfunding project I’ve ever been even tangentially involved with, so. Excitement.

2. New Product Line at Alice & Austen

I’ve been building up inventory for my new literary gift shop over this year. May brought the new Shakespeare line, including a William Shakespeare Deepings Doll, finger puppets and hand-stitched bookmarks among other things. June is all about Alice — specifically this one gorgeous Alice in Wonderland design by Kathleen Jennings. Pre-orders are underway now for silk scarves and art pouches featuring these beautiful illustrations. I really hope this line is a success because I want to be able to produce MORE Kathleen art as pretty gifts. We all know that she would happily draw Jane Austen characters all the live-long day, so it would be cool to make that happen. Pre-order discounts for The Alice Scarf & The Alice Art Pouch apply until 16 June. Those ordering the Alice Bundle before 31 May get a free gift.

3. The Bromancers

A new podcast serial at Sheep Might Fly is always exciting, but this one is turning out to be EPIC. I’ve just put up the first episode and am busily writing away on the story as a whole. It’s gonna be big. The theme of The Bromancers (#3 in the Belladonna University/Fake Geek Girl series) is friendship & fandom (as they interact with magic), and with so many characters to look at & so many combinations, even with leaving most of the romantic narratives aside (cough, some of them won’t go quietly), the story is definitely growing beyond my original parameters. I hope you all like it, because it’s going to take over the podcast for at least three months!

4. Continuum!!!

I’m going to be there with the entire Galactic Suburbia crew! We’re doing a three hour Galactic Suburbia/Twelfth Planet Press extravaganza including a book shower for Luminescent Threads, the awesome Octavia Butler book shortly to be released! I’m gonna be on SO MANY PANELS. Also btw the Monday of that weekend is my first wedding anniversary AND 21st relationship anniversary with the Silent Producer.

5. Eighteen Days

Yeah, so this one is awkward. I’m just going to slip it in here. I have a very small, very treatable form of lymphoma, and I’m going to be undergoing radiotherapy in June. As far as I can make out from the very advanced medical science that has been explained to me (so basically magic then), a robot arm is going to shoot rainbows at my head and by August my cancer will have completely disappeared. It all seems very improbable, but there you go. The part that really gobsmacked me is that radiotherapy is not, apparently, like having laser eye surgery. I have EIGHTEEN appointments, daily, for around 12 minutes each (5 of the actual treatment).

So this is going to be a big theme of my June and I kind of want people to know it’s a thing that’s going on without having to have That Conversation with them because I’ve had so many versions of That Conversation over the last year and I’ve hit a wall with that. Also, the effects are likely to become visible over the course of the month, another reason for giving people a head’s up. I’m going to lose a little hair, but only because the area of treatment is so close to my hairline. I have been promised a month of something that feels like really bad sunburn, irritable skin and a whole lot of boredom/inconvenience which. Yeah. I’m OK with. I know how lucky I am.

Which brings me to…

6. HIDDEN MERMAID HAIR

I’m going to be celebrating the end of my treatments with some serious hair colour action. I have been longing for hidden mermaid hair since I learned that was a thing. I never experimented with hair colour as a teenager because mine was so dark, and then it started going silver while I was still young enough to not really be bothered about it, and I have embraced that as part of my identity now. Once upon a time, before I went silver all over, I had a single silver lock underneath my dark hair, and I loved the effect, so I’m excited to get that back in complete reverse order.

Anyway. I’ve made my appointment. Before the end of June unless the radiotherapy makes me too miserable to want anyone touching my hair for a while. But it’s happening. Robot arm > Magical rainbows shot at face > mermaid underlights.

THE PACKAGING: JLI trade vol 4

THE CREATIVE TEAM: Keith Giffen (Plot & Breakdowns), J.M. DeMatteis (Script), Mike McKone (Pencils), Dick Giordiano (Inks), Gene D’Angelo (Colors), Andy Helfer (Editor) Kevin Dooley (Assistant Editor)

JUSTICE LEAGUE ROLL CALL: J’onn J’onzz the Martian Manhunter, Batman, Green Lantern (Guy Gardner,) Fire, Ice, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Mister Miracle (Scott Free), with Maxwell Lord & Oberon in civilian support.

GUEST STARS: Amanda Waller of the Suicide Squad. Nabu AKA Kent Nelson AKA sometimes Dr Fate. A teeny bit of Big Barda.

THE STORY: A still-wounded Oberon visits Amanda Waller, convincing her to break the mind-conditioning on Blue Beetle. Batman is suspicious of Waller and this proves to be correct — she makes two crucial errors which serve to reactivate Beetle’s “possession” so that he physically attacks her and then triggers an Azrael block, which knocks him into a full coma.

One thing’s for sure: Queen Bee is definitely behind this. We get a flashback to Issue 16 when Beetle and Booster were kidnapped in Bialya, which is when the triggers were placed in Ted’s head.

While the rest of the team express their anxiety for both teammates (Fire is still recovering from her own strange power malfunction), Batman visits Kent Nelson to ask for his help with Blue Beetle.

THE CHARACTERS: Some really great character interactions and moments in this issue. Ted himself, lamenting his loss of control and dealing with the fear and guilt of what happened to him. It’s Blue Beetle at his most serious, and it’s great.

A rare scene between Tora and Booster shows them sharing their fears for their respective best friends.

Oberon has lots of crunchy material in this issue — not only sparking off Amanda Waller, but also sharing a very sweet moment with the bedridden Fire, where they bond over reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish. We get confirmation that Guy helped Fire with her power explosion last issue, saving Oberon from being fried to a crisp.

Fire flirting with Oberon in this issue marks a turning point for her character — before we’ve seen her flirting and lusting after boys in a pretty random, ‘boy crazy hot girl’ way. Here, she’s doing it deliberately, making a warm connection and trying to unsettle him just a little. We’ll see a lot more of her deliberate teasing to get a particular response in future. Also, while De Matteis has been using his favourite trick of referencing literature to make us shift our opinion about whether characters are as dumb/shallow quite a lot lately, it works well here.

THE COMEDY: The banter between Waller and Oberon is great. They take such pleasure in insulting each other — which reflects the relationship she already has with Max.

The structure of the issue is actually excellent — the majority of it is the Serious Beetle Drama with Waller, Batman etc, but these scenes are punctuated by short, page-long scenes of the other teammates which lighten things up.

THE ART: McKone is a new artist to the JLI and he does a pretty good job of capturing the regulars. His Blue Beetle is a little odd and has a bizarre haircut, but he gets everyone else. Guy Gardner is an especially difficult look to replicate, so kudos for that. McKone also draws Fire and Ice with distinct faces and expressions, which is always a good sign in an artist.

By far the most impactful piece of art in this issue is the Exorcist-style cover, but all the fight scenes between Batman, Blue Beetle and Amanda Waller are pretty great.

THE KITCHEN SINK: Fire reading serious Spanish literature in the original is my aesthetic. Too often, our international characters just come off as American, with occasional accent jokes. Fire gaining some depth and characterisation is a good move in the right direction, reflecting how Dmitri is also being written differently in JLE. It’s also nice that Tora gets a moment with Booster, as Blue+Gold+Fire+Ice is a quartet I greatly enjoy.

We’re starting a brand new fiction serial on the Sheep Might Fly podcast this week! The Bromancers (Belladonna University #3) continues the adventures of Hebe & Holly Hallow, Sage, Juniper and the rest of the Fake Geek Girl extended share house family.

THE BROMANCERS

Our favourite witchy rock band, Fake Geek Girl, are road-tripping to a magical music festival in a wi-fi free zone on the same weekend that the season finale of their favourite TV show drops. Can they avoid spoilers? Can Hebe, Holly, Juniper & Sage camp in tents for three days without murdering each other? Can coffee really fix EVERYTHING including missing band members, messy relationship drama and obsessive fan shenanigans?

Friendship is magic, but if you pile too much friendship on top of too much magic over one weekend, the results are bound to be explosive.

EPISODE ONE: Hebe Plans For Failure

You can listen to the first two Belladonna University stories, Fake Geek Girl & Unmagical Boy Story, right here on Sheep Might Fly.

Fake Geek Girl (Belladonna University #1) is also available as a free ebook.

Unmagical Boy Story (Belladonna University #2) is available for sale from Kindle, Kobo, iBooks & more.

Thanks for listening to Sheep Might Fly. You can sign up to my author newsletter for updates, follow me on Twitter at @tansyrr or @sheepmightfly, find me on Facebook at TansyRRBooks, and if you like this podcast consider supporting me at Patreon where you can receive all kinds of cool rewards and exclusive stories for a small monthly pledge.

See you next week!

THE PACKAGING: Justice League International trade Vol Five

THE CREATIVE TEAM: Keith Giffen (Plot & Breakdowns), J.M. DeMatteis (Script), Bart Sears (Pencils), Pablo Marcos (Inks), Gene D’Angelo (Colors), Andy Helfer (Editor)

JUSTICE LEAGUE ROLL CALL: Captain Atom, Power Girl, Metamorpho, the Flash (Wally West), Elongated Man (Ralph Dibny), Animal Man (Buddy Baker), Rocket Red (Dmitri Pushkin), with Catherine Cobert and Sue Dibny in civilian support. Wonder Woman is mysteriously missing already! She was gonna be “part-time”, remember?

GUEST STARS: Wild Huntsman, Rising Sun, Tuatara, Owl Woman, Jack O’Lantern

THE STORY: Captain Atom sums up the plot so far (dead Nazi, mob uprising), and the team splits into groups to cover more ground.

Each of the groups is attacked by a geographically themed “super-villain” who calls them Nazis and battles valiantly before falling into a coma. But if you’ve been paying attention since the beginning of the JLI you’ll know they’re not villains at all — or, they didn’t used to be. The attackers in question are Wild Hunstman, Rising Sun and Tuatara, former members of the Global Guardians.

Yes, that same multicultural superhero team that was shut down when the Justice League went International.

Cut to: Jack O’Lantern and Owl Woman, apparently still working for a “Queen” (ie Queen Bee of Bialya), smug at the Dome (headquarters of the Global Guardians), back in business.

I guess someone found them some more funding.

THE CHARACTERS: These little vignette mission/fight scenes not only set up the new plot, but also give us a moment with each of the characters of the new team, establishing a few key traits, and/or the dynamics between them.

Captain Atom is doing his best to sound like a leader, in the hope that confidence in his job will follow. He reacts badly to anything happening outside his control, like when Sue slides into the job of resident hacker/monitor duty person without permission.

Wally West is a hound constantly making leering comments about women, including his female co-workers. Ralph calls him out on this, but loses all credibility because he’s constantly comparing Wally to Barry, the original Flash, which I’m sick of already.

Metamorpho is grumpy and anti-social. He also, apparently, lost 5 years of memory in the recent meta-human gene bomb, the character reboot event that keeps on giving. He’s my favourite.

Power Girl doesn’t like Nazis, which is fair enough, but she is weirdly aggressive and patronising about the history of Nazi Germany with Dmitri, who firmly points out that his country, Russia, has been suffering far more from the ramifications of World War II than America ever did, so.

(Also, isn’t Power Girl Kryptonian? So, why is she pretending to be an expert on historical events that happened long before she arrived on Earth?)

I’m really loving how Dmitri is becoming rounded out as an intelligent character, instead of the funny accent machine he was back on JLI.

THE COMEDY: There are a few beats that definitely work, humour-wise — the long-sufferingness of Captain Atom, at the mercy of everyone else. Ralph and Sue have a great patter down where he is proud of how great their relationship is, and how adorable she finds him… and Sue undercuts him with a healthy amount of sarcasm.

The nose twitching is also gonna get old fast, but it’s worth it to see Ralph annoying Captain Atom with it.

Sue Dibny is a goddamn treasure.

THE ART: Ugh. The action shots are fine, but the proportions are bizarre and everyone looks like they’re played by an elderly Arnold Schwarzenegger. I know a lot of 90’s comic art is like this, but do they need to have so many pouches in their facial expressions?



THE KITCHEN SINK: I’m glad to see the Global Guardians being picked up again as a story thread, and it’s interesting to see Queen Bee hinted at considering that there’s a major Bialya plot going on in the Other Show at the same time.

Wonder Woman is not in this comic.

Am I the only one who thinks he looks sexier like this than when he was Generic Leading Man TM?

Rex Mason, archaeologist and adventurer, went on a quest to retrieve a rare Egyptian artifact, the Orb of Ra, in the 1960’s. His employer, corporate giant Simon Stagg, was so incensed when he learned Rex was dating his daughter Sapphire, that he ended up plotting to kill him. Java, Stagg’s bodyguard (often drawn as a literal Neanderthal) knocked Rex out, leaving him trapped and exposed to a radioactive flare-up from the Orb of Ra (which as it turned out, had been made from a meteorite).

Rex was tranformed into Metamorpho the Element Man: able to shapeshift and change into any element or combination of elements found in the human body, but never again able to look like his ordinary human self.

Fantastic, magical shape-shifting superheroes were all the rage in the 1960’s, with titles such as Metal Men and Doom Patrol (which launched Beast Boy/Changeling). Metamorpho was originally conceived as a parody of these character types. Writer Bob Haney had worked on those titles before being charged with the creation of Metamorpho; Aquaman artist Ramona Fradon was coaxed out of maternity leave to design the character and draw the first 4 issues of the Brave and the Bold, where Metamorpho would appear.

His popularity led to a 17 issue series in the late 60’s:

“He wasn’t your average super hero so capes and masks didn’t suit him. I tried a lot of those and finally decided that since he was always changing his shape, clothes would get in his way. So I drew him in tights, with a body made up of four different colors and textures that were supposed to indicate the four elements. From the beginning, we had fun working on Metamorpho. The characters Bob invented were such deliciously overdrawn stereotypes that they were wonderful to design and animate. What I liked most about doing that feature was the freedom it gave me to exaggerate and be myself.”

Ramona Fradon Reflects on Metamorpho.

In 1983, Metamorpho became a founder member of the Outsiders, a team of non-traditional superheroes led originally by Batman. Characters such as Geo-Force, Halo and Katana were created for this team; Metamorpho, Black Lightning and Batman himself were the only pre-existing characters used. Metamorpho was still one of the Outsiders when he “died” during the Millennium event.

Given his general indestructibility, the deaths of Metamorpho tend not to stick. After his Outsiders death, he was mysteriously resurrected during a random page of the Invasion! storyline with no explanation other than ‘gene-bomb does weird things to meta-humans’. As for those years he can’t remember, and what’s going on with his wife and other left-behind supporting characters, well… I’m sure that will be addressed in future issues of the JLE!

New episode is up!

Final episode of Death at the Dragon Circus: Part 6, In Which Kurt Already Has A Job.

This serial is now complete! Those of you who hate waiting between cliffhangers may listen at your leisure.



They used to be the Hammer and the Dove, a ruthless pair of living weapons for hire. Now they have reinvented themselves as Kurt and Inga Frostad, searching for all the key ingredients of a fresh start: a home, a community, a job that doesn’t require them to kill people. The Dragon Circus may be exactly what they need, as long as their old life doesn’t catch up with them…

PREVIOUS EPISODES:

Part 1, In Which Inga Was Not Expecting Dragons

Part 2, In Which Inga Learns To Fly

Part 3, In Which Brennan is Not a Civilian

Part 4, In Which Fin Needs A Friend

Part 5, In Which Kurt Has A Type

This novella was recently published in the ClanDestine anthology And Then: The Great Big Book Of Awesome Adventure Tales.

Thanks for listening to Sheep Might Fly! You can follow TansyRR on Twitter & Tumblr, like my page on Facebook at Tansy RR Books and sign up to my author newsletter. You can also support the podcast at Patreon for cool rewards, exclusive stories and more.

Next week, we’re back to Belladonna University for a road trip, a music festival, and a whole lot of witchy shenanigans.

I’m everywhere this week!

First, I guested on Terry Frost’s long-running Paleo Cinema Podcast, talking about my love of musicals. We looked at Calamity Jane AKA Doris Day Sings In A Lesbian Rom-Com, and Cabaret AKA Oh Shit The Political Situation Looks Very Familiar But At Least Liza Minelli is Luminous.

We had so much fun, we talked for nearly 2 hours.

Today, I appear on a brand new Australian podcast, Comics Watchtower, in which Jeremy chats to Australian authors about their love of comics and how comics have influenced their work. Jeremy is a fun interviewer and we had a great talk about Batgirl, superheroes in YA novels and diversity in comics.

The big news this week is that Rivqa Rafael and I have announced our new project — a gender-themed Artificial Intelligence anthology called Mother of Invention. We’re launching our Kickstarter on 1 June, and Random Alex was generous enough to interview us, digging into why this book is so important to us. Featuring some of our favourite writers like Kameron Hurley, Seanan McGuire, Nisi Shawl and John Chu, Mother of Invention is going to be subversive and powerful and hopefully offer a flood of new Artificial Intelligence narratives that aren’t about lonely men building hot robot girlfriends.

Over at Alice & Austen, I have curated a new range of Shakespeare-themed gifts, including a wonderful new Deepings Doll design, action figures, and some hand-made bookmarks. Alice and Austen provides a range of fun, interesting and one-of-a-kind gifts for fans of classic literature and historical geekery.

Phew, there’s probably more, but that’s enough for now.