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In celebration of Women in Genre Month we ask some of our favorites about some of their favorites!

We asked this week’s panelists…

Here’s what they said…

My favorite female author is Ursula K. LeGuin. I started reading her in the late sixties and have never stopped. Her best work combines genuine, multi-dimensional characters with “thought experiments” about how societies are organized, and with what consequences. My favorite of her works are The Dispossessed and the collection of related novellas, Four Ways Into Forgiveness. Brilliant, compassionate, believable, these books truly eplore what it means to be human, in human societies, striving for the things human beings care about.

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This week we asked about books you don’t love.

This is what they had to say…

Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In a Strange Land was not the first Heinlein book I read. I started with what is still, in my mind, one of his best, Double Star. Nor was Stranger the second Heinlein book I read. Or the third. Or the fourth.

Indeed, back in the days when my interests in science fiction were broadening and I would occasionally talk to people about them, Heinlein would inevitably come up. “You should read Stranger In A Strange Land.” I must have been told this a dozen times by a dozen different people. I even tried reading the book, but on two occasions, spaced years apart, I simply couldn’t get very far into it. I felt terribly guilty about this. Something must be wrong me. It seemed everyone who ever read a book had read and loved Stranger. But not me. I couldn’t even get through it.

It wasn’t Heinlein. Couldn’t be, right? I went on to read and enjoy Heinlein’s future history in The Past Through Tomorrow. I read and loved Podkayne of Mars. I read Puppet Masters and Starship Troopers and found those entertaining. (Although both movies were appallingly bad.) I adored Friday and The Door Into Summer.

It finally took jury duty for me to get through Stranger. In the fall of 2000, in a cavernous room within a Hollywood courthouse, I battled my way through Heinlein’s tour de force. And before my jury service was up, I’d managed to finally finish the book.

And hated it. Just plain didn’t like it. To this day, when asked if I’ve read Stranger, I reply with a world-weary, “Of course. I read it while suffering through jury duty in the fall of 2000.”

“And what did you think of it?”

And without skipping a beat, reply, “I couldn’t be picked for a jury soon enough. My how I suffered through that book!”

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REVIEW SUMMARY: An excellent quartet of stories with strong female characters, and Rome. Romanpunk!

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Classics expert Tansy Rayner Roberts brings four Roman themed stories with strong women, and monsters across 2 millennia of time.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Rome themed fiction! Dry wit, clever writing, excellent linking across the four stories.
CONS: The size of the collection works against it.
BOTTOM LINE: Ave, Augusta!

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TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS is the award-winning author of the Creature Court trilogy, consisting of Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts.  Her short story collection Love and Romanpunk was published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2011. You can find her at her blog, on Twitter as @tansyrr, and on the Hugo-nominated podcast Galactic Suburbia.  Tansy lives in Tasmania, Australia with a Silent Producer and two superhero daughters.

Charles Tan: Hi Tansy! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. First off, how did you first get involved with speculative fiction?

Tansy Rayner Roberts: Hi Charles!  I’ve always loved SF and fantasy since I was a small child being indoctrinated into Doctor Who fandom at my mother’s knee.  I spent most of my teens writing novels and occasionally submitting half-hearted queries to publishers, and then struck it lucky with Splashdance Silver, which won the inaugural George Turner Prize in 1998 and was duly published by Bantam/Transworld.  So I’ve been at this a while now…
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From Jason and the Argonauts to Avengers Assemble, crossovers have brought the best of genres together in unexpected and pleasing ways. Instead of asking this week’s panelists what their favorite crossover is, I wanted them to share some of their own creations. So I asked them:

Here’s what they said…

My first thought was that I want to see the universes of Blake’s 7 and Futurama collide because I think my head would explode with fannish glee.

Then there’s all the delicious possibilities from the Doctor Who universe, though sadly most of the crossovers I would love to see involve actors that are dead, or well past the age to convincingly play the part on screen.

But actually what I most crave is a colossal superhero comics crossover, with She-Hulk, Emma Frost, Black Widow, Spider-Girl and Kitty Pryde teaming up with Black Canary, Batwoman and the Batgirls, Wonder Woman and Power Girl, with Xena and Starbuck thrown in for good measure.

Together, they fight crime.

In space.

And then someone makes a movie about it.

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