Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence discussion

Welcome to our first ever monthly chat! This gives us chance to get together and share our recent reads with each other around the same time. Our Recommend Books thread remains open 365 days a year


📘📘 YOUR RECENT READS: 📘📘

1) What did you recently read?

2) Which are you recommending for the DB bookshelf-database (if any)?

3) For any books you are recommending, are there any common content warnings we add shelf tags for? Here is our current list: (view spoiler)[

Animal abuse
Animal Death
Body Image - (fat shaming, eating disorders)
Bullying
Child Abuse
Child Death
Child Neglect
Graphic Violence
Homophobia (that is acknowledged)
Low female rep
Oppression
Racism (that is acknowledged)
Self harm
Sexism (that is acknowledged)
Slavery
Transphobia (that is acknowledged)
(hide spoiler)]

4) Are there are aspects of the books you aren't recommending that you'd like to discuss with us?



❓❓ JANUARY FEATURED TOPIC: Short Stories ❓❓

1) Goodreads only allows listings for standalone short stories that are not published in any Magazine or Anthology.

QUESTION: Would you find it valuable for the Do Better bookshelf to include standalone short stories (without SV)?

2) Many standalone short stories do not have sufficient reviews for moderators to validate SV.

QUESTION: Would you be willing to read Pending Short Stories to help us determine which meet our group guidelines?

I would love to read pending short stories. Not immediately, though, so if someone beats me to the current batch I can read the next ones that get posted.

I think it's interesting that short stories tend be more likely to include SV, from what I've noticed anyway. It seems like SV is shorthand, a quick way to establish the 'world' as ugly or the character as either fragile or as a survivor.

Here is a summary of my recent reads:


RECOMMENDING to DB:

The Seep by Chana Porter
This is a bit of a trippy story, set in a future earth and featuring a 50 year old trans woman. Common CW - (view spoiler)[ suicide ideation (hide spoiler)]

On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard
A Vietnamese family owned space station in the far future.
Common CW - (view spoiler)[ suicide (hide spoiler)]

Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente
Not sure how to describe this one. Weird story about an A.I. who communicates with its human family through a dreamscape + unconventional prose = not easy to recommend to anyone I know. But no SV!



Already on DB Bookshelf:

I also read these and agree they should stay on the shelf 😃

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey



Recommending Removal from DB bookshelf:

Tell the Machine Goodnight by Katie Williams
Contemporary fiction set in a near future with some interesting tech. It's a bit spoilery to explain why I'm recommending removal. I do believe only the most sensitive readers would be triggered by this. Read spoiler only if you want to know a plot spoiler (view spoiler)[ mention of date rape drug, mention of sexual harrassment, but no actual rape/harrassment actually occurs, bullying off screen, eating disorder (view spoiler)[ (hide spoiler)] (hide spoiler)]

I've checked Assassin's Apprentice for domestic violence and overall, (view spoiler)[children are beaten quite often in this book, including the main character, usually by educators and guardians, but we also hear that one girl regularly gets beaten by her father. However, none of this is sexualized. We also learn that this father used to beat his wife (who has already passed away at the time of the book, so this is just discussed as having happened, not dramatized).

I'll leave it to the mods to decide: it's clearly not sexualized violence, nor is it particular to girls and women but affects everyone (apart maybe from the wife beating that is mentioned as having occurred in the past). Of course, it should carry a major "violence towards children" content warning, but as far as I remember we wanted to focus on sexualized violence or violence that victimizes women in particular, so in terms of this focus I'd find it acceptable (especially since the effects of this violence are depicted with a lot of sensitivity, not used as a "this is just how it is" wallpaper. What do you guys think? (hide spoiler)]

I love the monthly chat idea !

I'd help out with the short story review/recommend I'm trying to 'read' (mostly listening) to one a day this year. I'm listening to mostly Clarkesworld, strange Horizons, podcastle, dark, nightlight, metaphorosis, beneath ceaseless skies, uncanny and lightspeed. I'll start keeping notes on them for however it's decided to handle them.

I can recommend Heavy Time by C.J. Cherryh there's no SV. There is some violence, nothing graphic. I'll put this on the recommendation thread too.

It's sad how many books I'm reading that end up having something (rather small?) that disqualifies it. Like SV alluded to off page and not having happened to the MC.

@ Eva - Thank you so much the detailed response! This one has been on our pending list for quite some time. Do you mind adding a spoiler to your research?

I know we're getting into the nitty gritty of things, but we did decide to exclude mentions of domestic violence in adult relationships. Our reasoning was (view spoiler)[ in abusive adult relationships, sex is most often involved. We have to draw the line somewhere and that is right at the edge of our line. Nonsexual abuse against children gets a warning shelf tag, domestic violence of a partner is excluded altogether. (hide spoiler)]

@ Mary - I feel similarly about the brief mentions offscreen. I wonder why authors bother, in some instances it just seems like traumatic window dressing. If we were ever to write a manifesto to authors to do better, I think we'd definitely include that.

I don't like having to exclude books for tiny mentions, but I remind myself that this project isn't about finding the largest list, but the most informative. It helps that we have the Worlds Beyond the Margins and Women of the Future bookshelf-databases to offer a wider variety of options for those less sensitive to SV.

Mary wrote: "I'd help out with the short story review/recommend I'm trying to 'read' (mostly listening) to one a day this year. I'm listening to mostly Clarkesworld, strange Hori..."

That sounds like an amazing reading goal! I can't wait to see your list of stories over at our WBTM short story challenge :)

The short stories in SFF magazines you list are the stories that GR librarians will delete, even if hundreds of people have written reviews. Well, I say delete, what they actually do is merge them into the magazine edition, leaving everyone unclear what the reviews are referring to 🤷

So if we do include short stories, we're mostly just talking about including Tor.com who publish "standalone" stories on the web, not in a Magazine/Anthology.

Oh and just to clarify - going forward you can recommend books within the monthly chat. When you do so, you don't need to duplicate them the recommend thread 😁

Beige wrote: "Mary wrote: "I'd help out with the short story review/recommend I'm trying to 'read' (mostly listening) to one a day this year. I'm listening to mostly Clarkesworld, strange Hori..."

That sounds l..."

Online magazines are tricky in Goodreads indeed but it is just a matter of members getting used to use/create magazine editions and not a single story.

I am still advocating for the award (Hugo/FIYAH/Nebula) nominated short stories/novelette/novella published in online magazine since they are relatively more visible to readers and likely will have more reviews too once they're nominated. I can commit to read these since I've been doing it anyway :D

End of the month round-up! 🤗

I've read 18 between books and short stories: of these, 9 don't make the cut - some narrowly, some by a looooong shot, and some have already been excluded; but this still leaves me with a pretty decent haul to share with y'all 😁

Recommending to DB:

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

There's actually been some debate about the book's eligibility, which you can find over at the "Recommend Books" thread (comments #464 to #472: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...)

How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend by Linda Addison

A delightful, touching, quirky horror / fantasy collection of short stories and poetry. It hasn't gotten many reviews, but if needed I'll coax Nefeli and Mark to second the nom since we read it together over at WBtM 😉

Six Months, Three Days, Five Others by Charlie Jane Anders

Speaking of delightful and quirky! This short story collection was a joy to read: highly recommended (and the single stories collected here can be all read for free, to boot!)

Stone and Steel by Eboni J. Dunbar

It's a fantasy romance novella that's been a bit of a mixed bad for me, truth to be told, but I still enjoyed it enough to go on reading some of the author's short stories (you can find a list of her work here. I especially loved the M/M PNR short story Birds of a Feather, in which Dunbar makes consent sexy: yay!)

And I finally started the Dominion of the Fallen series by Aliette de Bodard, starting from the short stories Of Books, and Earth, and Courtship (this is a lovely fantasy romance short story that can be easily enjoyed as a standalone), In Morningstar's Shadow: Dominion of the Fallen Stories, and the first installment of the trilogy proper, The House of Shattered Wings.

Already on the DB shelf:

MURDERBOT 💜💜💜

We're reading / re-reading the series over at WotF and... ah, it's just such a joy to be back in Murderbot's company! The series is widely famous and universally well-liked so I'm sure you don't need any convincing, but if you haven't already... read it!!!

About the short story / magazines debates: I don't usually read SFF magazines, much less single short stories online - something I'm working to fix 😉 so I don't really have an opinion about how to go about adding them to our shelves.

I'm aware there are some issues with the way GR adds single stories to its database, but I haven't personally encountered them, so I'll leave it to those more knowledgeable on this matter.

I have a couple of reads from January I can recommend for the DB

Finna and Persephone Station which have BRs coming up I think in the sister sites so can be verified. no SV or other excluded items

edited The Best of All Possible Worlds had nothing excluded on page but (view spoiler)[ the was a long time mind control/influence in a relationship. just remembering the book treats this as a domestic abuse so not a recommendation (hide spoiler)]

The Pride of Chanur no SV or other excluded items

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe no SV or other excluded items.

Thanks all!!! Some great looking books added to our shelves this month 😃

@ Eva - Thanks for commenting on the pending status of Assassin's Apprentice, we have moved it to our shelf with the appropriate content warning.

@ Mary - Heavy Time - added to group shelf, no SV found in reviews. And while it is listed as #4 in a series, we included it because it's also listed as a start of a new duology.

@ Elena & Mary - Thanks for even more suggestions. Woohoo! I will include these in my February research/validation 👍

Thank you, Beige! I've added spoiler tags as requested, sorry I didn't see your request sooner.