It begins:
I’m English. I've lived in the US a long time (in fact last year I got my US citizenship) but I’m still English. You can tell: all I have to do is speak. There's no hiding that accent. In England, I belong. I visit often; I feel at home; I just don't live there anymore.
A few years ago, when William Gibson was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, he said: I am a native of science fiction but no longer a resident.2 I understood exactly what he meant.
My most recent novel, Hild, has no fantastical elements whatsoever. It's not set in a secondary world, there are no dragons, no wizards casting spells, no special swords or magic rings. Yet the book has been nominated for three SF awards3. Why?
It's a nice essay, but I do have a caveat. In my judgment, and I'm a qualified judge, one would think, Hild is not a literary novel; it's historical fiction. It's not even a literary novel as historical fiction, as is Wolf Hall, for instance.
I can give my reasoned reasons as to why that's my judgment, but am mostly occupied by the hell of New Computer: making it be a computer, not a tablet, transferring, migrating, trying to figure out how to use the *&*&^%%$ thing as a useful machine. Which also might mean dumping my main e-mail account, as MS dropped live mail in favor of Outlook, which they previously dropped in favor of Live, which so infuriated me I never changed over. I had liked Outlook Express very much, and never did like Live Mail at all.
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