women here today

I'd just like to point out, regarding this year's Hugo nominations, that 80% of the finalists in the five Hugo prose fiction categories are by women. Eighty per cent. I think that's a new high.

Even in the Retro Hugos, covering a much more male-centric time in SF authorship, counting co-authored stories as half a story for each author, 23% are by women, which would have been a very respectable percentage in the regular Hugos almost any time before 2010.

two concerts

Sunday I went to the Australian Chamber Orchestra at Bing. I had been thinking of taking this in anyway, and then my editor asked if I'd like to review it. Sure, I said.

Monday, up to Herbst for the Elias Quartet. Like the ACO, this was a softer and more gentle group than the last time I heard them. Their Schumann 41/1 was light-textured and shining, and so was much of their Britten Second, gnarly though that piece often is. And again, as with ACO pulling out a firmer and grittier sound for their new piece, so did Elias for a new quartet by Sally Beamish. This was inspired by the Schumann, in the sense that Beamish bases each of her numerous short movements on a tiny fragment taken from the Schumann piece. It helps to have the Schumann immediately in your ear when listening to this (in the playbill, they were going to play the Beamish first, which would have been odd), but it's listenable to on its own. Eclectic, but not totally disjointed. For an encore, this proper British ensemble played a Scottish folk waltz with an intriguing air of American bluegrass to it. I suppose that's where that originally comes from.