Crossed Genres #25 - Indoctrination

I read Crossed Genres' Issue #25: Indoctrination last night and was mostly underwhelmed.  The first story, Cabaret Obscuro was imaginative, but I never really felt enough of the world to really invest in it.  In the story, humans are the dominant members of a society also populated by "xenos", alien lifeforms ranging from cartoon stickmen to hobgoblin magpie trainers and household instruments like mattresses and candles brought to life.  The performances at a human and xeno cabaret are contrasted, critiquing the use of xeno performers as the "freak" or "novelty act".  The thrust of the story felt broadly allegorical (with the xenos standing in for marginalized members of our own society) without enough specificity to provide an interesting critique.  The climactic scene in which our protagonist, the hobgoblin musician/stripper had some emotional force and was more creative and delightful than I'd expected, but mostly this story felt like a neat idea not pushed hard enough to have much force.

The second story Distant Gates of Eden Gleam features a career office clerk brought in to the offices of the Illuminati in order to do some of the grunt work associated with running the world.  A revelation of the first day is that there are 14 continents, cleverly hidden.  The instructions relayed are almost entirely relatively small-time disasters - a forest fire, oil spill, etc.  Not surprisingly, he becomes disenchanted and does something about it, giving a speech about how he never really wanted to be a career office clerk, he was just held back by the poor economy.  After observing that this is a story about a low-level file clerk in the bowels of the Illuminat, there's not much more to say.

The third story, The Lion God (which I immediately renamed Subverting Aslan in my head), had some potential.  A great lion has come to earth, performed various miracles (mostly healing-related), and his very presence compels worship and adulation.  The lion has set himself up as God and (perhaps unsurprisingly) implemented a relatively socially conservative society, ensuring at least a few rebels.  The story is told from the perspective of one of these rebels during her inquisition by the Lion God himself.

The Lion God got a lot of points for me because the Lion God was genuinely godlike.  He's a big, impressive force who performs genuine miracles and inspires worship even in rebels like the protagonist.  I've talked before about appreciating science fiction & fantasy that take religion and gods seriously, and this story does.  It also gets points for the sheer insolence of basically dropping Aslan into a New York broadcast center.  That was pretty awesome.

One of the problems I had with The Lion God was simply a matter of taste - the protagonist is young and impertinent with lines like "In that moment I know that 'Licorice Death' will be the name of my next band".  I didn't enjoy this at all, and it knocked me out of the story a bit.  More broadly, though, the complaints against the Lion God are predictable, especially for Crossed Genres' audience.  Aslan is enforcing the patriarchy - women are banned from boxing and wearing pants is frowned upon.  Years of fiction like The Handmaid's Tale are doing the heavy lifting for this story, along with the ongoing and important discussions within the genre.

The Lion God is a fine story.  I was delighted (over and over again) at the realization that the author dropped Aslan into a modern broadcast center and made him the villain of a story.  I was grateful to the author for presenting a truly godlike creature and never pulling back the curtain to reveal some illusion.  And yet despite the strengths of these concepts, the actual grievances against Aslan were stale, the story lasted a bit too long, and the conclusion was a bit of a letdown.

Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of this issue, but I found pieces of each story to enjoy.  There's a lot of emotional strength in the final scene of Cabaret Obscuro (and probably a lot more for more marginalized readers than there was for me), I just wish the rest of the story had led me to it more strongly.  I think the core concept in Distant Gates of Eden Gleam was worth telling, I just wish it'd showed up in a shorter & punchier form.  I will always be happy that I've read Aslan Subverted (and probably will never read The Chronicles of Narnia the same way again), so that's a story I didn't even know I needed checked off my to be read list.  But sometimes when you only make space in your lineup of authors for men, the overall product falls a bit short.

Year End Book List

I did a midyear roundup, but here's the wrap of the books I read this year:

• Persuasion, by Jane Austen (Fiction, Woman Author, Book Club)
• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fiction, Woman Author, POC Author)
• Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George B. Dyson (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic (Fiction, Translation)
• Crossroads of Twilight, Knife of Dreams, Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, A Memory of Light all by Robert Jordan or Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, the end of my Wheel of Time re-read.  (Fiction, SFF) 5 books
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon (Fiction, SFF, Nebula award nominee)
• King Rat by James Clavell (Fiction, book club)
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (Nonfiction)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Nonfiction, Book Club, Woman Author)
• The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones (Fiction, SFF)
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Nonfiction)
• The Martian by Andy Weir (Fiction, SFF)
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• The Absolute Sandman Vol 1 by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross by Richard Winston (Nonfiction)
• Dawn by Octavia Butler (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author)
• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Fiction, SFF)
• Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• On Basilisk Station by David Weber (Fiction, SFF)
• Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older (Fiction, Short Stories, SFF) - editors are nonbinary and person of color
• Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1) by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author) 2 books
• Jaran by Kate Elliott (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author)
• Eifelheim by Michael Flynn (Fiction, SFF, Book Club)
• Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author)†
• Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2) by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Night's Black Agents by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• Upgraded edited by Neil Clarke (Fiction, Short Stories, SFF)
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author)
• Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle #1) by Tim Akers (Fiction, SFF)
• A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author) 3 books
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• The Three-Body Problem (Three Body #1) by Cixin Liu, Translated Ken Liu (Fiction, SFF, Translation, POC Author)
• Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author) 2 books
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Nonfiction, Book Club)

That's 45 books.
Book Club - 8 books
Written/Edited by woman/nonbinary - 13 (9 in the second half of the year)
Written/Edited by person of color - 7 (only male POC are Daniel José Older, co-editor of Long Hidden, and Cixin Liu, the Chinese author of The Three Body Problem) (5 of these came in the second half of the year)
Sci-Fi or Fantasy - 32 (20 second half of the year)
Nonfiction - 9 (3 in the second half of the year)

General observations - basically all of my nonfiction reading came from book club, which I find a bit disappointing. I have good intentions of reading nonfiction, I just rarely pick it up. I dove back into Science Fiction/Fantasy in a big way later in the year. Some re-reads, some new-to-me older reads, some contemporary titles. (I read all but 2 of the currently buzzing titles that I'm at all interested in.  Still want to check out Goblin Emperor and maybe City of Stairs).  I am encouraged that my reading was more diverse in the second half of the year (partly simply because I finished The Wheel of Time)

Standout reading experiences of the year included -

Long Hidden - This kickstarted anthology was simply fantastic.  What amazes me is that every discussion/blog post I've seen about it highlights different stories.  For me, Marigolds, Collected Likenesses and Lone Women were three of the most engaging stories, but nearly every story would stand out as a "best" of nearly any other anthology I've read.

The Three Body Problem - This hard Chinese science fiction was an engaging read that I've been wanting for a while without quite being able to put my finger on.  The science explanations, going into problems of multiple star/planet systems, how a computer works, and delving into some more theoretical physics, encouraged me to imagine how science works.  All of this was presented from the unfamiliar perspective of modern china.  I'm not sure how realistic or complete this perspective is (Ken Liu has me pretty well convinced that looking for a "complete" view of Chinese speculative fiction would be nonsense), but I wrote about how important it was for me to read something that didn't center me.

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor is a first-contact story with aliens landing in Lagos, Nigeria.  Due to publishing quirks it's not yet available in the US (and I'm going to be very disappointed if this ruins its award chances), but I grabbed the Audible copy, which was a great choice.  The narrators and accents were excellent.  I enjoyed Okorafor's style, but also the interweaving of science and popular culture, the visions of the natural world, and the optimistic tone.  

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice was fantastic, as all of the awards, reviews, etc. indicate.  I'd have been blown away by Ancillary Sword had it been anything other than the sequel to Ancillary Justice.

Octavia Butler (Dawn and Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents) - I've heard Octavia Butler's name for years now, but hadn't ever read anything of hers.  Dawn was an incredibly good first contact-ish story that raised some very important questions about human identity and power relations.  The Parable books are prophetic dystopias that feel incredibly relevant in the age of #BlackLivesMatter.  I've more or less sworn off dystopias (post I still need to write), but the Parable stories feel like the essential dystopias that should stand up and be cited along with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.

Rereading Kate Elliott's Jaran and N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus has been a great pleasure.  My wife was recently between books and commented that "maybe I'll just read Jaran.  It's so good, which is why I end up reading it twice a year." I think this is exactly right.  I tend not to read for character interactions (one weakness of The Three Body Problem that I didn't even notice until I read some other reviews) but Jaran has a fantastic group of characters interacting in fascinating and delightful ways inside a fully-realized culture.  

When I first read the Inheritance Trilogy I was simply carried away by Nahadoth, who is such a compelling and overwhelming character.  I was actually worried about rereading this series, but it's even more fascinating and rewarding than I had remembered.  Having grown up on Lord of the Rings, Shannara, and The Wheel of Time, the Inheritance Trilogy gives me all of the vast, epic feel I love while simultaneously highlighting so many of the weaknesses in "Epic" fantasy.  I had remembered that Jemisin's gods are so vast and unknowable that they overhang the entire series (and show up every Olympian-ish god out there), but I had forgotten (or just missed) how much the series sets up a privileged group that aspires (literally) to cast the world in it's image and undercuts those notions of universality.  

Both Jaran and The Inheritance Trilogy are things I'll return to frequently, and recommend to anyone interested in speculative ficiton.

I also discovered short stories this year.  I'm rereading the Science Fiction Hall of Fame (an interesting anthology that's definitely showing it's age), read Long Hidden, Women Destroy Science Fiction (another kickstarted anthology, good but with a more uneven fiction selection), and Upgraded from Clarkesworld.  Short fiction is still a struggle for me - there are a lot of outlets and I haven't really worked short stories into my reading patterns, but I've been encouraged enough by what I've found that I really want to read more.

Disappointments - My big disappointment this year was The Martian.  Aaron Roberts' review (and in particular Ian Sales' comment) hits the nail on the head for me - this was so pedestrian as to be both uninteresting and unrealistic.  Man cannot live on potatoes alone.  It does occur to me that I've been wanting to read "hard" science fiction (which for me means stuff that foregrounds science that can be measured, although I realize this definition has some problems) and jumped at The Martian for that reason.  Maybe there's just not much out there right now? Rec me some, please!

Fire with Fire was awful in its portrayal of women, and the obsession with guns was uninteresting for me.  Nebula award nominees will probably not be a reading challenge I try again.  

I may re-read The Wheel of Time again sometime (I think Sanderson actually did a great job salvaging a series that had lost its way), but it's very much lost it's lustre.

Going Forward - In 2015, I do want to read some older "hard" SF to understand where that's coming from.  I'd like to avoid Heinlein and Asimov's Foundation series (which seem to have a lot of bizarre pseudo-social sciences) and find some things more like Hal Clement's Heavy Planet.  I solicited recommendations, but please drop me more.

I'm planning to reread another big epic fantasy series.  I was considering Erikson's Malazan, but I think it'll be Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars.  Likely in conjunction with reading a bunch of Elliott's backlist as well as her three(!) new books coming in 2015 (a collection of short stories, Black Wolves, a new epic fantasy, and Court of Fives, a debut YA novel).  N. K. Jemisin also has a new series starting next year.  My other goal is to dive into short fiction.  I want to read it, understand what's going on with short fiction, and find some more exciting authors.  Finally I want to read more people of color.  Daniel José Older's Half Resurrection Blues drops January 6.  I'm going to retry David Anthony Durham's Acacia, and try Samuel Delaney.  Again I'd love more recommendations!

"Hard" sci-fi recommendations from a more civilized age

I put out a call on Twitter tonight for recommendations of "hard" sci-fi from the Golden Age (by which I meant "stuff from before I was born" but which apparently means 1938-1946 (with plenty of caveats).  A few people chimed in, including very helpfully Paul Weimer and Fred Keische. Tweets are below for anyone interested in building a reading list.

First, though, an explanation.  It's not infrequent these days to hear a narrative something like: "back in the good old days, science fiction was 'hard' sci-fi about science stuff.  It wasn't about feelings and it wasn't about politics, it was about science!" Often rebutted by people pointing out first that much of that "hard" science fiction was poorly written and not engaging (people are more interesting than chunks of metal!) and also that by accepting and writing within a particular context, authors are writing politically - if all of your scientists are white men, you're writing a political story that says women and people of color can't be scientists.  (You're also valuing empirical physical sciences at the expense of others, which reinforces another political and social narrative, etc).  I'll have a separate post on creativity and overarching narratives, but my problem was much more basic: when I think of older science fiction writers, I think of Asimov (in particular the Foundation series), Heinlein, and Larry Niven (Ringworld) being the only thing I've read & remembered.  None of these authors are particularly writing about hard sciences, and certainly not to the exclusion of politics or at the least sketchy psychology.  I needed an education.

One of the great joys of Twitter is that there are smart and generous people on it.  Not only Paul and Fred replied.  I got book recommendations from Tim Akers, Kate Elliott and Ethan Jewett.  Fred pointed me to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which is far too much rabbit hole for me, but looks delightful.  Paul gently let me know that by throwing around the term "Golden Age" I was confusing.  I got a lot of book and author recommendations, and I'm excited to familiarize myself with a genre I don't know well.

Preliminary reading list (bold indicates those I'm most interested in), then the full Twitter exchange -
Hal Clement's Heavy Planet (a re-read in large part because I own it)
Larry Niven's Ringworld (again, a re-read I own)
Arthur C. Clarke's The Other Side of the Sky (a first read, but I own it.  Not sure if it fits the bill)

Hoyle The Black Cloud
Clarke Rendevous with Rama
Greg Benford
Poul Anderson
Paul McAuley Quiet War
Charles Sheffield

Older "Hard" Sci-Fi Recs

A bookshelf picture

I picked up N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus yesterday (Nahadoth! New Novella!) and was struck by the size.

Here's the Inheritance Trilogy up next to a few other books on my shelves.  The Dreamblood Saga & books 1 and 2 of the Imperial Radch Saga (Ancillary Sword and Justice), then The Name of the Wind and Mirror Empire on the right.  Erikson's Malazan books (minus the last) tower over them in back, and up front is the Earthsea Trilogy.

3-Body Problem - A Personal Reaction

Here's a second post on Cixin Liu's The Three Body Problem, translated by Ken Liu.  As before, this is not a "review" of The Three Body Problem (Speculative Scotsman has a good one), it's more a personal reaction.  I do want to emphasize that The Three Body Problem is fantastic hard sci-fi. It invites us to think about big scientific problems, consider the ways scientific progress can advance, and projects the possibilities on the horizon.  I highly recommend reading it if you have any interest in science fiction.

There are links below to the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign as well as thoughtful essays by people of color about representation in media.  I'd encourage you to head down & read them now.

(Light spoilers to follow, more likely to color your reading than ruin a surprise)

The Three Body Problem is a bestselling Chinese novel recently translated into english, and reading it made me aware of how thoroughly accustomed I am to being the center of a story.  The book is primarily set in modern China, with a prologue and a few other moments that look back to the Cultural Revolution.  Not surprisingly, there are essentially no americans.  Even when some of the scientists decide to reach out to the global scientific community, input comes from European experts, not Americans.

Some of this is simply delightful and creative.  Late in the story there's data on a boat that needs to be recovered.  I found myself waiting for the obligatory moment where special forces landed on the boat.  Since there's a loose global alliance, I actually found myself wondering if there would be a SEAL team or the chinese equivalent storming the boat.

... Infrasonic waves. All of these are cooler than a SEAL Team. And really, even cooler than a superhero. Literature of the imagination
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) November 20, 2014

I found the few places where Americans did show up the most challenging, however.  As mentioned, there is a loose global alliance (this is revealed early on, though the purpose is not), and there are periodic meetings where a US military officer shows up.  Four, I'm pretty sure.  By which I mean - I paid a lot more attention to the book every time an American shows up.  All four times.  Four meetings, where basically the officers serve as window dressing.  And yet I read these scenes very closely.  Then, in the last meeting, the American officer is a jerk.  He's a foil there to show off one of the actual protagonists, and reading this scene actually made me angry.  "We're not really like this!" I wanted to yell.  "That's not me!"

I don't know quite how to describe this, so I'm going to just say it again - I went into a story written by a Chinese author in Chinese, and yet every time an American showed up, no matter how briefly, I keyed in on that character.  When the characters turned to the outside world, I was disappointed that it wasn't an American expert they sought out.  When the American in the story turned out to be a jerk and a useful foil rather than a fully realized character, I felt betrayed and angry.

I take two messages away from this - first, I am incredibly accustomed (in ways I'm not even aware of) to being able to center myself in the story.  The Three Body Problem is the first time I can remember where I found my representation pushed to the margins.  This is the definition of privilege, and once again a reminder for me of how easy & unconscious privilege usually is.

My second takeaway is that #WeNeedDiverseBooks.  I'm a cis white male with all of the privileges.  It's easy for me to find books that center me.  But I'm trying to imagine reading a book where the character who I obviously identify with is always just a foil to show off someone else, always relegated to the background, always an idiot or a jerk, or violent, or being set up for a noble, tragic death (or maybe an ignoble or meaningless death).  Because for many readers and authors - women, people of color, gay or transgender individuals, that experience, rather than my one-time discomfort is the norm.  (And that's if they exist in the story at all).

I don't know what that experience would be like.  I can't extrapolate from my one venture into literature where I was not centered to imagine reading only books that marginalized me.  I can imagine that your defenses would go up.  I can imagine reading every book waiting to be betrayed by the author.  I can imagine clinging to shallow tropes and marginal representation because it was the best you've ever seen.  I can imagine anger every time someone said something like "well at least now there's a character like you - isn't that a good first step".  I can imagine simply being driven away from the genre entirely - choosing not to keep reading books that will let you down over and over again.  I can imagine all of these things, but I don't really know what it's like.  I do know that for me, reading a book that presented my identity in a marginal way, and eventually showed the character who looked like me to be an unpleasant jerk was not fun.  It wasn't enough to spoil my reading of The Three Body Problem (which, I reiterate, was awesome), but it did make me angry.

I'm going to stop here with links to a campaign to bring more diverse books so that more people can have literature than centers them, rather than marginalizing them.  (And also maybe so I can read more literature that doesn't put me in the center, and become a bit more aware of my own privilege).  Also included are a few recent links where people of color talk about representation in media.  If you're aware of more, please let me know in the comments & I'll add them here.

More links-

#WeNeedDiverseBooks
Donate here through December 10, 2014!

Troy Wiggins on DA: Inquisition
(Also a good set of recommendations if you're looking for diverse Fantasy/Sci-Fi)

N. K. Jemisin on DA:Inquisition

The Unbearable Solitude of being an African Fangirl

These are the links that I've noticed specifically in the few blogs that I follow in the SFF community recently.  This doesn't really touch on some of the issues exposed at the National Book Awards (buy Brown Girl Dreaming here!) or elsewhere.  These links aren't exhaustive.  They're barely scratching the surface of an experience many readers have all the time.  An experience that I've had once, but which provoked a visceral, angry reaction I haven't had towards a scene in a book in a long time.

3-Body Problem - The Aliens

I finished The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu recently.  Published by Tor books, this is the first of a trilogy of bestselling Chinese hard sci-fi.  I am unapologetically a fan of this move, and looking forward to more translated science fiction in the coming years.  (Clarkesworld will also be publishing translated SF short stories beginning next year, thanks to a successful Kickstarter project).  All of which is to say I was predisposed to enjoy The Three Body Problem, and I did.  The science is hard.  The perspective is Chinese, or at least recognizably not coming out of an American fiction tradition in ways that were almost entirely good, novel, and brain-stretching.  The Three Body Problem is probably my favorite book of the year (jostling with Lagoon), and this is definitely not a review.  There's a good one at The Speculative Scotsman (one of the few reviewers whose reviews I generally read regardless of the book, simply to learn from), I'm sure there are lots more elsewhere if you look.

Light spoilers follow - I don't think anything that would ruin a surprise, but probably things that will color your reading.

I've got another post planned about reading a book that's both global (and indeed interstellar) in scale and yet centered outside the US, but first I want to address the aliens in The Three Body Problem.  I'm accustomed to aliens in Sci-Fi, but usually (at least when presented with nuance), they are specifically different from humans in important psychological ways in order to comment on certain human impulses.  I am thinking here mostly of the emotionless but hierarchical Atevi of C. J. Cherryh's Foreigner series, but also of the stationary and consuming monsters in Peter Hamilton's Pandora's Star, and the multi-bodied creatures of Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep.  There are aliens in The Three Body Problem, but their interactions with humans are mediated by a couple layers of technology and communication, such that they are presented as essentially human - any major psychological or physical differences don't make it through the layers of mediation, so humans are basically interacting with other humans.

One thing that this allows Liu to do is dive into the history of various important scientific discoveries & imagine how they could occur in a different environment.

Got to what I'm now going to call the "Nightfall" scene in #3Body Problem. Such a good book.
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) November 19, 2014

What most blew me away, though, was that just as humans encounter aliens, so the aliens are encountering us.  Where many stories focus on differences between humans and aliens to highlight certain aspects of the human condition and suggest alternatives, The Three Body Problem achieves the same goals without needing to emphasize any difference.  People living on planets encounter each other twice in this book.  There are many important differences in their histories, the environments that they live in, and their political structures, but Liu focuses instead on their similarities.  The responses are similar, without being identical.  The general bureaucracy of a united communications effort and the particulars responses of individual representatives play out differently, and yet with certain unpredictable echoes in each case.

Liu's aliens, their response to humans, and their non-alienness aren't the most important aspect of The Three Body Problem, but they're probably the place where my expectations were most clearly blown away.  I have read about aliens and humans encountering each other many times.  I've seen alienness used to reflect (generally) weaknesses in humanity in ways that almost inevitably reveal as much about the author as any universal human condition.  Without relying on these tools at all (and thus, of course, preserving the possibility of further revelations if and when we encounter the aliens more directly!), Liu achieved these goals in a spectacularly ingenious way.  There's better writing & better science in the book, but these nearly featureless aliens keep sticking with me as I look back on it.  I'm grateful to Cixin Liu for such a great book, to Ken Liu for translating it, and all of the people at Tor who brought The Three Body Problem here.

Unfinished - My personal reaction to reading a book so thoroughly centered specifically in China and yet on a global scale.

No big deal, just landing on a comet

We landed a robot on a comet earlier today.  Using harpoons.

XKCD covered it, and an archive of the slides can be found here. (first few are uninteresting, but keep clicking & it gets good).

There's also a video series for kids about the mission.

The European Space Agency robots are tweeting about it.

Well done my friend! RT @Philae2014: Touchdown! My new address: 67P! #CometLanding
— ESA Rosetta Mission (@ESA_Rosetta) November 12, 2014

Approaching the comet, we've learned that it both stinks and sings.

Welcome to the future.

We just did a decade of math to successfully harpoon a space rock moving at 40,000mph with a robot to learn more about where we came from.
— Kyle Hill (@Sci_Phile) November 12, 2014

I am never tired of science landing things on comets, though. This is the future I signed up for.
— Kari Sperring (@KariSperring) November 12, 2014

This is ridiculously awesome.  10 years ago we planned a mission to land a robot on an asteroid using harpoons.  And it worked.  I'm going to revel in that for a little while.

A personal note - I haven't yet seen pictures of the ESA Operations center.  I bet they're pretty excited right now, though.  Here are scientists from India celebrating getting their space probe into orbit around Mars. A representative image:

This image is fantastic, and a good reminder for me that scientists and space programs are more colorful and include more women than they do in my head.  Landing a robot on an asteroid is the future I signed up for.  Women in saris flying a robot around Mars wasn't, but is even more awesome!