—
from the Introduction
What Remains
Ellen Klages and
Geoff Ryman
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What Remains, published in conjunction with the appearance of Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman as the Guests of Honor at WisCon 33, features three tales, two of them by Geoff Ryman and one by Ellen Klages. In Ryman's "No Bad Thing," a certain brilliant, world-famous scientist has become a vampire and duly turns hi intellectual gifts in a new direction; and in "Care," a story set in the fascinating world of Belo Horizonte, a little boy's father stands with him on the Edge of the world looking down at Rio, shows him how to walk off the Edge, then disappears.
In Ellen Klages's original novelette "Echoes of Aurora," Jo Norwood goes back to her hometown to bury her father and meets a lovely, mysterious woman named Aurora, and through the summer, Jo and Rory make passionate love, poetry, and a story together—a story that begins "Once upon a time, you kissed me."
What Remains also includes Eileen Gunn's interview of Geoff Ryman and Debbie Notkin's interview of Ellen Klages.
The WisCon Chronicles, Volume 3
Carnival of Feminist SF
Liz Henry
Order now
In my research into feminist and women's writing, I have found many times and places where women have come together to produce culture—poets of Mercedes Matamoros' circle in Cuba in the late 1800s, for example, or the publishers of feminist newspapers in France in the 1830s, or the Seneca Falls convention, or the Combahee River Collective. What unites all these movements is their collective nature and their visibility...This series of WisCon Chronicles, along with just about all of the publications of Aqueduct Press and many other zines, websites, and small press publications, and hundreds of blog posts and comments, are public writings that will give the fizz of WisCon a lasting place in women's history.
The word's been out for some time now that we're living in "post-feminist" times. And yet the world's largest feminist science fiction convention, held annually in Madison, Wisconsin, which many of the genre's luminaries attend, has become so popular that the ceiling limiting attendance to 1000 participants often tops out months in advance. People attend to meet up with friends from other parts of the country (or the world) whom they've come to know online; they attend because the programming goes far beyond the "feminism 101" that is the most they can hope for from most other science fiction conventions. But above all they come to experience the kind of community they can't get elsewhere. Some participants even characterize it as "four days of feminist utopia"—a reference to the communities created in the most famous feminist novels of the 1970s.
This volume explores some of the issues of interest at WisCon 2008: the politics of the intelligibility of stories, internet drama, and feminist fandom. It offers a selection of thoughtful essays and analysis, dialogues, comments, arguments, meditations, and appeals to reason, collected from participants—writers, bloggers, activists, and fans, some of them WisCon veterans and some attending for the first time—including L. Timmel Duchamp, K. Tempest Bradford, Nancy Jane Moore, Alexis Lothian, and many others.
Cheek by Jowl
Ursula
K. Le Guin
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The monstrous homogenization of our world has now almost destroyed the map, any map, by making every place on it exactly like every other place, and leaving no blanks….As in the Mandelbrot fractal set, the enormously large and the infinitesimally small are exactly the same, and the same leads always to the same again; there is no other; there is no escape, because there is nowhere else.In reinventing the world of intense, unreproducible, local knowledge, seemingly by a denial or evasion of current reality, fantasists are perhaps trying to assert and explore a larger reality than we now allow ourselves. They are trying to restore the sense - to regain the knowledge - that there is somewhere else, anywhere else, where other people may live another kind of life.
The literature of imagination, even when tragic, is reassuring, not necessarily in the sense of offering nostalgic comfort, but because it offers a world large enough to contain alternatives and therefore offers hope.
Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Cheek by Jowl, a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these essays, Le Guin argues passionately that the homogenization of our world makes the work of fantasy essential for helping us break through what she calls "the reality trap." Le Guin writes not only of the pleasures of her own childhood reading, but also about what fantasy means for all of us living in the global twenty-first century.
Early reviews of Cheek by Jowl
"I had many a-ha moments as I was reading the various essays-places where
Le Guin articulated something I understood, or believed, but hadn't put
into words… [Le Guin] is smart and erudite and never talks down to the
reader, but never makes her arguments too hard to follow, either. She's
good with facts, but she allows emotional content, something you don't
always get in the same package. I highly recommend this book."
—
Charles de Lint Magazine of Fantasy and Sciente Fiction June/July 2009
"Ursula K. Le Guin may be on the short list of great writers to emerge from
our little corner of the map, but she's also something of a skirmisher…
and she continues to ask the questions here, mostly in the context of
children's and YA literature, with the unflagging passion and clarity we've
come to expect from her critical writing."
—
Gary K. Wolfe, Locus April 2009
Centuries Ago and Very Fast
Rebecca Ore
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"When I first met him running on the moors, I thought he was gypsy or part Paki with his otter body and the broad head that ended in an almost pointed chin, but he said he was European, old stock, some French in the bloodlines. His left little finger ended just below where the nail would have been…"
Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Centuries Ago and Very Fast, a collection of linked stories by Rebecca Ore, author of Gaia's Toys, Time's Child, Slow Funeral, and other well-received novels. The stories in this collection relate tales from the life of Vel, a gay immortal born in the Paleolithic who jumps time at will. We encounter him hunting mammoths, playing with reindeer tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms, negotiating each successive wave of invaders to keep his family and its land intact, living as the minor god of a spring, witnessing the hanging of "mollies" in seventeenth-century London as well as the Stonewall riots in twentieth-century New York City. Vel has had more lovers than he can remember and is sometimes tempted to flirt with death. Centuries Ago and Very Fast offers fascinating, often erotic glimpses of the life of a man who has just about seen it all.
Praise for Centuries Ago and Very FastThe eminent novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany writes: "Witty, vivid, and very thought provoking, these interwoven narratives of the most sophisticated of primitive lusts start with a gay caveman who happens to have been around over fourteen thousand years. Finishing an afternoon tryst with a Puerto Rican drag queen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, he and his new friend wander back to Greenwich Village to end up smack in the Stonewall Riots of late June '69. Then we go hunting (and killing and dressing and eating and a few other things that might raise your eyebrow) a mammoth. But that's only the beginning. (Want to learn the right way to celebrate the winter solstice?) Ore's little book has intelligence and charm. Really, you've just got to read this!"
And Pamela Sargent, author of The Shore of Women and the Venus Trilogy and editor of the Women of Wonder series, says: "In Centuries Ago and Very Fast, Rebecca Ore reveals the gritty and often less admirable aspects of human life without flinching but also without cynicism. These earthy, lively, and compelling stories centered around a time-traveling immortal show inventiveness, combine cosmic scope with realistic detail, and will leave readers wanting more."
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"Baby, baby, baby! Baby, baby, baby!" Cousin Alphonse must have thought he looked like James Brown. He looked like what he was, just a little boy with a big peanut head, squirming around, kicking up dust in the driveway. Oneida thought about threatening to tell on him for messing his pants up. Even Alphonse ought to know better. He had worn holes in both his knees, begging "Please, please, please" into the broken microphone he'd found in Mr. Early's trash barrel. And she'd heard a loud rip the last time he did the splits, though nothing showed. Yet.
Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Filter House, a collection of short fiction by Nisi Shawl, with an introduction by Eileen Gunn (author of Stable Strategies). The collection's fourteen tales offer a haunting montage that works its magic subtly on the reader's subconscious. As Karen Joy Fowler says, "This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to some strange and wonderful places."
Praise for Filter House
"From the exotic,
baroque complexities of 'At the Huts of Ajala' to the stark, folktale
purity of 'The Beads of Ku,' these fourteen superbly written stories will
weave around you a ring of dark, dark magic."
—
Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Lavinia
"A traveling
story-bazaar, offering treasures and curios from diverse lands of wonder."
—
Matt Ruff, author of Set This House In Order and Bad Monkeys
"Nisi Shawl
uses the tools of future and fable, usually used to explore the other, the
future, and the mysterious, to magically reveal what and who we all are
here and today."
—
Tobias Buckell, author of Crystal Rain and Ragamuffin
"Sometimes enigmatic, often surprising, always
marvelous. This lovely collection will take you, like a magic carpet, to
some strange and wonderful places."
—
Karen Joy Fowler, author of At Wit's End and The Jane Austen Book Club
"Remarkably involving stories that pull you along a path of wonder, word by
word, in worlds where everything is a bit different."
—
Eileen Gunn, author of Stable Strategies
This exquisitely rendered debut collection of 11 reprints and three
originals ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in
a dazzling variety of settings. “At the Huts of Ajala,” a folktale
concerning a girl wrestling with a trickster god before her birth, is full
of urgent and delightful imagery, while “Wallamelon” is an elegaic,
sophisticated exploration of the Blue Lady myth. Of the several science
fiction stories included, the strongest are “Good Boy,” an engrossing
experiment in computer psychology, African gods and postcolonial anxiety,
and “Shiomah’s Land,” a cross-genre bildungsroman involving a girl
who becomes the wife of a goddess. The concluding tale, “The Beads of
Ku,” is an utterly arresting, authoritatively delivered tale concerning
the diplomacy of marriage and the economy of the land of the dead. The
threads of folklore, religious magic, family and the search for a cohesive
self are woven with power and lucidity throughout this panorama of race,
magic and the body.
—
Starred Review, Publishers Weekly
"Nisi Shawl tells stories as if she has just awakened from a vivid and
terrifying dream, and she's intent on relating its details. She strings
her plots loosely onto frameworks of otherworldly logic, and she makes no
attempt to explain why things are the way they are. [...] Her stories are
part fairy tale and part nightmare, and they bristle with references to
real-life problems, like racism and poverty. [...] Shawl's stories are for
the reader who relishes that bone-deep shiver of a grisly ghost story. And
they're perfect for the reader who wants to be left scratching her head
— and peering over her shoulder — at the end of each tale."
—
Haley Edwards, The Seattle Times, June 6, 2008 (read the whole
review)
The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 2
edited by L. Timmel Duchamp
and Eileen Gunn
Order now
Provocative essays on feminism, race, revolution, and the future.
Remember WisCon 31?
Wit flashed.
Sparks flew.
Eagles carried off the guests of honor.
The world’s leading feminist sf convention just won’t fit into Memorial Day weekend. Some forty contributors—too many to list here—take WisCon 2007 a step further.
Kelly Link and Laurie J. Marks on books they love and asbestos pants Chris Nakashima Brown, L. Timmel Duchamp, and K. Joyce Tsai on the volatile “Romance of the Revolution” panel, with a transcript by Laura Quilter Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Naamen G. Tilahun, Catherynne Valente, Wendy Walker, and others on issues of race and gender Rachel Swirsky (and sixteen others) on how to deal with racism and sexism in writers’ workshops Plus Elizabeth Bear, Rosalyn Berne, Susan Simensky Bietila, Nicola Griffith, Jacqueline A. Gross, Joan Haran, M.J. Hardman, Nora Jemison, Tom LaFarge, Mark Rich, Kate Schaefer, and Lawrence Schimel on WisCon past and future
WisCon 31 lives! Enjoy it. (Eagles not included.)
Stretto: Book Five of the Marq`ssan Cycle
L. Timmel Duchamp
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Stretto, the grand finale of the Marq'ssan Cycle, weaves together the major threads of the Marq'ssan story and encourages readers, as Joan Haran says, "to write beyond the ending." The novel, like the series as a whole, inquires Whose world is it? and shows several possible ways of answering the question through the respective perceptions and perspectives of the novel's five viewpoint characters: Alexandra Sedgewick, heir to the Sedgewick estate; Anne Hawthorne, Security operative; Hazel Bell, subversive activist; Celia Espin, human rights lawyer; and Emily Madden, star pupil of the maverick Marq'ssan, Astrea l Betut san Imu. As always, never predictable, never finished, the consequences of all that has gone before continues to play out.
Praise for Stretto
The final volume in the Marq'ssan series will encourage its readers to
write beyond the ending. There are no gift-wrapped resolutions or easy
redemptions on offer, rather there is a clear-sighted focus on the
always-unfolding consequences-intended and unintended-of personal and
political action taken. This is a series that is deeply invested in social
transformation while resisting any temptation to consolation. As a resolute
utopian, I see this as a hopeful strategy.
—
Joan Haran, author of Human Cloning in the Media
Like its predecessors, this is very much a novel of
ideas and personal relations rather than of action or adventure. The author
is more interested in the clash of ideas than in describing pitched battles
in the streets of Washington. If you enjoy books designed to stimulate
thought as well as entertain you, Duchamp's speculations about the forms of
government and the ways in which people in power interact should prove very
rewarding.
—
Donald D'Ammassa, Critical Mass
Plugged In
L. Timmel
Duchamp and
Maureen McHugh
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"In the kingdom of the blind," Sydney said, "The one-eyed girl is king." In "Kingdom of the Blind," Sydney, one of the codemonekys who maintain DMS, the software system that keeps the physical plants of the Benevola Health Network running, suspects the recent outages in the system may be a sign of the system’s sentience rather than due to simple corruption of its code. Her fellow geeks view the reset button as a possible if drastic solution for restoring the system’s integrity, but Sydney fears it might be a much too Final Solution...
In L. Timmel Duchamp’s "The Man Who Plugged In," Howard Nies becomes the first male to plug into a Siemens Carapace. And as an ad in the February 2013 issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology notes, the Siemens Carapace is "a prenatal cradle of caring" at the cutting edge of technology, "made of the finest, strongest, most lightweight materials ever produced. Its clean, round lines and soft, silvery matte finish can’t fail to reassure both the parents and the gestational carrier who wears it that the child within is getting better care and protection than any naturally gestated child."
Praise for Plugged In
Need a quick dose of weird, brainy science fiction but don't have time to
commit to an entire short story collection? Then consider a new kind of
book, from Aqueduct Press, which you might call a short story single, with
an A-Side and a B-Side (though both stories get an A from this
reader). Plugged In contains "The Man Who Plugged In," by L. Timmel Duchamp
and "Kingdom of the Blind" by Maureen McHugh....Highly
recommended.
—
Annalee Newitz, io9.com
(
read the whole review)
Blood in the Fruit: Book Four of the Marq`ssan Cycle
L. Timmel Duchamp
Read Chapters One and Two
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Blood in the Fruit, the hard-hitting fourth volume of the five-novel Marq’ssan Cycle, focuses sharp, analytical attention on human rights issues. The novel opens in October 2086. After ten years’ absence, the Marq’ssan Fleet returns to Earth to determine whether humans should be quarantined, and a young alien, unprepared for the shock of human culture, becomes a dangerous loose cannon taking violent, unilateral action. In the Free Zone, a flood of renegades led by Elizabeth Weatherall establish a fortress; even Hazel Bell, Weatherall’s lover, doesn’t know what they’re up to. In the US, when the government responds to increasing dissent and civil disorder by ratcheting up its repressive tactics, brave and dedicated human rights activists like Celia Espin join forces with the Free Zones in a global challenge that threatens to undermine governments around the world. Blood in the Fruit offers a grand, sweeping story through the eyes of four individuals with markedly contrasting perspectives and experience.
Praise for Blood in the Fruit
"The latest book in the Marq'ssan Cycle might just be the best yet, part of a series that is the most
important political SF published in the last decade. Praised by the likes of Cory Doctorow and Samuel Delany,
Duchamp's accomplishment here is deadly, sharp, emotional, and intelligent."
—
Jeff VanderMeer, OMNIVORACIOUS, March 18, 2008
"The novel - the series for that matter - is a distillation of political and
ethical philosophy, a commentary on the importance and frailty of human
rights, a feminist dystopia, and something of an adventure story, although
most of the real conflict tends to be on the intellectual rather than
physical level. This is the kind of novel which probably won't appeal to a
mass audience, in part because it steps outside the usual genre rules. For
those willing to invest the time to actually think about what they're
reading and work out the implications, it's a treasure house."
—
Don D'Ammassa, September 25, 2007 (read the
whole review)
"Each volume [of the Marq'ssan Cycle] is...a narrative which grabs and does
not let you go and leaves you breathless at the end....[It is a]
sophisticated, complex, and realistic depiction of women, social
organisation, and the tangled interplay of the personal and the
political...Blood in the Fruit is not a comfortable read: it goes to some
very dark places indeed, although never pruriently lingers on pain and
suffering in a gratuitous fashion. But it is a very rewarding one." (read the whole review)
—Lesley A. Hall,
Strange
Horizons, May 23, 2008
The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 1
edited by L. Timmel Duchamp
Order now
In most cultures, women's space is understood as private space, while public space is coded male. WisCon explicitly aims to create a non-separatist "women's space" that is public. A women's space that is also a public space is such a rare occurrence in our world that it feels science fictional.The word's been out for some time now that we're living in "post-feminist" times. And yet the world's largest feminist science fiction convention, held annually in Madison, Wisconsin, which many of the genre's luminaries attend, has become so popular that the ceiling limiting attendance to 1000 participants tops out months in advance. More than half those attending are women; and since the convention is openly feminist, women's issues dominate the programming. People attend to meet up with friends from other parts of the country (or the world) whom they've come to know online; they attend because the programming goes far beyond the "Feminism 101" that is the most they can hope for from most other science fiction conventions. But above all they come to experience the kind of community they can't get elsewhere. Some participants even characterize it as "four days of feminist utopia"—a reference to the communities created in the most famous feminist novels of the 1970s.
L. Timmel Duchamp has assembled a collage of diverse materials to document the thirtieth anniversary of WisCon, which was a grand reunion of most of the convention's previous Guests of Honor. These include the transcript of Samuel R. Delany's interview of Joanna Russ, several essays reflecting on the diverse aspects of the convention, as well as papers presented in the academic track, panel notes and transcripts, an original short story by Rosaleen Love, and Eileen Gunn's snappy series of Q&A with numerous WisCon attendees, among them Ursula K. Le Guin, Julie Phillips, Ted Chiang, Carol Emshwiller, and Suzy McKee Charnas.
Praise for The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 1
"In addition to capturing the proceedings, [Duchamp] also was interested in
exploring hot-button issues that emerged from the discussions. Homing in
on those areas of discomfort fits with the convention's reputation as an
event that goes beyond Feminism 101."
—The Capital Times, June 21, 2007
Dangerous Space
Kelley Eskridge
with an introduction by Geoff Ryman
a Locus-recommended book
Order now
Dangerous Space showcases a collection of seven seductive stories by Kelley Eskridge, whose novel Solitaire was a New York Times Notable Book, with an introduction by Geoff Ryman (author of Was and Air). The opening story, "Strings," takes us to a world that tightly controls musical expression and values faithfulness to the canon above all else. By contrast, in the title novella, "Dangerous Space," we see the full power of music unleashed to sexually enthralling as well as risky effect; original to the volume, this tale features Mars, the intriguing narrator of "And Salome Danced" (short-listed for the Tiptree Award), on tour with an indie rock band on the verge of breaking out. Closing the volume, the moving, edgy "Alien Jane" (a finalist for the Nebula Award and adapted for the SciFi Channel's Welcome to Paradox series) delves into the importance of pain for the human organism and finds hope in the most unlikely of places.
Praise for Dangerous Space
"Richly imagined, moving, and very sexy, these stories about music, art,
sex, and identity will make you rethink all the categories you thought you
knew."
—Julie Phillips, author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of
Alice B. Sheldon, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
"The archetypical herotale of feminist sf, the little girl who grows up
furious with the irritations of femininity, is confronted with her mirror
image: the woman so compliant that no matter what anyone does to her, no
matter how much she suffers, she feels no pain, only the agony of
alienation... A theatre director struggles with the vampire of desire,
and with a shapeshifter who may be personification of her demons, in the
extraordinary, tightly compressed 'And Salome Danced'; while 'Dangerous
Space' sinks deep into the soul of an indie rock band at its moment of
greatest meaning, just before the Big Time. Characters slip from story to
story, role to role, delineating a fascination with the ruthless hunger for
sensation that possesses all great artists, and the complicity of those who
love them. Kelley Eskridge's collection is a treat: unassuming, deceptively
gentle, packing a subtle punch."
—Gwyneth Jones, author of White Queen and Life
"It
takes a special talent to write about emotions this raw without
embarrassing yourself. In Dangerous Space, the very talented Kelley
Eskridge offers tales of the human heart that are searing, moving, and
true."
—Matt Ruff, author of Set This House in Order
"Eskridge is my favorite kind of science speculative fiction writer, the
sort who is very interested in using the tropes of the genre to externalize
that which weÂ’d prefer not to discuss and force it into the spotlight."
(read the whole review)
—Rick Kleffel, The Agony Column, March 23, 2007
"...sometimes a writer just sweeps me off my feet and I forget what I was supposed to be
doing. Such is the case with the title story from Kelley Eskridge's collection Dangerous
Space. While the year is half-over, this has garnered my vote as one of the best stories
of the year."
—Sean Melican, Ideomancer, June 2007
"A powerful piece, with just enough tech to tell readers they're in the
world of the day after tomorrow, and just enough understanding of the
places where human beings really connect to give us a ray of hope for that
future..."
—Nancy Jane Moore, SFRevu, June 2007
"Dangerous Space is a complex collection with strong concepts and prose...Eskridge
is skilled at creating atmosphere and physical detail, and uses her skill to present
thought-provoking stories, ideas that linger in the mind's eye."
—Strange Horizons, June 14, 2007
"Highly, highly recommended..."
—Gwenda Bond, Shaken & Stirred, June 27, 2007
"...an acclaimed SF novelist gathers seven stories about music, art, and sex..."
—Locus, New and Notable Books, June 2007
"At first glance, there doesn't seem to be any science fiction in Kelley Eskridge's
new book of science fiction, Dangerous Space (Aqueduct Press, 255 pp., $18). In
this compilation of seven short stories, Eskridge's subject is human emotion,
sexuality and relationships. Her characters are regular, flawed humans who struggle
with regular, flawed human emotions in a land that looks very much like our own.
But upon a closer look, the book is a unique kind of science fiction, wherein the
alien land we are enticed to explore is the human soul itself. Eskridge invites us
into its strange, inhospitable terrain and urges us to peer at the disfigured, imperfect
creatures that live there — jealousy, loneliness, yearning. Under Eskridge's watch, each
emotion becomes a monster, complete with its own personality, that then preys on her
human characters."
—The Seattle Times, July 6, 2007
"In her new collection, Dangerous Space, science fiction novelist Kelley Eskridge pushes
the boundaries of the status quo. She has put together a series of stories that make readers
ponder issues of gender, sexuality, and the nature of free choice."
(read the whole review)
—Colleen Mondor, Bookslut, Issue 63, August 2007
"Eskridge proffers a tantalizing taste of just how good and savory futuristic fiction can
be...Eskridge's tightly woven stories speak to concerns we have now—love and loyalty,
cause and effect, individuals versus society. These are stories for readers of genre fiction
and of serious literature."
—Victoria Brownworth, The Baltimore Sun, August 5, 2007
"This is the kind of art that the word "queer" fits perfectly. The stories
aren't specifically lesbian, and they're not specifically gay, but they
render any sexual preference wondrously possible. The biological gender of
Mars, protagonist of three of the collection's seven stories - including the
hypnotic novella-length title tale - is never specified: some will read her
as a woman, and her passion for the mesmerizing male lead singer of an indie
rock band as straight; some will read him as a man, and the same passion as
gay. Eskridge juggles the ambiguity with surefooted physical, emotional, and
sexual intensity. The same powerful notion of sexual mutability powers two
other tales: "Eye of the Storm," a sword-and-sorcery story in which Mars is
one of four warriors competing to join an elite military squad, in a violent
world where same-sex partners are nothing special; and "And Salome Danced,"
set in a near-future in which Mars is drawn to a seductive actor who
auditions for both male and female roles."
—Richard Labonte, Seattle Gay News, October 5, 2007
Mindscape
Andrea Hairston
Finalist for the 2006 Philip
K. Dick Award
Read an online interview with the author.
Read Sci Fi Wire's "Mindscape
Gets In The Zone"
Mindscape is the debut novel of the award-winning playwright and Professor of Theater and Afro-American Studies at Smith College, Andrea Hairston. Rich in complex characters and the vivid realization of their conflicts—personal, political, and cosmic—Mindscape plays deftly over a range of registers rarely attempted in first novels and celebrates the best of humanity even as it grapples with the worst.
Pulling a bass note from her pelvic floor, [Elleni] slid up her range, vibrating bones and organs until ultrasounds resonated in her nasal passages and shot out her skull. Her fingers danced in and out of the Barrier's domain. As she hit her highest notes, an archway crystallized just beyond her fingertips, and she almost lost the song. —Mindscape
Mindscape takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epi-dimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protegée, Elleni, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?
Praise for Mindscape
"[A] dazzling work of science fiction...an intoxicating, almost
hallucinogenic journey into a vision of Earth's future...Those familiar
with Hairston's plays will recognize her style here: sweeping and poetic,
multi-dimensional, tackling complex issues of race, gender and
politics...It's an enormous vision that Hairston offers to us, and a
beautiful one. The book is a complicated message of redemption and hope for
humanity."
—The Women's Times (Northampton, MA), February
2006
"African American playwright Hairston's first novel blends speculative
science with socially aware fiction to create a panoramic story that is at
once personally relevant and philosophically significant. The author's lush
prose and multicultural background make this a strong addition to most sf
collections."
—Library
Journal, March 15, 2006
"[We] engage with an ensemble cast of sufficient originality and variety
to please a whole range of SFados from hard sf to queer feminist
postcolonial...These folk are enmeshed in a plotline of great
complexity and great swaths of originality, presented through a
headlong and ferociously vivid mise-en-scene."
—New
York Review of Science Fiction, October 2006
"The novel effectively represents a world forever changed by a
mysterious
force, yet also reflects some contemporary issues, including poverty,
violence, unemployment, as well as the need for reforms in the
education
system. With a strong storyline and unique vision, Mindscape is
an
engaging novel that simultaneously explores the future and questions
the
present." (read the whole
review)
—Langston
Hughes Colloquy, Volume 7, 2006
" Mindscape traverses the author's prodigious imagination and
touches on all the themes that have filled her multidisciplinary,
cross-cultural plays for three decades. The book, published last week by
Aqueduct Press, is her first novel—yet another instrument in the
repertoire of this prolific
poet-playwright-actor-director-percussionist-scholar." (read
the whole review)
—Valley Advocate, March 9, 2006
"Wide screen, big questions, bigger answers and characters who have to
literally save the world from an alien force as large as the world."(read the whole
review)
—The
Agony Column, January 25, 2006
"Andrea Hairston's Mindscape starts with a vision of the way things
ought to be and then takes us along on the amazing journey that must be
undertaken to make that vision a reality. Her ability to fully imagine an
alternate reality without sacrificing the familiar words and rhythms that
provide outsiders a way into the story make this a book not just for true
believers, but for those who still think they 'don't like science fiction.'
After Mindscape, my guess is they'll see how meaningless such
categories are. In the presence of a visionary author like Andrea Hairston,
all you have to like is good writing!"
—Pearl
Cleage,
What Looks Like Crazy On An Ordinary Day and
Baby Brother's Blues
"What rich and provocative territory this amazingly written first novel
explores, what memorable characters it compels us to confront—renegade gene
scientists and ethnic throwbacks, slippery politicos and 'expendable'
Extras, ghost dancers and double consciousness diviners conjuring through
an enigmatic veil—each struggling in complex circumstances to navigate
survival, identity, and self in a world thrown off its course, each
speaking in distinct voices that stay with you long after you've left their
unforgettable stories. Science fiction at its best, Andrea Hairston's
MINDSCAPE makes you want to cuss AND shout for joy—its vision, raw
humanity, and ultimate hopefulness are exhilarating. What a pleasure it is
to be invited into a world so large and muscular, so sensual and rooted in
global history, a world in which not only the future but the past is at
stake."
—Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative
Fiction and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, winner of the 2001
and 2005 World Fantasy Awards
Tsunami: Book Three of the Marq`ssan Cycle
L. Timmel Duchamp
Read Chapter One
Order now
Tsunami, the gripping third volume of the five-novel Marq’ssan Cycle, opens in early 2086, immediately after the signing of the Madrid Accords at the conclusion of the Global War. Many countries, including the US, have been devastated by war, and some of them turn to the Free Zones and the Marq’ssan for assistance in rebuilding their infrastructure. In the US, the Executive, which has turned its attention to reconsolidating its power, meets with growing resistance to executive rule; and in the Pacific Northwest Free Zone, the Co-op faces an internal crisis when ugly, long-buried secrets are dragged into the light of day. Meanwhile, the lives of three very different women—executive Elizabeth Weatherall, anarchist Martha Greenglass, and human rights lawyer Celia Espin—become entangled as each strives to bring about the change she so passionately desires.
Praise for Tsunami
"[T]hose with a serious interest in dystopias and particularly the feminist
version thereof should find L. Timmel Duchamp's Marq'ssan Cycle a rewarding
experience."
—Michael Levy, New York Review of Science
Fiction, December 2005
"The third volume of the Marq'ssan cycle, Tsunami, confirms what the
second volume, Renegade, made clear: the narrative drive and sheer
invention of the work is more than up to the size, scope, and ambition of
this extraordinary project. What a grand job! What a great read! It's been
a long time since I've read science fiction with such a dramatic grip on
the political complexities of our slow progress toward the better world we
all wish for."
—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and
Trouble on Triton
"Duchamp's powerful use of language and her gift for creating unforgettable
and complex characters make this novel a dark and suspenseful read... The
author's sense of irony and her unflinching understanding of human nature
add much-needed wryness (and an occasional flash of romance) to the
mix."
(
read the whole review)
—A. M. Dellamonica, Science Fiction Weekly, Jan 10,
2007
"Duchamp's work challenges its audience with a perhaps uncomfortably
on-target vision of our extrapolated social, political, and economic
structures as well as with a decidedly leftist, feminist message. It is
definitely a work heavy on the "cognitive pleasures" that Robert Scvholes
identified as proper to good sf. But, for those willing to accept its
challenges, the narrative experience of the Marq'ssan Cycle, now totaling
some 1500 pages with the appearance of its third volume, Tsunami, fulfills
our need for both cognition and for sublimation as well...
[Duchamp] overwhelmingly rises to the challenges she sets herself through
the nuanced development of strong characters over the course of these first
three volumes of the Marq'ssan Cycle."
—Amy J. Ransom,, New York Review of Science
Fiction, April, 2007
"The old US government is attempting to reassert its authority, but
discovering that not everyone is welcoming them with open arms. This
lengthy, thoughtful, and intelligent novel examines the social, political,
and personal consequences, seen chiefly through the eyes of three women
– a lawyer, a businesswoman, and a political activist – all of whose
ambitions become intertwined. The series is an ambitious project that is
probably just a shade too intellectual for the mainstream commercial SF
market, but which should appeal to readers who like something a little more
thoughtful than the latest military SF or post-apocalyptic dystopia."
—Donald D'Ammassa, Critical Mass
Renegade: Book Two of the Marq`ssan Cycle
L. Timmel Duchamp
Read Chapter One
Order now
Renegade, the second of the five-novel Marq’ssan Cycle, opens in August 2077 as the Pacific Northwest Free Zone, having survived the first year of its existence, faces both internal and external challenges. The US’s Security Services has deployed a paramilitary covert action team to capture Kay Zeldin, Security’s most wanted renegade, and destabilize the Zone’s civil order. Nevertheless, Kay ventures outside the Free Zone to search for her spouse and dozens of other scientists who have disappeared, traveling through a war-torn American landscape she barely recognizes. When she encounters Security’s formidable Elizabeth Weatherall, each woman risks all she has become in no-holds-barred, mortal combat.
Renegade is a passionate novel of love, trust, and betrayal as well as matters of life and death. It poses vital questions about political morality that resonate powerfully with the most significant issues of our day. With this novel, L. Timmel Duchamp, best known for her “provocative,” “daring” short fiction, moves into new territory, mapping largely invisible connections between how humans negotiate the most intimate and the least intimate of relations.
Praise for Renegade
"This is easily one of the best science fiction series I've read in
years. Rather than beginning with what is already known, it strips bare the
arbitrary structures of our world (sexuality, gender, government) and
rebuilds them in complex, new structures that are strikingly at odds with
our experience—homosexuality as the norm, at least among the highest
levels, and men willing to forgo sexual pleasure for political power—and
yet also strikingly familiar, with classes or castes, torture, war, the
designation of the unfamiliar as automatically 'terrorist'. The arguments
for the elasticity of sexuality, and against the hierarchical structures of
gender and government are complex, and thoroughly examined—whether you
accept or deny the possibilities and premises presented, Ms. Duchamp does
not take lightly her responsibilities of presenting a believable, if
frightening world; nor does she present a simple dichotomy between men and
women, or between human and Marq'ssan."
(
read the whole review)
—Sean Melican, Ideomancer, March 2007
"[T]hrough the last two thirds of Renegade, [Duchamp] successfully
maintains narrative tension almost solely through the battle of wills
between Weatherall and Zeldin. That Duchamp has also done her homework in
the series' preparation appears in the scary verisimilitude with which she
depicts the intelligence service sub-culture, its methods and their impact
upon detainees. Indeed, the work at times reads much like a concentration
camp narrative (Levi's Survival in Auschwitz or Solzhenitsyn's One Day in
the Life of Ivan Denisovich come to mind) in its lengthy,
semi-philosophical passages about self-preservation. While I have certainly
been guilty of grousing about and skimming through such long-winded
philosophical digressions in other works of SF, with Renegade, I devoured
every word of every page."
—Amy
J. Ransom, SFRA Review, Oct/Nov/Dec 2006
"This second installment of Duchamp's (Alanya to Alanya)
projected five-volume saga of postmodern society continues to establish
the breakdown of familiar social structures and the transformation of
human values from a self-serving model to one that is truly
cooperative. Feminist in intent and meticulous in execution, this work
of dystopian fiction belongs in most large sf or speculative fiction
collections." —
Library Journal, June 15, 2006
"Duchamp doesn't need headlines to grab the reader. You do that with good
writing and strong characters. Both are to be found in abundance in
Renegade. And I do mean abundance. This here is a 616 page pulse-pounding
page-turner, based on Duchamp's research into the shenanigans and
evil-doings of our own favorite set of spies, the CIA. What would happen to
our bureaucrat-overseers, were they to be freed into a landscape overrun by
near-civil war, greed and violence? No, this novel is not about current
history or anything resembling it. You do, indeed, get hints of the truly
alien. They're the seeds of change." ( read the
whole review)
—Rick
Kleffel, The Agony Column
Alanya to Alanya: Book One of the Marq`ssan Cycle
L. Timmel Duchamp
Read Chapter One
Order now
Alanya to Alanya is the first book of the Marq`ssan Cycle, which Aqueduct Press will publish in five volumes.
Praise for Alanya to Alanya
"The intersection of science fiction and politics has always served an
important critical function, from George Orwell's dystopian 1984 and
Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of
Darkness to Robert Heinlein's ultra-nationalist Starship
Troopers, but until now they have always served as a means of analyzing
political structures. With L. Timmel Duchamp's million-word Marq'ssan novel
(broken into five books), anarchy is extrapolated. This is not anarchy in
its popular sense, but in its truest sense. It is also feminism at its most
fundamental level, and neither can be un-twined from the other."
(
read the whole review)
—Sean Melican, Ideomancer, March 2007
"Alanya to Alanya does just what a political sf novel should do:
it leavens its political message with first-rate futuristic extrapolation,
chilling dystopianism and a breathless adventure story that keeps you
turning the pages. It was a refreshing read and a rare example of deft
political storytelling."
—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, July 2006 (read
the whole review)
"Not an easy or comfortable book, but one that rewards a thoughtful reader
who is willing to give up simple action plots for a close consideration of
political and social ideas. In fact, the closest comparison one might give
is to some of LeGuin’s later work—no small
recommendation. Worth looking for." (read the whole
review)
—Peter
Heck, Asimov's, June 2006
"Readers who still appreciate the anger and surety of those early works can
take heart at the publication of L. Timmel Duchamp's Alanya to
Alanya...[T]hose with a serious interest in dystopias and particularly
the feminist version thereof should find L. Timmel Duchamp's Marq'ssan
Cycle a rewarding experience."
—Michael
Levy, New York Review of Science Fiction, December 2005
"Politically savvy and philosophically relevant, this title puts a human
face on today's problems."
(read the whole review)
—Library
Journal, June 15, 2005
"Alanya to Alanya is an intriguing mixture of SF genres and
styles: It has
utopian and dystopian elements, a strong splash of the political
thriller,
a good mystery subplot in Kay's amnesia, a hint of the sense of
discovery
that imbues first-contact novels and plenty to say about the current
state
of the real world."
(read the whole
review)
—Science
Fiction Weekly, June 27, 2005
"Alanya to Alanya is SF on a broader scale, with The War of
the
Worlds as one inspiration, but its metaphors apply to a very human
tangle of loyalty and betrayal, politics and idealism—Wells and
Orwell updated for the end of the 20th century."
—Locus,
June 2005
"[Duchamp's] political world building has a level of detail and
believability that rivals Bruce Sterling at his best, and her pacing is
much better than most other books driven so heavily by political
concepts,
such as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged or Sheri S. Tepper's The
Gate to Women's Country."
—Strange
Horizons, November 30, 2005 (read
the whole review)
"This is the first of a five novel series which mixes politics, aliens,
and a variety of feminist and political issues which might easily have
become unreadably polemic and convoluted, but which is surprisingly
readable and entertaining despite its heavy load of subtext."
—Don
d'Ammassa, Chronicle, September 2005
"Alanya to Alanya is not so much an exploration of the way
humanity
responds to an alien presence as an illustration of how a world under
siege
from its own governments finally revolts; the invaders are simply the
catalyst for change."
—Seattle
Times, July 3, 2005 (read
the whole review)
"My 'discovery' of the work of L. Timmel Duchamp was, as usual, pure
serendipity...her intellectual grounding and her political activism
both contribute to create a novel that is highly readable and as
politically relevant as any novel I can recall."
—Ritch
Calvin, The SFRA Review,
Jan./Feb/March 2006
—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren
Life
Gwyneth
Jones
winner of the 2004 Philip
K. Dick Award, short-listed for the 2004 James Tiptree,
Jr. Award, a
Locus-recommended book
Order now
Life is a richly textured fictional biography of the brilliant
Anna Senoz, a scientist who makes a momentous discovery about the X and
Y chromosomes. Anna’s discovery provokes widespread sexual rage and
cruelly impacts her career, her marriage, and her child. Ultimately,
Anna faces a challenge that the practice of science alone cannot meet.
Praise for Life
"[T]his is a rich, potent, challenging, and original novel which does
exactly what we always demand of the very finest science fiction: it
makes
us think about ourselves, about our future and how we want to be."
— Paul
Kincaid, Foundation, Autumn 2005
"Jones's genius here, however, is in the many layers and textures of
experience she gives us, her recognition that great discoveries, great
science, great art—like great sorrow and tragedy—take place
against the minutiae of our days...This is a novel that strives fully
to
limn contemporary life, where we began and what we have become."
—James
Sallis, Magazine of Fantasy and Science
Fiction, December 2005
"[...]Like all of Jones’s work, Life demands—and amply
repays—close reading. In addition to writing well about
the thrills and tedium of scientific research, she manages
to be both clinical and lyrical in describing her
characters’ exploration of their sensuality."
—New
York Times Book Review, November 14, 2004
"[...]Beautifully written and elegantly paced, this story conveys bold
speculative concepts through intensely human characters. Deserving a
wide crossover readership, it is highly recommended for both sf and
general fiction collections."
—Library
Journal, September 15, 2004
(Starred review)
"Remarkably rich and sophisticated...Life [is] a bold but
accurate title for a work that anchors itself in the commonest meaning
of the term (the old 24/7) and subtly weaves its way toward the larger
scientific and philosophical versions that we tend to give capital
letters and a lot more respect."
—Locus,
November 2004
"Gwyneth Jones has written the most wonderful day-after-tomorrow novel,
about science, sex, love and its limitations, achievement and its
ramifications. Always surprising, always profound, this is Jones at her
brilliant best and there is no one better."
—Karen
Joy Fowler, author of
The Jane Austen Book Club and Sarah Canary
"Exceptionally vivid, this is one of those novels that reminds you
what
novels at their best can do, evoking a total sense of how we live now.
Beautifully written, and a real page-turner too, sharp-witted and
suspenseful— I read it with a growing sense of exhilaration, certain I
was
engaged with a true work of art."
—Kim
Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice
and Salt
"This is an ambitious, focused, unblinking troublemaker of a book[...]"
—Suzy
McKee Charnas, author of The Holdfast Chronicles and The Vampire
Tapestry
Love’s Body, Dancing
in Time
L. Timmel Duchamp
a
Locus-recommended book, short-listed for the 2004 Tiptree Award
Order now
Love’s Body, Dancing in Time offers five love stories by critically acclaimed author L. Timmel Duchamp. Carnal and queer, intricate and involved, they range from the heart-breaking Sturgeon Award finalist “Dance at the Edge,” to the historically authentic, Tiptree short-listed “The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi,” to the subtle, original “The Heloise Archive,” in which the rewriting of the eleventh-century abbess’s life story dramatically alters the course of European history. Like all of Duchamp’s work, this fiction is passionate, feminist, and intelligent.
"This handful of SF tales demonstrates superbly what the
genre can really do. Rich with social resonance, these stories elicit
the thrill of ideas struggling to manifest as pure drama. Duchamp
writes some of the most rewarding science fiction stories you can read
today; she is simply and unarguably among the best."
—Samuel
R. Delany, author of Dhalgren and Nova
"Putting together a top 10 list isn’t always a
cakewalk. The last 12 months yielded a bumper crop of outstanding sf
and
fantasy, and it took a lot of boiling down and a little arbitrariness
to
select just 10 instead of a dozen, or 15, or even 20[...]Duchamp’s five
unpredictable, haunting love stories, which feature strong, memorable
heroines, provoke deeper inspection of cherished belief systems and
re-exploration of the big questions of relationships with ourselves,
others, and God."
—Ray
Olson, "Spotlight on SF/Fantasy," The Booklist, April 15, 2004
"These stories create a delicate choreography of
longing, love and loss. They continue to perform in the mind long after
you’ve turned the last page."
—Nalo
Hopkinson, author of The Salt Roads and Brown Girl in
the Ring
"Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is a first-rate
collection from the provocative L. Timmel Duchamp."
— Rich
Horton, Locus, April 2004
"[...]Each tale is a polished gem, reflecting human nature
in all its goodness and ugliness, and inviting deeper inspection of
cherished belief systems and re-exploration of the big questions of
relationships with ourselves, others, and God. Supremely intelligent
and confident, Duchamp infuses her consistently sensual prose with
mystery and beauty. Moreover, it is unpredictable—so emotionally and
conceptually multifaceted that there is no fast track through one of
her stories."
—Paula
Luedtke, The Booklist, March 1, 2004
"[...]It’s a remarkable achievement to turn edges into
seams
at the turn of a few words, and Duchamp does this throughout the
collection. Love’s Body, Dancing in Time creates curious little
ornithopters of story and sets them free, allowing feminism’s
speculations
to come into play." (read the whole review)
—Alan
DeNiro, The Sideshow, August 10, 2004
Conversation Pieces
A Small Paperback Series
Order now
 |
| Original Block Print of Mary Shelley by Justin Kempton (www.writersmugs.com) |
The Conversation Pieces series aims to both document and facilitate the
grand conversation of feminist sf. Books in the series offer a wide
variety
of texts, ranging from short fiction, speeches, and poetry to essays,
interviews, correspondence, and group discussions. While many of the
texts
are reprints, some are original. They are available through Aqueduct's
website and at a few select bookstores.
Volume 1. The Grand Conversation
L. Timmel Duchamp
The first volume, The Grand Conversation, collects four essays
by
L. Timmel Duchamp that explore her conceptualization of feminist sf as
a
conversation. These essays, which have been previously published in the
scholarly journals Foundation and Extrapolation, lay
out the
thinking behind the Conversation Pieces series.
Volume
2. With Her Body
Nicola Griffith
finalist for the 2004 Lambda Award
With Her Body presents three
pieces of short
fiction by the Nebula-, Lambda-, and Tiptree-award winning Nicola
Griffith. Among the brightest stars of feminist sf, Griffith is known
chiefly for her earthy yet luminous novels Ammonite, Slow
River, and The Blue Place. Griffith's particular attention
to
physical sensation and perception imbues the prose style of With
Her
Body with almost palpable heat.
"With Her Body is an atypical collection of science fiction,
and
those who are turned off by epic sci-fi shouldn't hesitate to pick up
this volume. It is intimate, sexy, and rich with good old-fashioned
storytelling. That sounds like joy to me."
—AfterEllen.com,
November 18, 2004
(read
the whole review)
Volume
3. Changeling
Nancy Jane
Moore
The third volume, Changeling, is an original novella by Nancy Jane Moore. Moore has only recently begun publishing fiction; her work has appeared in Imaginings, MOTA 2002, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, and several other magazines. Her story "Walking Contradiction" was shortlisted for the 2004 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards.
Praise for Changeling "Nancy Jane Moore is a writer to watch, if her novella, Changeling,
is any indication. It's an eminently satisfying, sweetly unraveling
story centering on a wheelchair using woman who rolls through walls
into a
dimension her parents frequented when young[...]"
—Books
to Watch Out For, Lesbian Edition (read
the whole review)
"Changeling is recommended to genre readers, regardless of their interest in the feminist sub genre of science fiction."
(
read the whole review)
—William I. Lengeman III, Apex Digest, January 2007
Volume
4. Counting on Wildflowers
Kim Antieau
The dusky light begins to turn golden. The forest gives way to barren hills covered in blowdown and snags. Some of the blowdown curves over the hills, looking like stilled waves of gray Saragossa grass. There is hardly any color anywhere, just the bleached bone starkness of the tree skeletons. I cannot stop looking at them, still standing after all these years, bare naked, for everyone to see. I cannot photograph them. It would be like taking pictures of the dead in their coffins.
So Kim Antieau observes the sun rising on Mt. St. Helens at the summer solstice, 2002. In poems illustrated by Terri Windling, in an original short story set in West Africa, in essays ranging in subject matter from Daphne du Maurier's fiction to excursions in the Gifford-Pichot National Forest, Antieau illuminates the richness of our world today, reveling in its wonders, worrying over its degradation, seeking out the possibility of transmutation—with proportion distilled by reflection and a ready dash of humor.
Kim Antieau is best known for her novels The Jigsaw Woman, The Gaia Websters, and Coyote Cowgirl. Charles de Lint, author of Memory and Dream, writes of her work: "Brilliant....One of the best writers we have today."
Volume
5. The Traveling Tide: Stories
Rosaleen Love
An original collection of seven short stories. Rosaleen Love's stories fairly dance and sing their way along the page, whether the scene is music itself, as in the tale she tells of driving her cousin Bridie, an Australian musicologist and jazz pianist, on a pilgrimage to the source of her music in the US South, or the vast vistas of geological time, or even the arcane science of therolinguistics as it deconstructs the "c(h)oral songs" that are a "series of texts written by air in water." Carmel Bird writes of the final story in the volume, "Once Giants Roamed the Earth": "This story is informed with deep concern for beauty of the earth and speaks urgently for respect and dignity. There is an air of menace and yet a pervasive hum of hope. The writing is firm, confident, and compelling."
"Once Giants Roamed the Earth" is a winner of the
2005
Aurealis
Award.
"[...]Love coils Stapledon's cosmic vision neatly into a walnut shell,
like
one of those fine and precious fairytale fabrics that can fit into a
tiny
space yet expand into practically an entire wardrobe."
—Strange
Horizons, December 13, 2005 (read
the whole review)
"The stories here include a couple that draw powerfully on the
Australian
landscape (and seascape) as well as history and myth...But most
effective
for me was the spooky "In the Shadow of the Stones," in which a
somewhat
downtrodden woman reflects on her disappeared friends, as she walks the
mysterious Australian shoreline."
—Rich
Horton, Locus, August 2005
"[A] high quality collection."
—Lorraine
Cormack, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, May 2006
"This book is a perfect beginning to a literary conversation."
—Gillian
Polack, author of Illuminations, September 2006
Volume
6. The Adventures of the
Faithful Counselor
Anne Sheldon
The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor relates a series of stories about the ancient gods Inanna and Gilgamesh from the point of view of Inanna's lover and sidekick, Ninshibur, the Faithful Counselor. As a storyteller, Sheldon performed "Inanna and the God of Wisdom" based on Diane Wolkstein and S.N. Kramer's translation of the 2nd century BCE cuneiform tablets. After telling the story for a few years, Sheldon began to feel the lack of a point of view that is missing from the traditional story—that of Ninshibur, Inanna's Faithful Counselor. The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor provides that missing point of view, as it begins with Gil and Nanna and Ninshibur's coming upon the Euphrates:
Staring at the sunset,and ending in a bakery, where
crimson poppies, the ibis,
our own new skin,
we were breathtaken and breathtaking
the work is unusual,The adventures between include, naturally, a visit to hell, which, as the narrator notes, "is not hard to find." Praise for The Adventures of the Faithful Counselor
the food excellent,
and the stories
astonishing.
"[...]it would be a reader of stone who would not enjoy experiencing this
adventure directly."
—Strange
Horizons, December 7, 2005 (read
the whole review)
"Anne Sheldon's use of vivid imagery, strong narrative voice, and
cleverly
placed anachronisms gives new life and a new perspective to an ancient
tale."(read the whole
review)
—MultiVerse
Speculative Poetry Reviews, June
2005
Volume
7. Ordinary People
Eleanor Arnason
Spanning thirty years, this volume collects six stories, one poem, and a WisCon Guest of Honor speech. In the richly ironic "Warlords of Saturn's Moons," first published in 1974, a cigar-puffing woman writes space-opera while the drama of real-life inner-city Detroit goes on around her; "The Grammarian's Five Daughters" offers a playful explication of the uses of the parts of speech; "A Ceremony of Discontent" takes a humorous approach to a modern-day feminist problem; and Arnason's wise, earthy tales of hwarhath serve up new myths explaining the origins of the world and morality (among other things). The work in this collection entertains with its wit, delights with its precision and imagination, and challenges and provokes with its bluntness. Ordinary People offers a small, potent taste of the oeuvre of an important feminist sf author.
Praise for Ordinary People
"When I read Arnason, I am charmed, not only by the tales-as-tales but
by a
voice as unmistakable as that of Heinlein or Vance or Farmer: measured
and
precise and stealthily funny and full of homely wisdom."
—Russell
Letson, Locus, November 2005
"An Eleanor Arnason story collection is way overdue, and this is a very
welcome book. I recommend it highly."
—Rich
Horton, Locus, August 2005
"This collection from Eleanor Arnason gives us eight pieces—six
stories, a poem, and the text of a speech—in which the author seems
to be engaged in conversation with her own past career in the genre. It
is
quite a retrospective collection, with stories going back to as early
as
1974...[and provides] a new look at the range of her fiction, and more
good
reason than ever to wish for more new stories from Eleanor Arnason."
(read the whole review)
—Tangent
Online, June 26, 2005
Volume 8. Writing the Other: A Practical Approach
Nisi Shawl and
Cynthia Ward
During the 1992 Clarion West Writers Workshop attended by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, one of the students expressed the opinion that it is a mistake to write about people of ethnic backgrounds different from your own because you might get it wrong—horribly, offensively wrong—and so it is better not even to try. This opinion, commonplace among published as well as aspiring writers, struck Nisi as taking the easy way out and spurred her to write an essay addressing the problem of how to write about characters marked by racial and ethnic differences. In the course of writing the essay, however, she realized that similar problems arise when writers try to create characters whose gender, sexual preference, and age differ significantly from their own. Nisi and Cynthia collaborated to develop a workshop that addresses these problems with the aim of both increasing writers’ skill and sensitivity in portraying difference in their fiction as well as allaying their anxieties about "getting it wrong." Writing the Other: A Practical Approach is the manual that grew out of their workshop. It discusses basic aspects of characterization and offers elementary techniques, practical exercises, and examples for helping writers create richer and more accurate characters with "differences."
Praise for Writing the Other
"Along with personal experience and examples, the book presents
exercises to
help writers step outside their own ROAARS. The exercises, developed
from
workshops the authors have conducted, reward writers with learning more
about developing characters—including those who are 'just like'
themselves—and understanding past and present stereotypes."
—Paula
Guran, Writers.com Newsletter, Vol 9, no. 3
"The book is excellent. I highly recommend it. It should be read by
every
'dominant paradigm' writer for that is its true audience. Recommended
also
for schools, colleges, and creativity workshops, and sociology classes."
—The
Compulsive Reader (read
the whole review)
"[...]a timely book. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward, two Seattle-based
science fiction authors, have developed a useful, nuts-and-bolts
approach to creating fully realized, well-rounded characters
substantially different from oneself."
—Strange
Horizons, June 29, 2006
"Just raising awareness about this writing challenge is a literary
service[...]Such exercises clearly help flex writerly muscles."
—Seattle
Times, February 3, 2006
"This book can help interested writers develop characters to exhibit the complexity of the human experience (and, since we're talking genre here,
multifaceted non-human experiences as well)[...] What I like best about this book is that Shawl and Ward encourage people to acknowledge their
fears and concerns, but also to try anyway." (read the whole review)
—Broad Universe, November 2007
Volume 9. Alien Bootlegger
Rebecca Ore (with an
introduction by Michael Swanwick)
Every writer worth admiring has her place of power: that locale or perspective from which she does her best and most assured work. For Rebecca Ore, it’s the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia. Though she has lived much of her life elsewhere, the land and its people are in her bones and the rhythm of their speech lodged in her head. It’s not an easy place to love, and she returns to it always with a certain degree of pain and regret. But it’s the forge and wellspring of Alien Bootlegger.
The Blue Ridge area is a region of stunning beauty where guns are common, old wealth holds to traditional values ("like owning people," as Rebecca enjoys explaining), and operating an illegal still is not so much disreputable as a matter of cultural pride. —Michael Swanwick
In Franklin County, when times get tough, people often to turn to bootlegging. But that’s a perilous way to make a living, since bootlegging is both illegal and tightly regulated by distributors like Dennis DeSpain. So when the mysterious and scary alien who calls himself "Turk" openly sets up as an independent operator, flouting both the law and the distributors, all hell breaks loose. In it up to their necks and pursuing their own agendas are: ex-activist Lilly, the alien’s lawyer; Berenice, an aging ’60s radical with a past; Orris, DeSpain’s smart, ambitious wife who believes in doing whatever it takes to achieve the objective; and DeSpain’s ex-lover Marie, a chemical-engineering student who loves working with machines and whose grandmother was a midwife, bootlegger in the Forties, and notorious for having killed a man.
Praise for Alien Bootlegger
"Alien Bootlegger is a supremely clever, elegant piece of writing
that uses one of the oldest staples of science fiction in a genuinely
new
way. It’s intelligent, funny, extremely dark at times, and offers an
unusually honest view of personal history and the way that it traps us."
—Tangent
Online, March 7, 2006 (read
the whole review)
Volume 10. The Red Rose Rages
(Bleeding)
L. Timmel Duchamp
[Eve] turned her attention to the monitor displaying Minnivitch’s cell. Never had it been so clear what Minnivitch was up to. The bare minimalist space of the cell screamed stage, and some strange, dramaturgical magic had transformed the white glare of the indirect fluorescent lighting into spotlights. Kneeling bald and naked on the floor’s glassine surface, Minnivitch—her arms, wrists, hands, and fingers as dramatically expressive as her face—was telling a story to an audience somewhere outside the glare of the lights. —from The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding)Sarah Minnivitch, an actor sentenced to prison for acts of civil disobedience, wreaked havoc at the for-profit medium-security facility she was first sent to. When Penco transfers her to a high-security facility, the facility’s director assigns Dr. Eve Escher the task of rehabilitating Minnivitch and recovering the corporation’s losses. Escher believes she is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough that will not only rehabilitate the prisoner but also win the physician fame and glory. But the stakes for both Escher and Minnivitch prove to be higher than either of them imagined.
"[An] effectively ironic short novel of near-future dystopia and
professional disillusionment."
— Locus,
"New and Notable," February 2006
"The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding) is an intense and gripping
read. It is dense with ideas without ever becoming bogged down, as the
narrative momentum keeps everything moving. It repays rereading to pick
up the hints and clues and recurrent themes and images that the pace of
the writing may sweep one past during the first read: for example, "the
rose-like designs" of the heat-trace readings on Minnivitch when she is
in black isolation, Eve's nightmare of a blood-red flower/wound
splitting her foot, the rose preserved in glass on Dorner's austere
desk, the "flower of fire blazing within" Venedra Poole. Not a
comfortable book, but a compelling and thought-provoking one."
(read the whole review)
—Lesley
Hall, Strange Horizons, April 24, 2006
"Duchamp does a marvelous job of portraying the intensely claustrophobic
Facility A7, a closed universe so much to and of itself that the real
world, which the author only occasionally and nightmarishly evokes,
fades
to insignificance[...]Given the recent revelations of how prisoners of
the
U.S. government have been treated at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, and of
the
free hand that private corporations like Halliburton have been given by
the
government to act like independent pocket-states, Duchamp's novel seems
as
relevant today as any uncensored blog reporting form the Middle East."
—Michael
Levy, New York Review of Science Fiction, August 2006
Read L. Timmel Duchamp’s essay The Prick of Political Imagination: on Writing The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding)
Volume 11. Talking Back:
Epistolary Fantasies
L. Timmel Duchamp
Dear Abiel,
I’ve never loved a character of mine as much as I love you. I know you don’t want to hear anything like this or even a little bit like this. It’ll embarrass you. You may not read any farther, but please do go on. You can burn this letter afterwards. Nobody will ever have to know about it. I hope you’ll be, at least secretly, pleased...
Talking Back showcases the epistolary fantasies of eighteen writers, among them Carol Emshwiller, Leslie What, Eileen Gunn, and Rosaleen Love. Invited to “talk back,” the authors penned love letters, fans letters, angry letters, thoughtful letters, letters to dead people, letters to fictional characters, letters to corporations. Carol Emshwiller writes to her beloved Ledoyt; Eileen Gunn, provoked by a New York Times review of Lady Windermere’s Fan, addresses Oscar Wilde; Heather Lindsley tenders friendly advice to Citibank; and Nisi Shawl explains to Jack Kerouac that the joke is on both of them. “Lovely Madame,” writes James Trimarco to Charles Dickens’s infamous Madame Defarge, “you whose eyes flash as your knitting needles click-clack at the table, I spit on the death your father has written for you and burn those pages from my book…” These are letters that will never be sent, intimate and personal, fantasies the authors have agreed to share with their readers.
Praise for Talking Back: Epistolary Fantasies
"Unusual and thought-provoking."
— Locus,
"New and Notable," May 2006
"[...]a slim volume, yes, but filled with potential, great fun to read, and
thought-provoking too. What more could one ask from a book, or a letter?"
(read the whole review)
—
Strange Horizons, Jan 17, 2007
Volume 12. Absolute Uncertainty:
Short Stories
Lucy Sussex
…it's like being kissed by his Mam, but with an erotic edge that tingles, sends slow shockwaves through him, from the spikes on his hennaed hair to the toes suddenly clenching in his platform boots. Her mouth is wide and dry, except for a trace of saliva left behind as she disengages. She kissed me! And with an open mouth! Where are the lads from school when he needs to tell them something really important?Absolute Uncertainty collects seven stories—three of them new—by Lucy Sussex, as well as an interview conducted by Maureen Kincaid Speller. In these stories, a fashionista becomes obsessed with the uncanny resemblance of the dazzling, eccentric "Lady Sanspareille" to the seventeenth-century Duchess of Newcastle; a young man loses his virginity in more than one sense of the word; an older writer shares her insight with Philip K. Dick, who really needs it; and in Biocultural Studies 101, a class examines moral ambiguities and the limits of biography in the case of Werner Heisenberg, "a real slippery customer," via a high-tech "interactive template." Praise for Absolute Uncertainty
"Strongly feminist, linguistically muscular, and historically erudite,
Lucy Sussex is an Australian writer who deserves to be more widely read
outside of her home country[...]This book is your chance to test [bridges
between our day and the past] in all their precarious charm, to take
them as far as they'll go in hopes of inhabiting a few broken moments
of life in another time."
— Strange
Horizons, September 12, 2006
"[...]Sussex is a potent talent[...]vivid and interesting[...]"
— Tangent
Online, July 18, 2006
"Fine stuff all around." —Fantasy Magazine, Fall 2006
"It opens with a delicious original, 'Duchess'[...]The other selections range
from earthy, political Australian fantasy[...]to ghost story[...]to the title's
story time-traveling Watcher in a Nazi Germany where Heisenberg is busy
speculating about Uncertainty, and they're told in a corresponding variety
of styles and voices."
—Locus, Jan 2007
Volume 13. Candle in a Bottle: A
Novella
Carolyn Ives Gilman
The pebble that starts the avalanche may be here, anywhere around us.
The savants of Institut Sorel, the world center of information mechanics, compute the governing algorithms that give all things their shape and structure. The voyants receive and sort enormous amounts of information. And now the savants say that the whole world, on the brink of a phase transition, is about to change, such that the long-term equilibrium that has locked the world into an "order crisis" will give way to a period of chaos. Dominique, a new, ignorant acolyte voyant, is asked to watch for the random factor that will trigger the phase transition. But the Institut itself is in chaos. Drawn into political intrigue and the savants' and voyants' struggle over his world's very future, Dominique cares for individuals, rather than abstractions and principles. But even so, he's not sure what it is he should be doing…
Praise for Candle in a Bottle
"Interesting intellectual political intrigue, high-minded science, and a
climax that moves along at a brisk pace makes the 100-page Candle in a
Bottle a trip worth taking." (read
the whole review)
— Tangent Online, July 24, 2006
Volume 14. KNOTS: Short Fiction
Wendy Walker
And as she moved, he saw that the shape of her wolverine cape described the very quadrilateral of the field, belonging to his fatherÂ’s renegade vassal across the mountain, which he so long and so ineffectually had yearned to possess; and the pure launch of her skirt mimicked the very contour of the fertile hillside claimed by the Bishop of Tours, which he had not briefly, nor successfully, disputed in the ecclesiastical and secular courts, and yet could not yield his claim. He had stridden after her then, and gained upon her figure slowly, intent on capturing her for one sole galliard at least…Four spellbinding tales, selected from Wendy Walker’s critically-acclaimed short fiction collections Sea-Rabbit, Or, The Artist of Life (1988) and Stories Out of Omarie (1995), showcase some of her finest work as she takes on the themes of art, memory and tragic love in pre-modern Europe and North Africa. “Twin Knots” presents the Goddess of Love’s take on an affair between a knight and an unhappy queen. In another tale, a count punishes his daughter for the attempted murder of her husband by placing her in a barrel and sending her out to sea, where adventures with pirates and a powerful sultan ensue. Publishers Weekly writes, “Walker's sentences grow and ramify as luxuriantly as vines in an enchanted wood.” Praise for KNOTS
"It's [Walker's] eccentric mingling of ideas and imagery, sensory
impressions of a world almost disturbingly alive, that distinguish her work
from anyone else's."
—Locus, Jan 2007
"Walker uses European poems and fairy tales as her inspiration and source
material, merging rich language and modern ideas with classic plot lines to
craft complex adult fare[...]Read her work for the history, the complex
tales, and the vivid language offered—where the true beauty of Walker's
work lies." (read the whole review)
—Tangent Online, Dec 16, 2006
Volume 15. Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work
Lesley Hall
Naomi Mitchison led a long, diverse, and active life, spanning most of the twentieth century, before she died in 1999 at the age of 101. She is probably less well-known than she might be, quite possibly because of this very diversity; a recent and favorable review of a reissue of her fantasy Travel Light, for instance, characterized her as “relegated to rare footnotes buried in the reverent biographies” of J.R.R. TolkienÂ…
A member of the famed Haldane family, Naomi Mitchison lived an adventurous, politically engaged, and well-examined life even as she wrote dozens of novels and works of nonfiction. From campaigning for womenÂ’s right to information about and the means of birth control to running for Parliament, from practicing “open marriage” in her own life to exploring a range of sexual arrangements in her fiction, for all of her 101 years, Mitchison embraced change as few people ever manage to do. Along the way she pioneered a new kind of historical novel that combined the immediacy of modern language with an ability to evoke the otherness of the past with great vividness and published her first work of feminist sf in 1962, a few years before the resurgence of feminism with its second wave.
In her profile of Mitchison’s life and work, Lesley A. Hall offers an overview of this prolific writer’s life and work, beginning from her upper-class origins, through her radicalization as a feminist and socialist and her experimentation and examination of sexual arrangements, to her life as a writer repeatedly breaking new ground.
Praise for Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work
The strength of [these examinations of Mitchison's novels is] that Hall
provides detailed ways in which Mitchison's themes are evident throughout
them. [...] Hall effectively kindles an interest in an endlessly
fascinating individual and body of work and leaves open the space for
others to begin filling in the gaps in criticism on Mitchison's work.
—Ritch Calvin, FemSpec 8.1/2, 2007
Volume 16. We, Robots: A Novella
Sue Lange
Sharp, bitter, and concentrated, it was on one square millimeter of integument surface. Exactly the size of a soldering iron head. I recoiled in terror, in blinding pain. I flew against that back wall of the lab bench. The pain quickly subsided. I turned my eyespots to the transie and watched, honing in on the soldering iron that she had mercifully unplugged and placed in a wall block, the business end inward.
“I hurt,” I said, and meant it.
A tale set in the not-so-distant future when robots with AI serve nearly every human household, We, Robots is the story of Avey, a robot who undergoes a forced transition from emotionless domestic servant to conflicted human companion. Two weeks prior to the long-anticipated arrival of the Singularity—the moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence—old robot models are recalled for the installation of a security upgrade that would allow the growing transhuman population to control them through instilling in them the ability to feel pain. This new feature introduces Avey to a cruel, unjust world, engendering a range of human emotions that include sadness, anger, compassion, and love. As robots across the globe collectively discover what it is to be human through the experience of suffering and longing, they inevitably begin to question their exploited existence. Will their joint uprising spoil the transhumansÂ’ grand social experiment and release them from a life of servitude?
Praise for We, Robots
"[...]in a genre where robot stories have been a dime-a-dozen since the New
Wave days, We, Robots stands out and delivers an insight into the human
condition that wouldÂ’ve made Asimov proud." (read
the whole review)
—Tangent Online, Apr 8, 2007
"[...]this is a funny and disturbing satire, and a refutation of the more facile writings in our
genre."
—Ideomancer, June 2007
"This is a well-told story[...]Lange provides a nice framework to move the discussion [about the future]
forward."
—The SF Site, June 2007
"[A] slim volume that manages to be both a hilarious critique of
hyper-consumerist and
protect-the-children-from-all-dangers-real-or-perceived-at-all-costs-always
culture and a pointed meditation on the uses of pain, physical and
emotional, in the formation of character, personality and ambition. [...]
Lange gives us a quiet and sad look at the world of institutionalized
timidity we are heading towards with or without robots, intertwined with a
hilarious send-up of just how weÂ’re getting there." (read
the whole review
)
—Racheline Maltese, Books Correspondent for Gather.com, October 22, 2007
Volume 17. Making Love in Madrid: A Novella
Kimberly Todd Wade
Even as she talks, she is assessing his lack of composure, his evident ineffectualness in his slouch and dumbfounded expression…. “You see my dilemma. I find myself without a history, and I need someone to fill it in for me. Additionally, I will need some kind of personal quirk, because such things make for convincing fictions.” She pauses, and adds philosophically, “If the world really were populated by fictional characters we would none of us understand each other for our compelling eccentricities.”
With Making Love in Madrid, Kimberly Todd Wade makes her fictional debut. Anna Tambour, author of The Spotted Lily and MonterraÂ’s Deliciosa and Other Tales, describes the novella as “a fantasia of amnesia, of lives that need filling, of writers of every tense, of talent and dry lemons and melted cheese; of giggling and tangled sheets and denture adhesive, competition and tenderness, a bloodless bullfight, the power of a giant smile to diminish greatness—a modern mannerist story around a story.
Praise for Making Love in Madrid
"Making Love in Madrid is a lyrical metafictional piece[...]often quite beautiful[...]"
—Locus, May 2007
"[I]f you enjoy this story, it won’t be for the characters, it
will be for the affect. If I’d got around to reading the copy of
Ice by Anna Kavan that I’ve had sitting in my TBR pile for the past
couple of months, I suspect I’d be making a comparison with Wade’s
novella; as it is, the writer I’ve read most recently whose work was
called to mind by Making Love in Madrid is Zoran Zivkovic, most
particularly in the sense that the uncertain landscape and strange events
described have some meaning just beyond my grasp." (read
the whole review)
—Niall Harrison (editor of Vector), Torque Control, September 21, 2007
Volume 18. Of Love and Other Monsters: A Novella
Vandana
Singh
a Locus-recommended book
At age seventeen, Arun, the narrator of Of Love and Other Monsters, emerges from a fire, his memories and identity vanished with the flames. He finds a refuge and home with Janani and soon discovers his unique ability to sense and manipulate the minds of others around him. Intimately connected yet isolated by this insight, he inhabits a dangerous place outside conventional boundaries: man/woman, mind/body. When someone who shares his ability, Rahul Moghe, arrives on his doorstep, he senses a power beyond any he has known. Janani warns of the grave danger posed by Rahul and sends Arun on his journey, fleeing the one person who may have answers to the mystery of his past...
Of Love and Other Monsters will be included in Gardner Dozois' next The Year's Best Science Fiction.
"Singh writes with a beautiful clarity. Each character is sharply drawn,
and the inevitability of the story pulls the reader headlong with
it—helped by a compelling sparseness of prose. Nothing unneeded is
written, leaving Of Love and Other Monsters with an incredible tightness
that is rarely seen even in the best of todayÂ’s modern short fiction. Of
Love and Other Monsters is an engrossing, though somewhat melancholy,
story. The reader is quickly carried away by ArunÂ’s story and journey, and
Arun is a character who subtly challenges our perceptions of what it means
to love and be loved. Singh also uses him to show us how we often harm
ourselves with our own limits. I certainly recommend this to any reader. It
is the best short fiction, and possibly the best fiction, I have read this
year." ( read
the whole review)
—
Michael Fay, The Fix, December 17, 2007
Volume 19. Aliens of the Heart: Short
Fiction
Carolyn Ives Gilman
Aliens of the Heart collects four stories of the heartland by Carolyn Ives Gilman. In these stories, Betty Lindstrom imagines leaving her husband in the town of Lost Road and turning east instead of west out of town and never coming back, but when she does drive west with her husband, alone with the prairie and the wind, she canÂ’t get home; Susan Abernathy undertakes to humanize Captain Groton, the alien charged with removing the residents of Okanoggan Falls, WI, with consequences she could not have imagined; Galena Pittman seeks to recover her lover, Thea, from the mountains of Montana, where she devotes herself to literally painting the landscape under the direction of the mysterious Dirigo; and the Conservator, charged with preserving the many layers of the map of the great river “on whose surface the past was written in cipher,” discovers that the relationship between map and landscape is more complicated than she had thought. “The Conservator” is original to the volume. “Frost Painting” and “Okanoggan Falls” appeared in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series.
"[These stories] are distinguished as feminist primarily in their
assumption that the stories of these (mostly small-town) women are worthy
enough to appeal to readers regardless of their own gender (or
geography). ItÂ’s a simple assumption on the surface, yet revolutionary in
its own way, and a powerful piece in this seriesÂ’ conversation." (read the whole
review)
—
Daniel Ausema, The Fix, December 19, 2007
Volume 20. Voices From Fairyland:
The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew,
and Sylvia Townsend Warner
Theodora Goss
In Voices in Fairyland, Theodora Goss offers four fascinating essays and several poems in conversation with the Coleridge, Mew, and Warner's poems. In her Introduction, Goss writes:
Coleridge, Mew, and Warner are only three examples of what I consider a broader phenomenon, the rest of the ice that must be present, underwater, when we see icebergs floating on a northern sea. That underwater ice is the tradition of women writing fantastical poetry. I will show you what I mean by focusing on one theme. Over and over again, women have written about witches. In "Witch-Wife," Edna St. Vincent Millay describes a woman whose "voice is a string of coloured beads, / Or steps leading into the sea" who "was not made for any man," not even the narrator, to whom she is married. The witch in Anne Sexton's "Her Kind" is fiercer and stronger. She tells us,I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
She creates a domestic space for herself in a place that is decidedly undomestic, that is wild, feeding worms and elves rather than the children that the women who are not witches presumably feed. "A woman like that is misunderstood," Sexton tell us, and we can certainly understand why, if her voice is a string of colored beads or those mysterious steps. She must speak differently, in a language that we cannot quite understand. And here is Emily Dickinson:
Witchcraft was hung, in History,Whatever you do, she implies, you cannot eradicate witchcraft. It is part of the world around us, always present. And we—History and Emily Dickinson—need witchcraft. I wonder what they need it for exactly, but Emily Dickinson, always her enigmatic self, does not tell us.
But History and I
Find all the Witchcraft that we need
Around us, every Day—
Volume 21. My Death: A Novella
Lisa Tuttle
...all at once, as if another light had been switched on, I saw the hidden picture. Within the contours of the island was a woman. A woman, naked, on her back, her knees up and legs splayed open, her face hidden by a forearm flung across it and by the long hair - greenish, grayish - that flowed around her like the sea.
The center of the painting, what drew the eye and commanded the attention, was the woman's vulva: all the life of the painting was concentrated there. A slash of pink, startling against the mossy greens and browns, seemed to touch a nerve in my own groin.
In this creepy but delicious novella, an early twenty-first-century novelist decides to write the biography of Helen Ralston, an all-but-forgotten twentieth-century novelist she has long admired. In the late 1920s, Helen studied painting with W.E. Logan. Logan painted her as Circe, and Helen painted herself as an island titled My Death. When they parted for good, both of them turned to writing. Willy became famous; Helen did not. The narrator of My Death intends to do something about that. But first she must solve the mystery of Helen's relationship with Willy and why Helen titled her self-portrait My Death.
Volume 22. De Secretis Mulierum: A Novella
L. Timmel Duchamp
If countless numbers of people throughout history have wished for an early menopause, probably no one wished more devoutly for it than Thomas Aquinas. No doubt he literally prayed for it morning, noon, and night. A picture comes to mind of him kneeling in his cell, pleading with the Virgin for release from a burden even Job hadn't been forced to bear.According to the Pentagon-owned-and-operated Past-Scan Device, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Aquinas were both women in drag. Jane Pendler's advisor says that's impossible, that the technology must be bogus, and pulls the plug on Jane's dissertation research on Leonardo. What a feminist graduate student to do? What else, but do the research behind her advisor's back, of course…
"A masterful exploration of sexual identity and sexual
mastery …marvelously intricate…"
—Tangent (Summer 1995)
A Locus recommended novella for 1995, the year of its original publication.
Volume 23. Distances: A Novella
Vandana Singh
She was a rider like no other…. Floating in the amnion, she entered unmapped territory; she was a speck, a ship lost in vastness, a rider on waves of maxima and minima, an explorer of a space that, but for her, would remain only guessed at. She entered this mathematical country as an explorer would enter a new land: she looked for singularities, skated over manifolds, sketched out the abstract, mountainous terrain of bizarre mathematical functions; she sought branch points and branch cuts and hidden territories bearing algebraic surprises. She took the esoteric world of the sthanas and made it her reality
Distances, a story of science, art, and deception, is fascinating far-future science fiction, set in a far-future desert city. For Anasuya, mathematics was experiential, a sixth sense that bared before her the harmonies, natural and artificial, that formed the sub-text of the world. So when mathematicians from the planet Tirana, 18-light-years-distant, ask Anasuya's help in solving a series of equations, she finds the new geometrical space they present her with intriguing. But as she explores the new space, she soon comes to suspect that it represents an actual physical system, and that the equations she is being asked to solve have a significance the Tiranis are concealing
Vandana Singh's short fiction has appeared in the Polyphony series, Interfictions, So Long Been Dreaming, Strange Horizons, and The Third Alternative. She has been short-listed for the BSFA and Parallax awards and is the author of the ALA Notable Book for Children, Younguncle Comes to Town (Viking 2006). Her novella Of Love and Other Monsters was Volume 18 in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series. Though she was born and raised in India, she now lives in Boston, where she teaches college physics.
Volume 24. Three Observations and a
Dialogue: Round and About SF
Sylvia Kelso
After WisCon 20, Sylvia Kelso engaged Lois McMaster Bujold in a rich, snappy correspondence about Bujold's Vorkosigan novels. "You ... remark that '[my] post-modern despair is not [your] emergency' over the failure of feminism to transform SF," she wrote to Bujold. "My postmodern despair OUGHT to be your emergency, buen'amiga, because one of the reasons you are being ignored is that ... you don't fit the male canon either in the community or the critical industry; so unless you catch their eyes with a sand-blaster like The Left Hand of Darkness, the male academics are also gonna find you invisible..."
That correspondence became "Letterspace: In the Chinks Between Published Fiction and Published Criticism," which is published here. Also included are "Third Person Peculiar: Reading between Academic and SF-Community Positions in (Feminist) Sf"," a critical essay discussing the intricacies of an Australian feminist scholar writing about science fiction; "Tales of Earth: Terraforming in Recent Women's Sf"," which considers colonialism in science fiction by women; and "Loud Achievements: Lois McMaster Bujold's Science Fiction through 1997," which closely examines Bujold's Vorkosigan novels.
Volume 25. The Buonarotti Quartet
Gwyneth Jones
The man who'd given his handle as Drummer raised heavy eyes and spoke, sonorous as a prophet, from out of a full black beard. "We will be ordered to the transit chamber as we were ordered to this room; or drugged and carried by robots in our sleep. We will lie down in the Buonarotti capsules, and a code-self, the complex pattern of each human body and soul, will be split into two like a cell dividing. The copies will be sent flying around the torus, at half-light speed. You will collide with yourself and cease utterly to exist at these co-ordinates of space-time. The body and soul in the capsule will be annihilated, and know GOD no longer."
In Gwyneth Jones's White Queen Trilogy, the reclusive female genius called Peenemunde Buonarotti invented the instantaneous transit device of the same name. In the four stories of The Buonaraotti Quartet, Gwyneth Jones shows us humans traveling via the device to alien worlds and situations. Some are diplomats, some are extreme travelers, some are prisoners. All are in for a rough, wild ride.