The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet, Vandana Singh

This is a collection of short stories by the most remarkable Vandana Singh, whose work I am growing more and more in love with the more of it I read.

In these stories, Singh writes about apparently quite ordinary people – specifically, people who are often women and often Indian – who find themselves in strikingly unordinary situations and circumstances, or who suddenly feel distanced, alienated as it were, from what once seemed normal and familiar. Her gift for delineating character with subtlety, precision and sometimes gentle humour is in peak form here, enabling us to understand and identify with the rich humanity of her characters, and thus experience a universe much larger and richer than we normally encounter – learning greatly thereby.

As Singh notes in the essay that concludes the collection:

Speculative fiction is our chance to… find ourselves part of a larger whole; to step out of the claustrophobia of the exclusively human and discover joy, terror, wonder, and meaning, in the greater universe.

Singh sees another function for speculative fiction (beyond the simple fun of it all, which she also celebrates), one that is also at the heart of many of the stories in this collection:

Science fiction and fantasy posit other paths, alternative futures, different social arrangements as well as technologies, other ways that we could be. Before we do, we must dream.

I’d be hard pressed to pick a few favourites from this collection to talk about – they are all very, very good.

There’s an interesting review of The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet here.

Webs of Discord, by Jason Sizemore

Webs of Discord, a chapbook published by Apex Publications, is a satisfying collection of short stories by author and Apex publisher Jason Sizemore, in the fantasy and horror genres. In one way or another, the stories focus on love – love gone wrong, love denied, love distorted, even a little bit of love triumphant – in ways that are interesting and unusual. Most of these short stories are solid offerings in the vein of horror, and deliver webs of discord indeed; particularly chilling is the story “Breaking Up is Hard to Do.” This deliberately unsettling mix is leavened with a delightful fantasy piece, “Milton, the Christmas Fairy,” the collection’s one unqualified happy ending.

I've been reading science fiction (and what was, in my youth, its upstart cousin, fantasy) for going on half a century now - the first book I can remember buying off the grocery store paperback carousel was James Schmitz's Agent of Vega (The PermaBooks 1962 edition - I can still see the cover in my mind), and odds are that was not the first science fiction book I'd read.

In that time, I've built and sold or given away at least a dozen complete libraries of SFF titles - my life was for many years an unsettled one. But now that I've become a home owner, and have many walls that can be lined with books, it's my ambition to recreate all the libraries I've owned - or at least, all the best parts of them.

So I've given my partner a long list of SFF books I want to own once more, and every once in a while he finds himself in a used bookstore and buys several of the titles off that list.

AS it happens, there's been some of these re-acquired books hanging around in the to-be-read pile, and this past week I decided it was time to read them all.


Double Star, Robert Heinlein

This has always been one of my favourite Heinlein novels - probably because of the combination of the craft of acting displayed by the main character and the plot focusing on political intrigue. To me, there's still something profoundly engaging - and yet, upon re-reading, profoundly disturbing - about this portrayal of how one person comes to surrender not only his future, but his identity, for a cause. It's an interesting mediation on the idea of personal sacrifice for the common good and the processes that lead one to commit to such sacrifices.

We see Lorenzo as a tragic hero, because Heinlein presents the cause he comes to champion as a just one. But one must also look at the process Lorenzo undergoes here - a traumatic separation from everyday life, enforced isolation from everything familiar, deep immersion in a specific political viewpoint, being surrounded with people who strongly espouse this viewpoint and stress the importance of the task he has been recruited for in such a problematical way... it's the same set of techniques used in cults, in military basic training camps, in fundamentalist madrasas, in all sorts of places where one breaks down personal identity and replaces it with devotion to a cause or an organisation.

And in the end, Lorenzo has vanished and the person he has become doesn't even think all that highly of who he once was, satisfied that the ends have more than justified the means.


Beyond This Horizon, Robert Heinlein

One of Heinlein's quirkiest and least focused novels, I've always thought. We have some of the classic and contradictory elements of a Heinlein future - societies where the libertarian idea of arming everyone and allowing private duels to settle personal conflicts co-exists with the profound degree of social control necessary for the acceptance of a world-wide genetic breeding program. We have an attempted revolution by Luddite-inspired neo-facists (complete with plans to eliminate the inferior races - in this case, people who have not been part of the government breeding program), a love story between a man who doesn't want to further his carefully designed genetic heritage and the woman chosen by the agents of the state as his ideal genetic counterpart, numerous paeans to rationality and the wonders of science, a quest for the truth behind paranormal ideas such as reincarnation and telepathy, and a seemingly socialist political and economic system in which a well-run centralised state produces higher and higher citizen living allowances and excess production that can be used for just about any hair-brained scheme that comes to mind, as long as it can be argued to be in the interests of science, the people, or something else noble and iconic.

It's fun to re-read, but I still have no clue, after all these years, of what Heinlein might have been trying to say on this novel. Maybe that no one ideology has a hard-and-fast hold on utopian ideas, or that no matter how utopic a civilisation my seem, there will always be people who aren't content - some who will want to destroy, and some who will want to grow in new directions? Who knows. And Heinlein isn't around to tell us.


A Case of Conscience, James Blish

Another classic that leaves me with unanswered questions, even after re-reading it again after so many years. The novel is in two parts. In the first part, a team of scientists from Earth evaluate Lithia, a newly discovered planet which is home to a technological but pre-space flight alien civilisation to determine what kind of relationship should exist between it and Earth. One of the scientists, a physicist, wants to turn the planet into a physics weapons lab because of its wealth of fissionable materials. Two others want to open it up for mutual trade. And the fourth, a Jesuit priest and biologist, has decided that it is a Satanic trap for the human conscience, a planet where all adults of the dominant species behave in the most moral of fashions even though they have no religion, no god, no revelation, no experience of sin and grace.

In the second part, the scientists return to Earth, carrying with the a gift - the carefully stored embryo of one of the Lithians. The alien grows rapidly to adulthood and, cut off from his culture, deliberately becomes a focal point for the frustrations and discontents of a vast underclass of human beings, sparking riots and threatening to create fractures in human society. Eventually he is taken prisoner and sent on his way back to Lithia. Meanwhile, the priest has come under severe criticism within the church because in his assessment of Lithia, he has fallen into the heresy of manicheanism, in granting Satan the ability to create of his own accord - an ability that must be reserved for God. However, the Pope himself suggests a way out - Satan can create illusion, which, once exorcised, will vanish. At the same time, the physicist has been given the go-ahead to create his weapons research lab on Lithia.

The climax leaves the reader with no resolution to this case of conscience. Through the offices of a convenient advance in technology, a group of scientists - including the conscience-tormented priest, watch Lithia in real time as they wait for the physicist to begin a dangerous experiment that one of the scientists on Earth has predicted will destroy the planet. As he watches, the priest decides that he must try to carry out the Pope's recommendation and begins his exorcism. The experiment, as feared, fails with devastating consequences.

Has God chosen to destroy Satan's illusion via the material tool of a scientific experiment gone awry? Or has the theological issue been a red herring all along, and the real sin here the way that a arrogant physicist has been given the opportunity to destroy an entire planet of sentient beings? Blish clearly wanted his readers to think about the interrelationships of science and religion, and the effect they have on society, for themselves.


Slan, A. E. Van Vogt

One of the classic stories about the emergence of a super race, their persecution by "ordinary" humans, and their struggle for survival and plans for and/or success in achieving benign control over all of humanity, mutant and otherwise, for the greater good of all. Scratch the surface and it's a particularly ugly justification for a fascist utopia, but at the same time, it's such a deep-seated nerdly wish fulfilment fantasy that, as a nerd myself, I can't help identifying with the orphaned slan Jommy Cross and his search for the secret slan organisation that, he believes, must exist, so that he can give them the benefit of his father's scientific discoveries in their goal of preparing to take over the world.

Fantasy is, after all, one of the places where we can imagine the things we would never want to really do.


Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

Ah yes. The classic anti-censorship novel, which interpretation Bradbury recently repudiated, insisting that it's all about how bad television is for you. Well, I won't deny that there's a profound critique of the ways in which North American society has, for quite some time now, been creating dumber and dumber forms of public entertainment (it's fascinating to compare the "families" the Montag's wife is so enthralled by with the most recent forms of entertainment to hit the public airwaves, the participatory reality show where viewers can influence what happens on the show), and the effects that this may be having on society.

But if censorship is control of what people are allowed to see, then this is clearly about censorship, and what happens to people in censored societies when they realise what is being kept from them.


October Country, Ray Bradbury

In re-reading this collection of short stories, I was reminded both of how good a writer of the short form Bradbury is, and of how truly grotesque and disturbing his vision could be. There is a great deal of death and decay in these stories - suitable for the season where the weather turns cold and living things die and many cultures have their festivals of the dead. Bradbury was a master of may genres, from science fiction to horror, and this is certainly a collection of some of his finest examples of the latter.

The Collected Short Fiction of C.J. Cherryh

C.J. Cherryh is known primarily as a long form writer – in a long career of writing mainly well-regarded novels, she has only published enough short fiction to fill one, admittedly thick, volume – and fully a third of those are related short stories from a themed short story collection originally published in 1981 as Sunfall, set in the cities of an unimaginably old Earth, where only those who cannot bear to leave their planetary home remain. The remaining stories bear publication dates ranging from 1979 to 2004 – occasional pieces scattered throughout the working life of a major writer of SFF, all different, and all interesting. It’s a good collection to own.

Mothers and Other Monsters, Maureen McHugh

Maureen McHugh is one of my favourite authors, who alas has not written nearly enough, due to health issues (this has happened to too many of the women whose work I enjoy reading). This collection of short stories by the author of China Mountain Zhang and Mission Child is a treat to be savoured. And I did.

McHugh’s stories, more often than not, are about people of little power or agency, people who at their core are not really all that unlike most of us, no matter how strange their circumstances may seem – people trying to find ways of surviving, getting by, getting through, doing what they can, managing, but not always successfully. They are often painful, often sad, but also often stories of small victories – which perhaps only seem victories to the person who achieves them.

Filter House, Nisi Shawl

Filter House is Nisi Shawl’s first book, a collection of short stories that all fit under the broad umbrella of speculative fiction, some leaning more toward science fiction, some toward fantasy, some toward magic realism, some toward the supernatural, all drawing on African/African-American experience and story. Shawl tends toward a literary voice, but I found all the stories in this collection accessible and immensely readable. Shawl looks fearlessly at the intersection of race, class and gender, and speaks from a post-colonial perspective that makes her work thought-provoking as well as entertaining.

I’m very much anticipating Shawl’s next published fiction, no matter what it is or when it arrives on the bookstore shelves.

This is the year I discovered Thomas King. King is a First Nations author and a professor of English and Theatre at Quelph University in Canada. He has been writing since the 1990s and has produced a number of novels and several collections of short stories, and in 2003 he was the first Native Canadian to deliver the Massey Lectures, which were published under the title The Truth about Stories, which I read earlier this year.

King has said that "Tragedy is my topic. Comedy is my strategy.” He writes about the Aboriginal experience in white North America, which certainly has many of the elements of tragedy, and at the same time, his work in the short stories I have read – from the volume A Short History of Indians in Canada - is so wisely and wittily funny even as it eviscerates the assumptions, attitudes, perceptions and actions of white North Americans toward First Nations and Aboriginal peoples that this white reader can only thank King for such a happy course of instruction, correction and illumination.

Reading the stories of King the author, and then reading the lectures of King the teacher on what story is and means and does in Aboriginal tradition, has been most rewarding, and I look forward to reading more works by this person who is so kind as to use his talent to make me laugh and think and learn.


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We So Seldom Look on Love, Barbara Gowdy

This collection of eight unsettling tales of life at the extremes of human existence, of love and longing and desire and damage, is not easy reading, but it is worthwhile reading. In these stories, the reader will meet people whose lives and circumstances, in lesser hands, would be tales of lurid sensationalism or gushing sentimentality. Instead, we meet these scarred and broken people head on, as real human being, with all their pain and all their potential, however warped by the experiences of living, for despair and desolation, joy and love.

I do not recommend reading all these stories at one sitting, but I do think that there’s a great deal to gain from reading them.

While I don’t often give specific recommendation, I think that anyone who enjoyed Jennifer Pelland’s collection Unwelcome Bodies would also find this volume of interest, and of course, the opposite would be true as well.

The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews, Joanna Russ

There are not enough words to express how much I enjoyed reading this collection, which is mostly reviews of science fiction novels spanning several decades. It didn’t matter if I’d actually read the book Russ was reviewing or not, the review was a delight and a source of thought in and of itself. What’s also delightful is the way the reviews, read in order, reveal the development of Russ’ thinking, about speculative literature, about literary criticism, about feminism, and about the interrelationship of all three in her own and other’s work.

And the (smallish) collection of essays and letters are another treasure trove of early feminist criticism and theory.

I could burble on incoherently for a while longer, or simply direct you to Sarah Monette’s review at Strange horizons, which is as glowing a comment on the collection as this is, but rather more coherent.

A must for those who think , as I do, that Russ is one of the (many) important feminist thinkers and science fiction writers.

Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman

There’s a thread of sorts that runs through a lot of Neil Gaiman’s work, and that thread has a lot to do with the concept of the interaction of dual or multiple realities – dream worlds, parallel worlds, shadow worlds, otherworlds, and afterworlds. It’s the sense that no matter where you are, there is something else going on just over there, or under the hill, or through the mirror, or some other place that you are just barely aware of, that would turn your understanding of your own world upside down or inside out if you ever really noticed it.

Something else that Gaiman pays a lot of attention to is storytelling as an act, as a frame, as a way of providing context or counterpoint. When he writes stories in the first person, they are often the stories of a conscious and self-conscious narrator, who knows he or she is telling a story and is aware of how it sounds, how it is shaped. Sometimes his protagonists are storytellers, or his stories draw on the words of other storytellers for settings or images.

One of the reasons to enjoy Fragile Things is that there are lots of stories that are perfect examples of what Gaiman can do with these two themes in his work – separately or together. Stories about people telling stories about ghosts, stories about writers trying to tell fantastic stories about autocars and bank mortgages in a world where daily life is profoundly gothic in nature, wonderful stories about the art of storytelling while looking through a glass, somewhat obscurely. Many, but not all of these stories have a distinct flavour of the supernatural or of horror, and there are a good many stories that qualify as ghost tales - explicit journeys into the otherworld.

And for the reader who enjoys watching writers play with the issues, ideas, characters, themes and worlds of other writers writing otherworlds, there are some particular pleasures here, as this collection includes such stories as “A Study in Emerald” – Gaiman’s truly magnificent imagining of how certain characters from the Holmesian tales of Arthur Conan Doyle would behave were they to find themselves in a mirror world where the Elder Gods of H.P. Lovecraft held sway – and “The Problem of Susan” – a story that asks the reader to consider the situation of Susan, the young woman that C.S. Lewis barred from the higher, deeper, inner Narnia (which is to say, Heaven) because she found lipstick and boys interesting.

Northwest of Earth
Jirel of Joiry

Catherine Lucille Moore, better known as C.L. Moore, was one of the few women regularly writing and getting published in the science fiction and fantasy genres during the great era of pulp fiction during the 30s and 40s. She wrote extensively, sometimes in collaboration with her husband, Henry Kuttner – their joint stories were often published under a pseudonyms, most notably Lawrence O’Donnell and Lewis Padgett .

In her solo writing, she created two of the greatest characters (in my not-so-humble opinion, of course) to grace the pages of the science fiction and fantasy pulps – Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry.

Northwest Smith is the quintessential mercenary, adventurer and rogue – willing to take on any job if the price is right, outside the law but grounded in his own sense of honour, smart, bold and not easily taken in, but with a certain weakness for women in distress, particularly if they are beautiful and exotic – and Northwest Smith’s worlds, where humans are newcomers, barely children among the ancient and often decadent alien races that have gone before, some of those women can be very exotic indeed.

But Northwest Smith, memorable creation that he is, was not all that different from the heroes of a good many pulp stories. To my mind, CL Moore’s best creation is the tough-as-nails, brawling warleader who makes no allowances for her gender, the unmatched warrior Jirel of Joiry. As tall and strong and as skilled with a sword as any man, Jirel was one of my earliest heroes – proud, fierce, competent, fully in command of the men who fight and if necessary die for her. Jirel was the kind of woman that no one else was writing, or would write again until a good 40 years later.

The Jirel of Joiry stories – most of them, anyway – have been available in a single volume for many years now, going in and out of print under a variety of titles, but never vanishing completely. The Northwest Smith stories have just been recently released after a hiatus of more than 50 years in a single volume containing a forward by C. J. Cherryh and a previously uncollected story, “Quest of the Starstone,” co-authored by Moore and Kuttner in which Moore’s two finest characters meet and fight side by side.

Naturally, I snapped up the new release of Northwest of Earth, and was most happy to spend several hours lost in the lush writing and fantastic tales of ancient and unknowable evils; this of course was more than enough of an excuse to pull my worn copy of Jirel of Joiry off the shelf and indulge myself further. They just don’t write like that any more – which is probably a good thing, because there is a thin line between gloriously extravagant and overblown when it comes to this style of prose. But Moore was one of the masters, and it’s good to have stories like “Shambleau” and “Black God’s Kiss” close at hand.

The Martian Chronicles
Something Wicked This Way Comes

I've been re-reading a lot of Ray Bradbury's work recently - mostly his collections of short stories, which are without question among the finest examples of the craft of the short form.

The Martian Chronicles, like several other of Bradbury's collections, seems to tell a story - overtly, about the human attempts to colonise Mars - but each story in and of itself speaks to elements of the human condition, from hope and joy to hate, suppression and fear. Re-reading the stories in this volume was like a master class in the art of distilling human existence in all its rich variety into a few pages full of words and images.

I was not as pleasantly occupied by my reading of Something Wicked This Way Comes. I don't remember reading this novel before, and I doubt that I will return to it as I have to his short stories or his classic novel Fahrenheit 451. Something Wicked This Way Comes feels like a potentially great short story drawn out to lengths that the material simply doesn't sustain. And in the drawing out, it accentuates one of the great flaws on Bradbury's work - the idea that only boys and men can have wonderful adventures and fight the great struggles against the dark. In most of his short stories, this unfortunate tendency is clear, but not generally expounded upon. Something Wicked This Way Comes is too full of observations about the nature of boys and men when confronted with the felicities and adversities of life, without any corresponding observations on what sorts of exciting and important things girls and women can do.

Ah, but those splendid short stories - that's what's worth remembering.

Unwelcome Bodies, Jennifer Pelland

I thought this was a great first-time collection of short stories from an up-and-coming writer of speculative fiction who has a truly unique way of looking at the world as it is and as it could be.

It’s also the first published book from a friend whose evolution as a writer I’ve been privileged to follow almost from the beginning. So yeah, I’m biased.

It’s also true that I have an abiding fondness for reading about the darkness in the human mind and soul, which explains a lot of things, including my interest in dystopic fiction and narratives about serial killers, and this is a collection representative of Pelland’s darker writing.

Because she’s good*, and she hits a lot of my buttons, I would have enjoyed these stories even if someone else had written them. They are for the most part dark, often uncomfortably so, and whether they are horror with an SFnal base or science fiction with a serious dose of what human beings find horrifying, they are original and thought-provoking, each and every one of them.

I can’t really pick out a couple of favourites to talk about. Many of the stories in this collection place the protagonist in a profoundly difficult, even nightmarish situation and then follow the story through to what H. P. Lovecraft might have called unspeakable ends – except that Pelland dares to speak them. Among the purist examples of this are the stories “Big Sister/Little Sister” and “The Call.”

There are dystopic visions galore, from the despair of “For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great”, a story about a future in which a new air-borne variety of AIDS comes to be seen as a gift that frees people from devastating isolation to the ecologically-based nightmares of “Flood” and “Songs of Lament” – visions given a profound reality by Pelland’s ability to distil all the horror of these damaged worlds into their singular expression in the lives of her protagonists. I’ll give a very special nod in this general category to the previously unpublished story “Brushstrokes,” dealing with forbidden love, forbidden thoughts and forbidden knowledge in a society that enforces its rigid class and caste laws with police state methods.

Then there are the – for me, at least – profoundly moving explorations of disability, both as a lived and as an observed state of existence in “The Last Stand of the Elephant Man” and “Captive Girl.”

There are stories that explore the ways in which even the highest and purest of ideals and philosophies can, under the right combination of pressures and personalities, drive the descent into terrible acts – “Immortal Sin” and “Firebird.”

I feel that I must point out that Pelland’s work is not all dark – in fact, one of the stories in this collection, “Last Bus,” is to my mind a very optimistic story in its own poignant way – although it’s also true that even her funniest work can contain some elements that some might consider disturbing (you’ll definitely know what I mean if you’ve read “Clone Barbecue” or “The Burning Bush”**). This collection was published by Apex, a publisher that specialises in dark speculative fiction, so naturally the short stories selected for this volume showcase that side of her writing. I hope her next collection will have some room for all the other shades of Pelland’s distinct vision.


*She’s already been a Nebula Award nominee for her short story “Captive Girl,” and I see many more nominations and awards in her future.

**Links to a number of stories available online can be found at the author’s website.

The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury

One of several re-reading projects I've been meaning to get around to is the short fiction of Ray Bradbury. This is the first collection I've gone back to, and after two, maybe even three decades since my last reading, it's amazing how many of these stories are ones I remember, and at the same time, ones that I get thrills and chills about all over again as if I'd never read them before.

It's a powerful collection, containing such stories as: "The Veldt" (children turn on their parents using the technology of a simulated playground), "The Other Foot" (the reaction of a Martian colony of black people driven off earth to the news that most of the remaining white people on earth have died in a world war and the survivors desperately need their help), "The Rocket Man" (a child and his mother deal with the danders faced by his father's career as a 'rocket man'), and "The Exiles" (what happens to the spirits of books and their creators when all the books are destroyed?), to mention just a few of the 18 classic short stories in this collection.

Bradbury's gift was to be able to write just enough, no more and no less, that each story was complete and full to the brim - nothing wasted, nothing missing - and to tell in this way a simple story that somehow had meaning and relevance far beyond the basic plot of the tale. A master storyteller.

Aqueduct Press is a small publisher specializing in feminist science fiction, and if one can be said to have a “favourite” publishing house, Aqueduct Press is mine. Founded by L. Timmel Duchamp, whose innovative feminist dystopic series “The Marq’ssan Cycle” I have been praising loudly for some time now, Aqueduct has made an effort to publish a broad range of works with a feminist perspective, and I must admit that so far, I want to own every volume that Aqueduct has published so far. Every once in a while, I treat myself and send in an order for a few more books from their catalogue, and the most recent of these treats (a Christmas present to myself) included two novellas and two collections of short stories.

Novellas

Of Love and Other Monsters, Vandana Singh

Singh begins with one of the classic situations for a journey of self-discovery; her protagonist, Arun, a young man has no memory of life before being rescued from a terrible fire, is also aware that he is different from other people in that he can he can in some way “feel” the minds of others, experience and appreciate them, as other people sense physical bodies: “I sensed the convoluted topography of each mind, its hills, valleys, areas of light and darkness, the whole animal mass trembling and shifting with emotional fluxes.” Arun’s journey touches on a number of themes: the quest for self-knowledge, a history, a past; the desire for relationship with someone for can see/perceive the world as you do, who can see you the same way you see them; the experience of being other, immigrant, alien in a world where some cannot abide the other; the nature of love when it is in fact the “meeting of two minds” that is most deeply desired, and how this affects questions of gender; and the process of discovering and coming to terms with limits and the existential isolation that is part of the human condition. Singh is too good a writer to give us a traditional happy ending, but she does give us a story of coming to terms with past, present and future, and with self.

The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding), L. Timmel Duchamp

Duchamp has already demonstrated in the very difficult second volume of her Marq’ssan Cycle, Renegade, her ability to unflinchingly hold up before our eyes the most naked of power dynamics, the processes of torture and brainwashing, and show us how this horrifying spectacle is in many ways a condensation of so many other kinds of relationships based on power and submission, enforcement of conformity, creation and maintenance of systems of oppression that are masked as “they way things are.” In this novella, Duchamp again forces us to look at the way in which a society that is in its essence based on conformity and unquestioned acceptance of hardened institutional structures of power reveals its moral bankruptcy in its treatment of the non-conformist, the questioner, the rebel. Set in a futuristic prison where those society rejects “pay for their crimes” by being experimental subjects and organ donors (and indeed, let’s be honest here, just how “futuristic” is this, really?), The Red Rose Rages (Bleeding) is a powerful examination of the methods used by a conformist society to reform, punish, and ultimately destroy those who would question its authority.


Short Story Collections

Love’s Body, Dancing in Time, L. Timmel Duchamp

The five stories in this volume can certainly all be said to be about love, among other things. Love and sacrifice, love and secrecy, love and forbidden knowledge, love and devotion to the voice of the divine, love and regret, love and passion, love and remorse, love and risk, love and loss, love and vision, love between being and love of art, god, tradition… love in a great many contexts, places and times. In different ways, I loved all five stories: “Dancing at the Edge,” “The Gift,” “The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi,” “Lord Enoch’s Revels,” and “The Heloise Archive.”

The Travelling Tide, Rosaleen Love

The seven stories in this collection by Australian writer Rosaleen Love are all, in different ways, influenced by Love’s background as a teacher of the history and philosophy of ideas, and a science writer with a particular interest in the geology of Australia and the indigenous lifeforms of the seas surrounding it. From a tale told in email of “cousin Bridie’s” search for the roots of Southern American music, to a very feminist look at Alexander the Great and his little-known wife Roxanne, to stories of giants transformed, to an appreciation of the songs of a coral reef, to losses and resurgences of friends and geological eras in water, earth and stone, and more, Love brings together the sense of the long stretch of time in which ideas and landscapes change, billow and recede like the tides, and the vastness of seas and continents and structures of thought and tradition.

Strange Horizons has an excellent review of this collection by Lesley Hall here.

Some brief comments on several collections of short stories I’ve read this year, but some very talents authors – some of whom I’ve been reading for years, and some of whom I have only discovered this year but have come to appreciate greatly.

Dangerous Space, Kelley Eskridge

This was my introduction to Eskridge’s work, and I was very impressed. Her explorations of the fluidity of identity, gender and sexuality are powerful and harken back, for me, to some of the best of Samuel Delany’s work. There has been much mention by reviewers of the three stories that feature the ungendered character Mars, but while Mars is perhaps the flashpoint of discussion about these issues for many, most of the stories in this collection place their characters in the “dangerous space” that lies outside, or perhaps in between, the safe definitions society would force upon us all. In some stories, the use of settings where social roles and personal actions are highly regulated (an asylum, a fascist state) highlight the sense that anyone can find themselves in a dangerous state when we move away from any imposed norm.


Bloodchild and Other Stories, Octavia Butler

It still seems unreal to me to think that we shall read no more from Octavia Butler. I’ve long been an admirer of her novels, but only this year did I finally read this collection of her few short stories. Most science fiction readers will be acquainted, with the three strongest stories here – “Bloodchild,” “Speech sounds,” and “The Evening and the Morning and the Night.” In addition, there are two lesser known stories and two essays on her craft by Butler. It is a good thing to have all of her published stories together in one place on my shelf. It is a sad thing that there are so few. It is a great loss that there will be no more.


The Chains that You Refuse, Elizabeth Bear

It is difficult from me to think that before this year I had never read anything by Elizabeth Bear. In just a few months, she has become one of my (admittedly many) favourite writers, someone whose latest offering I would buy unhesitatingly without even reading a review or a blurb to see what it was about. This collection was the second book I read by her, and the diversity of ideas, combined with her sure sense of the right style for each, made a strong impression. If there was an underlying theme to the collection, it was making choices that challenge boundaries, subvert expectations, resist demands – as the title says, refusing chains.


Mother Aegypt and Other Stories, Kage Baker

I acquired this book specifically because I had run into a great deal of positive comment about Kage Baker, and decided to introduce myself to her work through a collection of her short stories. The title story of this collection, which captured my imagination immediately, is an original novella set in Baker’s Company series, which I am currently devouring with great joy. Several other stories are apparently set in the universe of another of her novels, The Anvil of the World, which I have not yet read, although I intend to remedy that as soon as I may. I also enjoyed the stand-alone stories in the collection. Baker has a gift for telling what seems to be a simple tale, about something not all that earth-shattering, which turns out to be far more significant than one would at first have believed. The delayed punch effect. I like it.


What Ho, Magic! and Relative Magic, Tanya Huff

Why yes, I am trying to acquire every collection of Huff’s stories. How clever of you to notice how many of them have been on this year’s reading list. Why? Because Huff writes stories that run the gamut of styles and emotions, from laugh-out-loud pun-laden comedy to the most serious and heroic of epic fantasy with everything in between. Reading her work makes me feel good. Do I need another reason?

With Her Body, Nicola Griffith

While reading and contemplating this collection of short stories I felt a certain resonance with Nicola Griffith, even though I know little of her other than a few biographical snippets, and what any reader knows of a writer through her work. But it’s that particular area of resonance that makes the three stories in this collection speak to me so strongly.

Like Griffith, I am a woman who deals with a chronic and debilitating disability; my body – which, as a woman in this society is supposed to be the site of my power, my function, my essence – is often for me a site of limitation, frustration, and failure.

This contradiction which is most pertinent to my own situation is most clearly expressed in the second of these three stories, “Song of Bullfrogs, Cry of Geese,” but questions of the body, and most particularly the female body – her body – how it moves, what it senses, how it loves and hurts, gives birth, changes, manifests and loses power, strives to exceed its limitations – are central to all three stories.

These stories are also and very specifically, about women who love other women, her body to her body, and this is something else that is important to explore – women, embodied but not for men but for women.

These stories, written about women acting with their bodies, by a women conscious of her body, had in them many, many things that as I read them, I felt in my body. Nadia dancing with light and sound, Molly crawling through pain to survival, Cleis running wild – each one living intensely with her body.

Ordinary People, Eleanor Arnason

Ordinary People is a collection of six of Arnason’s short stories, one poem and a speech made as Guest of Honor at the 2004 WisCon. The collection begins with the poem “The land of Everyday People,” dedicated to John Lennon. I think he would have liked it. I know I did. An everyday hero is something to be.

And the stories in this collection are indeed about ordinary people going about their lives. They love, they work, they deal with family issues and concerns with their emotions, and hopes and discontents. Three of the stories feature stories and legends of the Hwarhath, the non-human race explored more extensively in Arnason's novel Ring of Swords, and it is, as always, a delight to learn more about this complex culture Arnason has created.

Included in this collection is the wonderful short story “The Grammarian’s Five Daughters” in which the nature and uses of the various parts of speech – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions – illuminate some very important truths about language and life, and many fairy tale clichés are gently but firmly put in their place.

Closing the collection is the transcript of a speech, “Writing Science Fiction during the Third World War.” Arnason raises for consideration a number of observations about war, globalisation, nation states, and resistance. In the midst of her comments, she has this to say about science fiction today:

We are living in an age of revolution and a science fiction disaster novel. No, we are living in several science fiction disaster novels at once. The stakes are high. Human civilisation may be at risk. The solutions are going to require science and technology, as well as social and political struggle.

What are we – as science fiction readers and writers – doing about this? Historically, science fiction has been about big problems, use and misuse of technology, the broads sweep of history, and every kind of change. Historically, it has been a cautionary and visionary art form. Are we continuing this tradition? Are we writing books that accurately reflect our current amazing and horrifying age? Are we talking about the kind of future we want to see and how to create it?

Or are we, in the immoral words of the preacher in Blazing Saddles, just jerking off?

Arnason is, I think, one of our great science fiction writers, to be spoken of in the same breath as Ursula LeGuin. If you have not yet encountered her work, this is an excellent volume to begin with. (Available through Aqueduct Press)

Over the past few months, I’ve read a number of short story anthologies. I seem to go through phases with respect to reading anthologies. Last year, I read only two multi-author short story collections and two single-author collections.

Black Swan, White Raven, (eds.) Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
Crossroads, (ed.) Mercedes Lackey

Consider Her Ways and Others, John Wyndham
Dressing for the Carnival, Carol Shields

So far this year, I’ve read nine multi-author short story collections (two of which – the James Tiptree Award anthologies – I have written about already) and six single-author collections (most of which I’ve discussed earlier in this journal).

Sex, the Future and Chocolate Chip Cookies: the James Tiptree Award Anthology Vol I, (eds.) Fowler, Murphy, Nothin, Smith
The James Tiptree Award Anthology Vol II, (eds.) Fowler, Murphy, Nothin, Smith
Women of War, (eds.) Tanya Huff and Alexander Potter
Aegri Somnia, (eds.) Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth
The Doom of Camelot, (ed.) James Lowder)
Glorifying Terrorism, (ed.) Farah Mendlesohn
So Long Been Dreaming: Post Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, (eds.) Nalo Hopkinson, Uppinder Mehan
Tales from the Black Dog: A Wyrdsmiths Chapbook, (ed.) William G. Henry
The New Wyrd: A Wyrdsmiths Anthology, (ed.) William G. Henry

Stealing Magic, Tanya Huff
Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree Jr.
Meet Me at Infinity, James Tiptree Jr
Boy in the Middle, Patrick Califia
Ordinary People, Eleanor Arnason
Bloodchild, Octavia Butler

I’m not going to discuss any particular anthologies at length here, because many of these I’ve already written about elsewhere, and the remainder I will write up sooner or later. I just wanted to talk about the short story anthology in general and my relationship to it.

I tend, overall, to prefer novels to short stories. I think part of it may be that I read very quickly – short stories, no matter how wonderful, are, well, short. I mostly read fiction to be deeply engaged, swept away, taken under the waters of creative vision and held there until I can’t endure the richness of the thoughts and images in my blood and have to come up and breathe the thinner air of reality. Novels do that better than short stories.

But short stories are often the faerie lights along the road that lure you toward the heady realms that are deeper in, further up. They intrigue, seduce, lure the reader toward the vast realms that await, often at the same time that they shine, perfect creations in their own right, short but intense experiences that leave haunting afterimages in the mind.

Anthologies serve a number of excellent purposes. They can introduce the reader to a new author – and many of the anthologies I’ve read this year have done just that. Best-of collections, anthologies set in a shared world, collections assembled – as in the two Wyrdsmiths collections on my list – by a group of writers creating a showcase for their work, are all great ways for me of finding new and interesting voices. I confess that I’m more likely to buy one of these if there’s at least one story by someone I know and enjoy – but the one known quality, so to speak, is usually enough for me to jump in and see what other, hitherto undiscovered treasures may be found.

Single author collections, especially from a favourite writer, can be a delightful change of pace, a smorgasbord of varied tastes and tones from someone you already know and appreciate. I’ve read a fair number of these this year, all from writers on my (admittedly large) list of favourite authors.

The kind of anthology I tend to like the most, however, is the one built around a theme, and there are a few of those in this year’s reading so far. It is fascinating to see how different authors approach a basic concept, to be required by the multiplicity of images and voices and paths and conclusions presented to examine that concept in greater detail, and broader scope. Which is one of the reasons that I think that Glorifying Terrorism – an anthology created in response to a recently enacted British anti-terrorism law that makes it a crime to “glorify terrorism,” whatever that means – may be one of the most important anthologies of the year. But more on that in a post devoted to that particular book.

Sometimes, in the midst of reading those all-encompassing novels I enjoy so much, I forget that less can be more, at the right place and time. It’s been a pleasure remembering that this year.

Boy in the Middle – Patrick Califia

I’m very picky about my porn. I prefer stories to pictures, but they have to be well-written, with interesting characters and scenarios. I like my porn kinky, and I don’t much care what genders are involved, as long as the story draws me in rather than leaves me outside looking.

Patrick Califia’s work does all that for me. Califia’s own sexual journey has given him a broad perspective on genders, orientations, kink, leather, all the delicious flavours and smells, touches, sights and sounds of desire, and you’ll find all of them in the stories collected in Boy in the Middle. As Califia says in the introduction to this feast of pansexuality:

So here is a book that celebrates several forms of passion. It is diverse, perverse, and bold. Not all of the sex within these pages is same-sex, but it is all queer.

If this sounds like your cup of tea, then I can promise you hours of reading pleasure.

James Tiptree Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips

I remember when James Tiptree Jr burst onto the SF scene as a writer of absolutely amazing, mind-bending, gob-smacking short stories. There was no question that he was one of the finest SF writers of his time, possibly of all time. I remember when he became known as she - as two shes, actually, since Alice Sheldon was discovered to be writing as Raccona Sheldon as well. I don't actually remember being all that astonished, the way many others were. Maybe I've forgotten, maybe I didn't really care at the time whether a man or a woman had written those wonderful stories. I remember being shocked and saddened when she died, at the thought of no more stories like that - although I had, sort of, noticed that there had been less and less Tiptree since Tiptree became Sheldon, too.

And now Julie Phillips has written a much welcomed biography of the person who was Alice Bradley Sheldon and became Tiptree and Raccoona. I felt a strong sense of connection with Alice/Alli/Tip as I read this book. Partly it's the skill of the author, and partly it's the elements of brother/sister/outsiderhood that bring most SF people, writers and fans, together in the end. Plus, I really understand what it's like to grow up female in the shadow of an overpowering and highly accomplished mother, especially if you have some gifts of your own but no confidence in them.

I found the unfolding of Sheldon's life as a writer compelling, the exploration of her not-very ordinary life as a woman of her times quite fascinating, and the examination of her sexuality, and her awareness (or not) of her sexuality, both intriguing and sad. Again, I have some idea of what it's like to spend time wandering the the ambiguous waters of not-being-straight at a time when there's not a lot of information available about what that is, or means (and fortunately, I managed to work out what I am, which Sheldon never really did, it seems).

The source material for this book is rich, and the interpretation is penetrating, insightful, caring and respectful. The selections from Tiptree/Sheldon's correspondence with other writers of SF, including Joanna Russ and Ursula K. LeGuin, make one long desperately for a collected edition of her letters.

If you read SF, if you know Tiptree, this book will have something for you.


Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree Jr.
Meet Me at Infinity: The Uncollected Tiptree, James Tiptree Jr.

And of course, having read the bio, I had to go back again and read her. My two choices, very clever ones, I thought, were Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, which is a collection of many of her finest stories, under both of her writing names, and Meet Me at Infinity, a posthumous collection of previously unpublished or uncollected stories and essays. If you want a survey course on Tiptree, this fills the bill.

If you haven't read Tiptree, go out and read Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, as soon as you can. If you know her work well, but haven't read Meet Me at Infinity, I think you'll enjoy it getting to know her in some different lights and places.

And now for Part 2 of the omnibus thumbnail reviews of recently-read sff.


The Temple and the Crown - Katherine Kurtz & Deborah Turner Harris

Kurtz and Harris write wonderful alternate history occult fantasies, drawing to some degree on Templar mythology with (in the Adept series) a large splash of Blavatsky et al. The is actually the second of two alternate history books they’ve written in which survivors of the discredited Templar Order place their abilities in battle, both mundane and arcane, at the service of Robert the Bruce in his struggle to free Scotland. I’ve not read the first book, but this one was lots of good fun, assuming you enjoy reading about Templar occultists fighting for the Scottish throne against the villainous Sassenach.


Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner

I am kicking myself for only now having read my first book by Ellen Kushner. Swordfights, politics, intrigues, long-lost heirs to ancient noble houses, and wonderfully gay heroes – good reading and wildly entertaining.


Crossroads - Mercedes Lackey
The Valdemar Companion
Sanctuary

I have discussed my weakness for Mercedes Lackey’s books in other entries. Crossroads is another Valdemar anthology, and includes stories written by a number of authors including Judith Tarr, Tanya Huff and Lackey herself. Much fun. The Valdemar Companion is of course a reference work for those whose memories can’t keep track of all of the characters of all of the Velgarth stories, but it also has some fun articles and new material written by Lackey herself. Definitely for fen.

Sanctuary is the third book in Lackey’s new series about dragon-riding pseudo-Egyptians, and it continues the series well. The evil magicians are now in control of both Upper and Lower Egypt, er, the lands of Tia and Alta, and the remaining dragon riders, er, Jousters, of both countries are hiding out in the desert protected by Bedouins, er, whatever she’s calling them instead. We’re all set up for the fourth and final book of the series, in which young Kiron, the dragon-boy with a Great Destiny, leads his valiant army of free dragon-riders to the rescue and restores truth, justice and goodness to the Two Lands. And I’ll just lap it up once it’s out in paperback. ;-)


A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L’Engle
A Wind in the Door
A Swiftly Tilting Planet

I confess, I had never read Madeleine L’Engle’s oft-recommended Time quartet until this year. Now I’ve read the first three books and have been properly charmed by her writing, which, while somewhat quaint and perhaps just a shade too overtly religious at times (much like C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books, which one loves, if one does, perhaps as much because of as in spite of these things), are indeed delightful. I fully intend to read at least the rest of the Murray-O’Keefe (Kairos) books, which continue the adventures of the family from Wrinkle in Time and I may try the Austin (Chronos) books as well, although since they are generally described as being more realistic than the Kairos books, I may not enjoy them as much.


The Dragon Prince Trilogy - Melanie Rawn
Dragon Prince
The Star Scroll

I read Rawn’s two interlocking trilogies, The Dragon Prince and Dragon Star, when they were first written back in the late 80s and early 90s, so these two books go in the list of re-reads. I deeply enjoyed both trilogies, at least in part because of the complicated and interwoven political manoeuvrings of both secular and esoteric power bases. Like many others, I regret that real-life difficulties have so far prevented her from completing her Exiles trilogy, and continue to hope that someday The Captal’s Tower will appear. In the meantime, I can always re-read the Dragon trilogies again.


Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J K Rowling

Well, I’m ready for the final book now. I surely hope that Rowling has a finale that’s big enough and strong enough to carry the weight of all these years of building expectations. But whatever happens to Harry, Snape has to be one of the great literary love to hate, hate to love characters.


The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart
The Wicked Day

More re-reads! I was going to wait until I had the full set in hand again, but there I was one afternoon, really craving some good old Arthurian historical fantasy, and there the two books were, and I said to myself, “I know what’s in The Crystal Cave and The Hollow Hills, I can re-read them separately once I pick them up.” So I read what I had to hand, and it was indeed fun to relive some of the earlier books of the popular Arthurian lit explosion of the 20th century.


The King’s Peace - Jo Walton

This is the first volume of Walton’s alternate history based on the Arthurian legend, and it looks to be the beginning of a worthy addition to the genre. I am, of course, delighted with the fact that the tale is set in a world where there is a good deal of gender equity and that the POV character (who appears to be fulfilling the Lancelot/Bedwyr function, at least so far) is a woman. A good historical fantasy read in general, and a treat for fans of the Arthurian material.


Empire of Bones - Liz Williams

Another new author (to me, anyway) and another novel I enjoyed very much. An original take on the classic star-seeding idea, with a well-realised alien culture, a non-Anglo protagonist and earth-based setting, and (minor but enjoyable to me) an honest look at issues of teleporter technology. I also liked the fact that the story line dealt with issues of disability and medical care. Worth reading.


Consider Her Ways and Others - John Wyndham

Another of my classic re-reads. Some thought-provoking stories, including the dystopic title story. I’ve always had problems with “Consider her Ways,” and the years haven’t changed that. The analysis of the role of romantic love in the social control of women remains solid after all these years, but Wyndham’s insectoid vision of sexless worker drones and brainless mothers in an all-female future makes for a terrifying alternative. I don’t believe that Wyndham lacked the ability to imagine a third alternative, so I must assume that this is some kind of cautionary tale to feminists, to be careful not to (in a deliberately maternalist image) throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Dressing Up for the Carnival - a collection of short stories by Carol Shields

I'm not sure why I've never read Shields before. It was a mistake, one I shal have to rectify, now that I've actually read something she's written.

Shields writes prose stories the way Mary Pratt paints. Perfectly rendered visions of everyday life, so clear and realistic that they become magical in their realism.

Shields uses her words, first to give us the outer image of her subjects, and then to let us have a further, perfect vision of their souls, who they are when they are not dressed up for the show.

I will be reading more of Carol Shields's work now. That's the good thing about books - if you miss them the first time, they're still there waiting for you to discover them when the time is right.