Queering SFF – So, This Thing I’ve Been Working On… Beyond Binary
On Dec. 8, I announced the table of contents for Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction — an anthology edited by yours-truly, to be published by Lethe Press in 2012. The book hasn’t exactly been a secret project or anythi...
Reading Joanna Russ: The Zanzibar Cat (1983)
Released within the same year as How to Suppress Women’s Writing, The Zanzibar Cat is Joanna Russ’s first short story collection. (I’m not counting The Adventures of Alyx because it forms a mosaic narrative and is a sort of book of its own; The Z...
Queering SFF Tidbit: Kathe Koja’s Under the Poppy Wins 2011 Gaylactic Spectrum Award for Best Novel
The results for the 2011 Gaylactic Spectrum Award have been announced for the winner and shortlist in the Best Novel category. The Best Short Fiction and Best Other Work categories are given every other year, whereas Best Novel is yearly; meaning 2012 ...
On Changing Reading Habits or Savoring the Experience
Having just finished reading the fantastic collection 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin (ed. Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin), I’ve started thinking about the ways in which my reading habits have changed over the years — mostly...
Bookended by Dragons: Somewhere Beneath Those Waves by Sarah Monette
Somewhere Beneath Those Waves is Sarah Monette’s first general short fiction collection, published by Prime Books, who also handled her collection of Kyle Murchison Booth stories The Bone Key in 2007 (discussed here). While there is one Booth story i...
The Past to the Present: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman
The Freedom Maze, out today from Small Beer Press and available here, is an eloquent and genuinely moving tale of real magic, stories, and the disjunction between Southern myth and Southern reality, circumscribed by time travel and complex trials of id...
Symphony of Science: “Onward to the Edge”
The Symphony of Science project has released their next and newest music video, “Onward to the Edge.” (Posts about the rest of the Symphony collected here.) This one is about space travel and the planetary system, featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bri...
Old and True: The Book of Ballads, Illustrated by Charles Vess
The Book of Ballads is a collection, published by Tor in 2004, of the Charles Vess comics put out by Green Man Press in the nineties, plus a few new additions. Written by authors most commonly engaged with fairy tales and the mythic, from Neil Gaiman t...
Reading Joanna Russ: How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983)
Joanna Russ’s first book of nonfiction is the inimitable How to Suppress Women’s Writing, published in 1983 by the University of Texas Press. While one other edition was released by The Women’s Press in the 1990s, the University of Texas has cont...
When MIT’s Technology Review Does Science Fiction
The MIT Technology Review recently released a special-edition issue focused on, as the cover says, “12 Visions of Tomorrow,” written by some of the top names in contemporary SF. The issue is labeled TRSF, costs $7.95, and can be ordered here.The ed...
Reading Joanna Russ — On Strike Against God (1980)
On Strike Against God: A Lesbian Love Story was a short realist novel — really more a novella than anything, as it barely tops out over one hundred pages — published by Out & Out Press in 1980, reprinted by The Crossing Press in 1985, and repri...
A Hard But Worthy Read: The Cold Commands by Richard K. Morgan
The Cold Commands, the second book in Richard K. Morgan’s ironically titled “A Land Fit for Heroes” series, follows the now-familiar trio of protagonists from 2008’s The Steel Remains — Ringil Eskiath, Egar the Dragonbane, and Archeth Indaman...
