From LISTSERV@listserv.uic.edu Fri Aug 25 10:30:58 2000 Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 12:29:02 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at University of Illinois at Chicago (1.8d)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0003E" ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 14:13:42 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Nomination Period Opened MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Once again it is time to select the books to discuss in the BDG in the next months. Indeed, we are overdue. That's why we will have a break of one month in May. I invite you to nominate books from now on until Wednesday, 5 April (incl.). I will handle the nominations and continuously update the nomination webpage (see http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/bdg_nom_0400.htm ). Next Thursday I will post the final nomination list and then there'll be one week in which you can send in your votes. Terri Wakefield will be in charge of the votes. I recommend that newcomers look up the selection procedure, old nomination list, the archives and the purpose of the BDG at the BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/index.html But most on the list know the whole process by now. Nonetheless I want to point out the most important rules for nomination here: Book can be nominated that fulfill the following criteria: - speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc.) - feminist (loose definition, nominators do _not_ have to have read the book already, it is enough if the story outline, reviews, or general reputation indicate that the book might be of interest from a feminist perspective) - currently available in the US (in English ;-) ) as mass market or trade paperback. Nominated books can be novels, collections and anthologies. If you nominate a collection or an anthology please specify which stories in particular you think the group should discuss (especially if it's a large one). Each list member can nominate one book. Please confirm the availability of any title before nominating it by contacting Maryelizabeth at Mysterious Galaxy (http://www.mystgalaxy.com/), by looking it up on Amazon.com or by enquiring at a near-by bookstore. With the nomination members should provide the following information: - author - title - publisher - list price - ISBN For example: Nalo Hopkinson: Brown Girl in the Ring. (July 1998). Warner Books; ISBN: 0446674338, List Price: $12.99 Nominations without this information are returned to the nominator. If somebody has for any reason difficulties confirming availability (e.g. non-US residents without full internet access) I am very ready to help them (please contact me off-list). Especially for the newcomers I want to stress: The BDG is one (and only one) feature of the feministsf-lit. It's purpose is to focus discussion on a particular book at a particular time. Other books can be discussed in parallel to the BDG, of course, and past and future BDG books can be discussed at any time on the list. The only difference to a 'normal' list discussion is that in BDG messages spoilers (for the BDG book under discussion) have not to be pointed out (the 'BDG' in the subject line is the actual spoiler warning). Up-coming BDG book (the last selected so far): April 3 Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 15:30:37 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Nomination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Our January BDG book has raised my interest in fairy-tales and especially in retellings of fairy-tales. So, when I went through the Tiptree winners and short lists to find a book to nominate the following book finally won out with me (I found several other books that sound wonderful and that are out in paperback now). Accordingly I nominate Kissing the Witch : Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue Harpercollins Juvenile Books; ISBN: 0064407721 ; List Price: $11.00, Paperback - 240 pages, Reprint edition (May 1999) My story selection from this collection are all 13 stories as (1) they are apparently interwoven, and (2) 240 pages are not longer than other novels (160 pages in the hardcover edition). This collection was short-listed for the 1997 Tiptree Award. The judges commented on it as follows: (see http://www.tiptree.org//1997/short.html) "Like Angela Carter and A.S. Byatt before her, Emma Donoghue puts a distaff spin on traditional fairy tales. But Donoghue doesn't deconstruct Perrault and the Brothers Grimm so much as she reconstructs them in a series of interlocking stories, letting the heroine of one tale grow into the villainess of the next, who then becomes the benign crone of the next, and so on. Her stories are ribald and often harsh in their assessments of male/female relations, and damning of the ways in which women--in fairy tales and real life--too often give in to what seems to be a preordained fate, rather than struggling for independence. Donoghue's tales also have a bracingly, and unapologetic, gynocentrism: in *her book*, it's the witch who gets the girl, not the prince. And Kissing the Witch makes a nice companion piece to Kelly Link's revisionist "Travels With The Snow Queen." [Elizabeth Hand]" "Kissing the Witch took my normal expectations of fairy tales, un- normal as they are, and shook them around again. The writing was beautiful. [Terry Garey] " I know of 4 (favourable) reviews: SF Site Review by Glen Engel-Cox at http://www.sfsite.com/05a/kiss32.htm Quote: "In her new book, Kissing the Witch, she incorporates the plot and themes of "Cinderella," "Hansel and Gretel," and "The Little Mermaid," among many, and interconnects them into an ongoing thread of causal connections and relationships. Kissing the Witch is not quite a novel, for it does not follow any one character or place, and yet it is not quite a short story collection, although it is broken up into sections labelled like "The Tale of the Handkerchief." Between each tale is a dream-like sequence, in which one character of the previous tale asks a question of another, which leads to the next tale. Like an ever-flowing river, the tales then drift by, separate yet connected. Sometimes a tale does not truly seem to be at an end when the thread is dropped to be picked up by another character, but that's a minor quibble. Connecting fairy tales together is not new. [...] But Donoghue's method is not quite the same. Sondheim and Lapine merged their tales; Donoghue strings hers together like a strand of pearls. [...] Donoghue's fairy kingdom is rarely happy -- before or after -- and this is especially true for the women who provide the narrative thread. While some might find this off-putting, I found it quite refreshing, as this forces Donoghue into unlikely territory for fairies, a territory that is neither whimsical nor horrific, although it contains the elements of both. More than anything else, her fantasy resembles life, and that's an accomplishment." A review by Charles de Lint in Fantasy&ScienceFiction at http://sfsite.com/fsf/depts/review01.htm (no extra address, third review from start) Quote: "What got me to pick up her latest book while browsing in a bookstore one day was, first, the title, Kissing the Witch, and the simple black and white design of the cover--both striking among the colourful array of its companions on a centre display island; secondly, the subtitle "Old Tales in New Skins," intriguing in itself; and thirdly the gorgeous language that opens the book: "Till she came it was all cold. "Ever since my mother died the feather bed felt hard as a stone floor. Every word out of my mouth limped away like a toad. Whatever I put on my back now turned to sackcloth and chafed my skin. I heard a knocking in my skull, and kept running to the door, but there was never anyone there. The days passed like dust brushed from my fingers...." I got about that far and immediately had to buy the book, find someplace quiet, and savour Donaghue's enviable gift of language and story. [...] with each encounter, I was transported from my mundane surroundings into a place where the fairy tales of my youth--still familiar to me from subsequent rereadings through the years--were banged up against each other in new configurations that both delighted and amazed me. It would seem impossible to retell such well-known tales in a manner that can make them fresh again, but Donaghue has done it thirteen times. More fascinating still, she's woven them together in such a way that the threads of what I've always known as disparate stories have become whole cloth. These are stories concerning the women in fairy tales: Cinderella, Beauty, Snow White, Gretel, Donkeyskin. In Donaghue's hands, you'll recognize them, but they'll be unfamiliar at the same time. For she has found new ways to tell their stories, new motives for their sometimes confusing actions, new connections between the stories that are at once surprising and inevitable when revealed. And from first page to last, the prose is perfect: spare and gritty, but simultaneously, resonant and rich with the poetry that only a few writers can find in the weaving together of the simple words we all know so well but wouldn't think to place in the same evocative order. Needless to say, I highly recommend it. " Essay by L. Timmel Duchamp at http://www.halcyon.com/ltimmel/kissing.html Quote: "The magic in Donoghue's tales lies in her taking such familiar, worn stories and illuminating the previously invisible that, in her hands, seems always to have been present, in the background, overshadowed by the masculinist agenda that characterizes the old versions. She gives us just as much of a mixture of the prosaic and the archetypal, loads of disguise, chance and fate, and a world of bad judgment and second chances. The individuals that are the heroes of these stories, though, are all women, and their happily- ever-after endings neither involve marrying a prince nor are ever the last word. The ultimate magic is Donoghue's promise, that there always is another story that will illuminate the one just told. Happily-ever-after, for the reader, is knowing there's always another story from another angle, if one only thinks to ask for it." A review by Leslie Weddell in LubbockOnline Journal at http://lubbockonline.com/news/091197/kissing.htm I am looking forward to reading this book. Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 08:11:12 -0600 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Roxanne Korpal Subject: Re: BDG Nomination Period Opened In-Reply-To: <200003301214.OAA13524@cserv.usf.uni-kassel.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Here is my nomination. Glory Season, by David Brin. - author - David Brin - title - Glory Season - publisher - Bantam Books - list price - $6.99 - ISBN - 0553567675 On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Petra Mayerhofer wrote: > I invite you to nominate books from now on until > Wednesday, 5 April (incl.). > > I will handle the nominations and continuously update the > nomination webpage (see > http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/bdg_nom_0400.htm > ). > > Petra Mayerhofer > mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de > -- > BDG website > http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 06:53:19 -0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Maryelizabeth Hart Organization: Mysterious Galaxy Subject: BDG Nomination MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'd like to nominate Nalo Hopkinson's MIDNIGHT ROBBER. We did BROWN GIRL IN THE RING a year or so ago, and I think it'd be interesting to do a little compare and contrast as well as reading MIDNIGHT ROBBER for its own benefit. Pax, Maryelizabeth -- Maryelizabeth Hart Publicity Manager ****************************************************************** Mysterious Galaxy Local Phone: 858.268.4747 3904 Convoy Street, #107 Fax: 858.268.4775 San Diego, CA 92111 Long Distance/Orders: 1.800.811.4747 http://www.mystgalaxy.com Email: mgbooks@mystgalaxy.com ****************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:32:36 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Misha Bernard Subject: Re: [*FSFFU*] Conferences Comments: To: "For discussion of feminist SF, fantastic & utopian literature" In-Reply-To: <34.3280443.261403c8@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi I've also been working myself up to asking this question, in a slightly varied form, since I'm working on using SF for my dissertation, and I really need to see what conferences are out there to attend and get my feet wet. Other than WisCon, I'm at a loss, so I second Joanie's request and I've put it out to both the femsf and femsf-lit lists. The second part of Joanie's request was for critical essays, and I would like to ask what essays (not necessarily in anthologies) CAN'T be missed in the field. Also, what non-feminist SF has to be included in any discussion of feminist SF- both essays and fiction? thanks a love misha On Wed, 29 Mar 2000, Joanie Bassler wrote: > Greetings to all, > > I am a graduate student at CSU, Chico and am looking to enrich my educational > experience with some conferences. I just began my studies in Feminism, but I > have been a fantasy reader and writer (not-yet-published) for a while. I > know that there are conferences for Feminists and Women's Studies, and that > there are SF and fantasy writer conferences, but are there Feminist SF and > fantasy conferences? If so, does anyone know of any coming up in the next > year? > > I am also interested in finding a good anthology of Feminist SF & F and/or > critical essays. I have Erotic Universe and Women Worldwalkers (or a similar > title). Any advice would be greatly appreciated. > > Thank you, joanie Bassler > (Fax: (530) 893-0354 > e-mail jbassler@aol.com) > Misha Bernard Cultural Studies PhD student mbernar1@gmu.edu George Mason University ------------------------- -mmmm! tastes like a scratch world! but it's Bishop Berkeley's Cosmo Mix!- Ursula K. Le Guin "World Making" (1981) ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 13:47:24 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Tracy Mitchell Subject: Re: BDG Nomination Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii I'd like to nominate: Not of Woman Born (Tales of high-tech reproduction from the most inventive names in science fiction) by Constance Ash (Editor) (March 1999) ISBN: 0451456815 Penguin USA (Paper) ,Roc Books, 272 pages Available in local/college libraries & bookstores Amazon Price: $5.59 In The Future You May Send A Mothers' Day Card To Yourself (reader comment) This contemporary anthology promises to provide lively and evocative discussion and would be a welcomed addition to our upcoming reading list. I can't wait to read and discuss the issues raised in this anthology such as current events concerning genetic studies, cloning, and the role and definition of 'parent' 'mother' 'father' and 'child'. We could expand our discussion and relate this anthology to other books/ stories on the topic. One of the stories in "Not of Women Born" is long listed in the 1999 Tiptree Awards: http://www.tiptree.org/1999/long.htm. More impressive than the many positive reviews are the overwhelmingly favorable readers' comments on this anthology: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=26A9MWRZUW&mscssid= DWA7R83B06SR2NJH0017QRP40HR791E7&srefer=&isbn=0451456815 Description From The Publisher An original anthology of stories dealing with modern science's impact on our ideas of conception, birth, and parenting from some of the most imaginative and prophetic authors in science fiction. Stories range from the humorous to the horrific, the fascinating to the far-fetched, with humanity surviving in the face of overwhelming technology as the common theme of each. A truly unique collection from science fiction's elite! Reviews >From Sarah Flowers - VOYA In this short story collection, top science fiction writers imagine worlds and futures in which extra-uterine, cloned, and bio-engineered reproduction flourishes. In the touching and morally deep Judith's Flowers, by Suan Palwick, a twenty-one-year-old college student must decide whether to live the rest of her life in the world of her genes or the world of her memories. In Dead in the Water, Jack McDevitt explores the process a woman goes through in deciding whether or not to "buy" one genetically perfect, virtually immortal child. Raising Jenny, by Janni Lee Simner, is a simple tale of mother love that addresses the question of nature vs. nurture, as a woman raises a daughter who is actually a clone of her dead mother. Walter Jon Williams looks at parents from a slightly different angle in Daddy's World: he asks how far a father will go to keep his family together, what constitutes a family, and what does it actually mean to be alive? All of the fourteen stories are new except an astonishing one by Robert Silverberg first published in 1957. There Was an Old Woman, the first story to use the term "clone," is about an exceptional woman who created thirty-one sons and raised them each for a specific profession. The story has aged remarkably well, and brings yet another viewpoint to collection of stories........ A review by Lisa DuMond for the SF SITE http://www.sfsite.com/03b/not53.htm Throw down those ovulation predictors! Cast aside those thermometers! Of what use are those fertility pills now? In the future, new humans are going to be popping out of every test tube, artificial womb, and industrial-size mayo jar if you look away for an instant. All that and keeping your girlish/boyish figure. Ah! Progress! Some of these new methods may take you by surprise, but Constance Ash and her herd of authors are already putting aside money for their neuvo-neonates' college tuition. If there's a high-tech way to reproduce, chances are it's covered in Not of Woman Born. And covered well..... ....It may well be the number one topic in the new millennium. You might as well get a jump start on the questions, now. Open your eyes and your mind to the possibilities. There is no better way to do it than with the precious, and semi-precious, gems in this anthology. And, it won't hurt a bit. Reader comments http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451456815/qid=954437158/sr=1-1/102-6048047-3788830 In The Future You May Send A Mothers' Day Card To Yourself Reviewer: A reader from Tallahassee, FL March 17, 1999 If you think the abortion debate is out of control now, wait and see what reproductive shockers are on the way. Constance Ash has assembled some of the finest minds in scifi to explore the possibilities of procreation. This collection leaves no method unexplored and no problem well enough alone. Ash delivers a chilling tale of survival of the fittest, willing or not, in "The Leopard's Garden." Sage Walker keeps the blood cold with a tale of genetic manipulation and the cycle of life. But, all is not grim and serious. "One Day At Central Convenience Mall" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman takes readers on a tour of the future AND provides plenty of time to shop. The stories are too numerous and too full to cover in this space. Time for you to apply your own brain to the subject. And, remember, it's only fiction. For now. Rating: overall "A" Reviewer: Peter D. Tillman from Arizona September 13, 1999 Theme anthologies sometimes suffer from too narrow a focus and/or carbon-copy stories. Not this one -- the authors interpreted the theme loosely enough so that I didn't lose interest. Walter Jon Williams takes a killer look at cybernetic family values in "Daddy's World", and Jack McDevitt delivers the most interesting look at gengineering one's progeny since Greg Egan's wonderfully sly "Eugene," in "Dead in the Water." McDevitt's mother-to-be is particularly well-drawn. A+ stories both; look for them on the award ballots next year. "A" stories: Silverberg's 1957 "There Was an Old Woman" is an amazingly fresh look at cloned lives, even 40 years on. Nina Kiriki Hoffman takes a sharp look at future retail clerks in "One Day at Central Convenience Mall." New author look at cloning's impact on showbiz in "Doppels."...... Things That Make You Go Hmmmmmm Reviewer: A reader from USA April 14, 1999 Mrs. Ash has done it again with her energized portrayal of the future and this time she brought of Woman Born has hit the target. Birth of a mind-bending anthology of sf luminaries Reviewer: E. Alexander Gerster from South Miami, Florida USA March 10, 1999 Fasten your seatbelt for a wild ride through the ideas of some of science fiction's best selling authors--thematically published under the concept of alternative conception. Each story challenges the reader with both the suspension of belief, and the creation of new beliefs in what today may seem impossible, each bringing a different moral tone and attitude that stretches your mind, always asking "what if?...." Highly Recommended. Let's read it! Tracy tracyam@us.ibm.com (Internet) ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 13:35:55 0100 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Nominiation Interim Summary MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Before I leave for the weekend an interim summary of the nominations so far (4): -- Constance Ash (Editor): Not of Woman Born. Tales of high-tech reproduction from the most inventive names in science fiction. (March 1999), ISBN: 0451456815, Penguin USA (Paper), Roc Books, 272 pages, List Price $6.99 David Brin: Glory Season. Bantam Books, list price - $6.99, ISBN - 0553567675 Emma Donoghue: Kissing the Witch : Old Tales in New Skins. Collection. Harpercollins Juvenile Books; ISBN: 0064407721 ; List Price: $11.00, Paperback - 240 pages, Reprint edition (May 1999) . Nalo Hopkinson: Midnight Robber. Paperback - 329 pages (March 2000), Aspect; ISBN: 0446675601, $13.95 -- The comments of the nominators can be looked up at http://www.geocities.com/bdg_volunteers/bdg_nom_0400.htm One last tip: it's always good to add some comments and reviews to a nomination. Firstly, hardly any election is won without some advertisement. Secondly, it makes the nomination process more interesting for all list members. Everybody can add comments to nominations from somebody else. I will be back on Monday. Petra Petra Mayerhofer mailto:mayerhofer@usf.uni-kassel.de -- BDG website http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Comet/1304/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 07:38:13 -0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Diane Severson Organization: iVillage Free Email (http://fe-mail.ivillage.com:80) Subject: Re: FEMINISTSF-LIT Digest - 28 Mar 2000 to 30 Mar 2000 (#2000-52) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I would like to nominate the following: Deborah Christian, _Mainline_ Tor Books, 1996 List Price: $5.99/$7.99 (Canada) ISBN 0-812-54908-2 Amazon: The premise of Christian's brilliant first novel is as ingenious as its execution: a career assassin's unique ability to shift between alternate time lines grants her almost perfect immunity from the law. During her latest assassination of a prominent politico, hit woman Reva attracts the unwelcome attention of her victim's bodyguard, a powerful alien warrior who swears revenge. As if one pursuer weren't enough, Reva is also being tailed by an imperial security agent with his own special talent--invisibility. Yet Reva's developing friendship with an imperiled black marketeer persuades her to remain in the current time line to protect her protegefrom crime lords while staving off her own enemies. Christian packs a relentlessly paced story line with enough explosive action, interesting characters, and technological gadgetry, such as intelligence enhancers for beast as well as human, to fill a dozen novels. Hers is an exciting new voice that should engage a wide range of readers,! from military enthusiasts to cyberpunk fans. Carl Hays Copyright) 1996, American Library Association. A review by Jacqueline Lichtenberger (The Monthly Aspectarian): Mainline other than in the use of point of view, is pretty much Intimate Adventure - the hero is a woman who is in a pickle because of a psychic talent. She has the ability to translate herself into parallel time-lines. She's crossed so many lines that she's lost and can't get back to her birth-timeline. She's found a way to make a living that isn't prostitution, though. She's become a hitman. And she's absolutely the best. Lately, though, the life has begun to pall. She's lonely because when she shifts to another timeline after making a hit, she has to deal with people who aren't really the same people she had established relationships with. And as a hitman, she really doesn't dare trust anyone with her secrets in a world where telepaths are all around and some work for the law, a hitman with a secret can't afford relationships. As a result, she's lived now a few years without any relationship in her life and it's getting very, very lonely. So she's promised herself not to skip time-lines again. She gets involved with a woman who is a smuggler and thinks she's real smart but isn't as smart as she thinks. Our hero tries (an act of charity) to help her learn how to cover her ass and be a good smuggler. Meanwhile, on a hit, our hero kills the boss of a man who has hired a really wild alien as bodyguard. The alien is pissed. The alien's honor has been tarnished by this assassin and he's out for blood. Meanwhile, a lawman with a similar gift to our hero's is on her tail. He is developing an attraction to her, but doesn't want to admit it to himself. This is an extremely densely plotted novel. --- Diane Severson Moerfelder Landstr. 108 60598 Frankfurt am Main (49)69-613371 (49)69-624595 (+Fax and answering machine) -- Join the most exciting community of women on the web! iVillage.com's FREE membership gets you private email, your own home page, special discounts and sweepstakes, and dozens of problem-solving tools. http://www.ivillage.com/frame/join_email.html ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 09:01:22 -0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Nomination I nominate Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Published by KNOPF, ALFRED A 1989, 1990 (1117367290) available at Powel's Books for a variety of prices from $7.95 for a used paperback to $150 for a signed first edition. I'm sure you can find it in almost any book store. >From the book cover: "Author Katherine Dunn--who has always chosen the unconventional in her own life as the daughter of migrant farmworkers, a teen runaway, a boxing stringer for Associated Press, and an award-winning novelist--now brings us one of the decade's most controversial books: a literary sensation that is a work of daring, brilliance, and unrelenting shock. "Geek Love is the story of a carnival family, the Binewskis, who save their traveling 'Carnival Fabulon' from bankruptcy by giving birth to fabulous freaks--the children born to Lil Binewski after she ingests drugs, insecticides, arsenic, radioisotopes, anything to make her babies more 'special'. The result is a world readers have never encountered before, a place of horror and humor, where vengeance and love are realized in unimaginable ways. And where some unforgettable 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not' characters are both exotically unique--and hauntingly, chillingly, like us." Here is a page with various reviews and references: http://www.teleport.com/~jdroth/EBK/dunn.html I've read this book twice and still find it fascinating. The characters are loving, destructive, jaded, innocent, manipulative and completely engrossing. There are Arturo the Aqua Boy the limbless, sadistic, "Transcendental Maggot"; his sister Olympia a bald hunchback albino dwarf and narrator of the story; their Siamese twin sisters the elegant pianists Electra and Iphigenia; Chick, Fortunato, the strongest child in the world -- telekinetic, empath; their proper Bostonian mother Diamond Lil and Aloysius the ringmaster, founder and creator of the troupe. There are other siblings kept in polished jars in the Chute, and then there's the next generation and an evil Miss Lick who gets her kicks from mutilating pretty women, for their own good. I'd have to say this is the most bizarre story I've ever read, and I'd love to read it at least once more. Joyce ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2000 14:35:06 -0700 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: "Magdalena A. K. Muir" Subject: BDG Nomination- Starfish by Peter Watts In-Reply-To: <001701bf9b32$beedf880$a242173f@default> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I am recommending the novel "Starfish" by Peter Watts, 1999, Tor Books, ISBN 0 312 86855-3 (hardcover). I read this book earlier in the year and was haunted both by the language and the ideas as it explored, particularly that of what it means for either gender to be sexually and physically abused, and whether one can become "addicted" to this state. It was also an interesting examination of institutional and personal cruelty. I would highly recommend this book for discussion and for anyone to read. Magdalena Muir Two reviews Watts, Peter. Starfish. July 1999. 320p. Tor; dist. by St. Martin's, $23.95 (0-312-86855-3). Burdened by exploding population, the world turns to geothermal energy from vents thousands of feet under the ocean. The vents are explosive and unpredictable, sending bursts of superheated steam randomly into a nightmare world of transparent fish, 50-foot tube worms, and oddly fragile sea monsters whose teeth shatter when they bite. To survive at such depths, the crews of deep-sea power plants must be modified to withstand the pressure, "breathe" water, and see in a darkness illuminated only by phosphorescent creatures. The necessary mental modification isn't easily done; indeed, only the already emotionally damaged--battered women, paranoid ex-spies, child molesters--won't turn psychotic from it. One crew's members struggle among themselves at first, but soon discover strange satisfaction in their isolated world and insight into their troubled lives. A subtle paranoia is everywhere, however, from the cramped station quarters to the office of the corporate psychiatrist who selected the crew. The hidden threat behind this unease isn't revealed until nearly the end, but the dark universe of the sea bottom and rich characterization captivate to the last page. Watts makes a brilliant debut with a novel that is part undersea adventure, part psychological thriller, and wholly original. --Roberta Johnson (Booklist/May 15, 1999) Peter Watts Starfish ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- New York: Tor Books; 1999; $23.95 hc; 317 pages Another Dave Langford review. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Peter Watts's first novel starts at the bottom and later works its way up. That is, the action begins in the appalling depths of a Pacific ocean rift, where dysfunctional characters are to run a geothermal power station that taps a hot vent. It's a creepily evocative world of darkness and extreme pressure, full of deep-sea monsters afflicted with giantism but also extreme fragility by their harsh, low-calcium environment. Humans going out into into this world not only require semi-sentient "diveskins" and light-amplifying corneal caps, but suffer a tiny death trauma at each exit through the airlock, as their unfeasible gas-breathing metabolism is overriden by inbuilt machinery and all the body's air passages fill with liquid. Who would ever want to work down there? Watts's answer is reminiscent of, but creatively builds on, some speculations in an earlier sf novel of high suspense in the deeps: Frank Herbert's The Dragon in the Sea (1956, also known as Under Pressure). Here a harried submarine crew is pushed to its physical and mental limits, and those who adapt most successfully -- notably the captain -- enter modes of thought which, to the planted psychologist who's anxiously monitoring them, seem very like psychosis. Meanwhile the strange attraction of the deep virtually explains itself as Herbert invites you to put on Freudian spectacles and contrast the subtly comforting, amniotic embrace of the sea with the shock of emergence into terrible bright emptiness. Starfish adds a further twist to the notion of quasi-psychotic adaptation to life on the edge. Its ruthless corporation selects workers who are "pre-adapted" -- that is, halfway towards an adaptive remoulding, since they've already broken under the stresses of the tough topside world. Thus Lenie Clarke, the first candidate we meet, is a long-time abuse victim who may have become dependent on her victimhood. Three kilometers down, in Beebe Station on the Juan de Fuca rift, she's initially teamed with the more "normal" Ballard, a woman who's exasperated by Clarke's passivity and struggles in vain to build a positive relationship. We realize the perversity of the system when Clarke is retained and Ballard pulled from the job. Clarke is the Right Stuff. Presumably there's an intentional ironic homage here to the authors of The Deep Range and The Drowned World. I was worrying that others of Beebe Station's subsequently expanded team of seven might be called Herbert and Verne, but no. The most interesting is Gerry Fischer, a paedophile whose tragicomic entrapment by a police child impersonator leads to his recruitment and to glimpses of the surgical modifications which equip these workers for the deep. Others are full of repressed or not-so-repressed violence. A couple are just ciphers. Under the shaping pressure of the Pacific, they change.... Watts provides plenty of satisfying incidents, developments, couplings and luminous descriptions of life in that ghostly, light-amplified world. Two of the group are lost, one dying under peculiar circumstances (there's a tiny murder mystery in here too) and one "going native" in a fashion that rejects the all too easy sf dream of unthinking transcendence as universal panacea. Those who remain, though, do eventually achieve a near-gestalt state, a comfortable, synchronized awareness of each other's presence and actions that's rooted in Roger Penrose's theory of quantum consciousness. Earlier, one character has teased a metaphor from this novel's title. Starfish have lots and lots of little sucker-tube "feet" but no brains: "So there's nothing to coordinate the tube feet, they all move independently. Usually that's not a problem; they all tend to go toward food, for example. But it's not unusual for a third of these feet to be pulling in some [other] direction entirely. The whole animal's a living tug-of war. Sometimes, some really stubborn tube feet just don't give up, at they literally get torn out at the roots when the others move the body someplace they don't want to go. But hey: majority rules, right?" The once wildly divergent Beebe Station group is in better shape than a starfish. Not, though, in the eyes of the company expert who (like Frank Herbert's psychologist) gatecrashes this oddly functional team and tries to understand it in topside terms. He sees them as vampires, lacking conversational affect, living almost full-time in their black diveskins, hiding their eyes behind milky corneal caps, creating deranged art like wind-chimes driven by water thermals from the hot vent, even for God's sake sleeping out there in benthic hell rather than their nice bunks.... "How could anyone get addicted to a place like this?" After which the storyline abruptly changes gear as Watts wheels on a possibly world-destroying menace. This is a primeval template for life which has survived in the warmth of that same vent, has never previously been able to spread, and which is potentially a deadly competitor for our familiar biosphere. Since it's been named Behemoth [with a Greek beta for the B] and is far more efficient at converting nutrients than existing "alpha" life, I found myself thinking of it as Betamax -- the superior system that lost out for reasons unrelated to quality. We are VHS and we are doomed, if Betamax ever gets an equal chance in the food chain.... Naturally the first thing that occurs to caring corporate leaders is to nuke Beebe Station, but there are restraining complications as the world pulls this way and that, like (again) the starfish. Large-scale violence and disaster follow, mostly plausible although at a different level of credibility from the compellingly claustrophobic deep-water storyline. One factor that I couldn't quite swallow was the "smart gel" artificial intelligences, even if they do look like mozzarella and are colloquially known as head cheese; their hidden flaw seems to belong in another and Asimovian decade of sf, following as it does the familiar lines of "oh dear, in the First Law we never defined what 'injure' actually meant." The final, memorable image is of Lenie Clarke, having been royally fucked over by the world all her life, finding herself neatly positioned to repay the compliment. Peter Watts writes confidently and well, and I suppose it's unfair of me to feel deprived of the story he didn't choose to tell -- the further transformation and ultimate fate of that strangely-knit, not-quite-sane community at Beebe Station, as it might have been if the narrative hadn't instead crashed at speed into the brick wall of Behemoth and threatened apocalypse. A highly interesting and thoroughly researched debut novel. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- First published in The New York Review of SF 134, October 1999. Article Index ^Õ Home