Free” and and Free” and “Happy How on Remarking
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The Cascadia Subd uction A LITERARY Z QUARTERLY on April 2013 X Vol. 3. No. 2 e ESSAY Asking the Wrong Questions: Alice Sheldon, the Gender Learning Curve, and Me by L. Timmel Duchamp POEMS 1995 by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back GRANDMOTHER MAGMA Lolly Willowes IN THIS ISSUE (or the Loving Huntsman) Crackling Arbutus Crackling by Sylvia Townsend Warner BOOK REVIEWS These Burning Streets by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back Sister Mine X by Nalo Hopkinson Cheryl Richey Necessary Ill by Deb Taber A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar How to Greet Strangers by Joyce Thompson Bio-Punk: Stories from the Far Side of Research edited by Ra Page “Since its launch in 2011 The Cascadia Subduction Zone has emerged as one of the best critical journals the field has to offer.” h Jonathan McCalmont, February 18, 2013, Hugo Ballot Nomination FEATURED ARTIST Cheryl Richey $5.00 Managing Editor Lew Gilchriist Reviews Editor VOL. 3 NO. 2 — APRIL 2013 Nisi Shawl ESSAY Features Editor Asking the Wrong Questions: Alice Sheldon, L. Timmel Duchamp the Gender Learning Curve, and Me Arts Editor by L. Timmel Duchamp h 1 Kath Wilham POEM $5.00 1995 by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back h 11 GRANDMOTHER MAGMA Outrunning the Reach of Society Lolly Willowes (or the Loving Huntsman) by Sylvia Townsend Warner reviewed by Karen Joy Fowler h 8 BOOK REVIEWS These Burning Streets by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back reviewed by Evan Peterson h 10 Sister Mine by Nalo Hopkinson reviewed by Ama Patterson h 12 Necessary Ill by Deb Taber reviewed by Nic Clarke h 13 A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar reviewed by Nisi Shawl h 15 How to Greet Strangers by Joyce Thompson reviewed by Daniel José Older h 16 Bio-Punk: Stories from the Far Side of Research edited by Ra Page reviewed by Victoria Elisabeth Garcia h 17 FEATURED ARTIST Cheryl Richey h 20 Subscriptions and single issues online at: To order by check, payable to: www.thecsz.com Aqueduct Press Print subscription: $16/yr; P.O. Box 95787 Print single issue: $5 Seattle, WA 98145-2787 Electronic Subscription (PDF format): [Washington State Residents $10 per year add 9.5% sales tax.] Electronic single issue: $3 In This Issue Cover banner collagraph of the Cascadia subduction zone by Marilyn Liden Bode Asking the Wrong Questions: Alice Sheldon, the Gender Learning Curve, and Me y by L. Timmel Duchamp 1. “fun” the mental patient was, and Don re- plying “That’s the sick part, honey” (156). It’s 1982. I’m reading Racoona B. Shel- By the time the delusive/drugged mental don’s “Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your patient thesis has been confirmed by the Faces Filled of Light” for the first time: woman’s doctor and young husband (and It’s 1982. I’m reading “Hot summer night, big raindrops falling later by her father), we know this story faster now as she swings along the concrete Racoona B. Sheldon’s “Your is not science fiction, but an allegory of Faces, O My Sisters! Your expressway, high over the old dead city. the it-was-all-a-dream (or daydream or Faces Filled of Light” for Lightning is sizzling and cracking over nightmare or drug fantasy) ilk. The cou- the first time: “Hot summer the lake behind her” (149). Instantly I’m rier vanishes — becomes as much a ghost night, big raindrops falling in a Delanyscape, a cross between Dahl- to the reader as the “dead city” was to the faster now as she swings gren and The Fall of the Towers trilogy. The courier — and a cipher takes her place. along the concrete express- first two sentences of the second paragraph As a person, she exists less even than the way, high over the old confirm this location in my imagination: nameless other wives in the story. The dead city. Lightning is siz- “She’s passing a great billboard-thing dan- only woman in the story who actually has zling and cracking over the gling and banging in the wind. Part of a big lake behind her” (149). a name is a “young policewoman” (164), grinning face: O-N-D-E-R-B-R-E-A, Instantly I’m in a Dela- Officer O’Hara, the honorary male who is whatever that was, bright as day” (149). By nyscape, a cross between Officer Alioto’s partner on a stakeout. Of- the fifth paragraph, I realize that laid over Dahlgren and The Fall of ficer O’Hara reports, when asked, that yes, the Delanyscape are elements of 1970s the Towers trilogy. she saw the young woman — whom she first feminist utopias — couriers, “sisters,” Native American names, and wisdom. characterizes as “some little tramp” (164) In the second section, two cops in a and then as “a spoiled brat if you ask me” (164) — pass by, followed closely by the four cruiser present a different view of the i same scene. Are we in alternate timelines? men who were known to have subsequent- ly attacked her. “Who does she think she I wonder. Or is this scene set in the past, 1 when the “dead city” was alive? The section is, running on the street at night?” (164). is short; the third is too, with a brief return O’Hara demands. The story ends with the to the “courier” that adds nothing new “spoiled brat’s” last deluded perceptions as to the story. The fourth section, though, she’s raped and killed. switches to a conversation between a In her 1981 “Recent Feminist Uto- mother and daughter about an encounter pias,” Joanna Russ includes “Your Faces” the mother and her husband have just had on her list of utopian fiction published with a hitchhiker, whom we by now feel in the 1970s, and describes it thus: “[A] certain is the “courier.” The daughter sug- madwoman, who believes she is living in gests that the hitchhiker was stoned, and a future, all-female utopia, is raped and the mother and the daughter conclude murdered by a male gang in a city at night” their conversation by emphatically agree- (140). Russ writes: “I believe the separat- “Who does she think she ing that the hitchhiker is “just asking for ism is primary, and that the authors are is, running on the street it” (154). By the next scene, which returns not subtle in their reasons for creating at night?” (164). O’Hara to the “courier,” every detail of the “cou- separatist utopias: if men are kept out of demands. The story ends rier’s” perception screams at us that she’s these societies, it is because men are dan- with the “spoiled brat’s” either hallucinating or delusional. The gerous. They also hog all the good things last deluded perceptions as she’s raped and killed. following scene, though, makes it a wrap: of the world” (140). Although Russ doesn’t the “courier” is fingered by a man named explicitly say so, we can infer that she reads Don — who just happens to share a name the nameless protagonist’s “mad” visions as with the narrator in Tiptree’s “The Wom- representing utopia, side by side with the en Men Don’t See” — as someone who’s depiction of the reasons men need to be ex- had electroconvulsive shock therapy and cluded from feminist utopian visions. For somehow managed to escape her minders. Russ, the protagonist’s “madness” does not The section ends with Don’s nameless wife invalidate her visions; rather, the attitudes remarking on how “happy and free” and and responses of Don et al. merely reveal Cont. on p. 2 n Asking the the ugliness and danger for women in or- that determine given characteristics, such Wrong Questions dinary male-dominated society. as those ascribed to woman, the Jew, or the (cont. from p. 1) For years I resisted reading the story as Negro. Science regards any characteristic allegory — as a didactic narrative designed as a reaction dependant in part upon a sit- to teach a particular lesson. Science fiction uation” (xiv). Was that true in France when readers don’t like allegories, because alle- she wrote those words in the 1940s? It cer- gories are moral dicta coated with the trap- tainly wasn’t true for the biological and so- pings of non-realist elements. Allegories cial sciences in the US. Beauvoir is still able For years I resisted reading don’t actually ask you to suspend your dis- to refer to “woman,” “the Jew,” and “the the story as allegory — as a belief, since all their non-realist elements Negro.” Surely the very notion of “woman” didactic narrative designed are there only to serve a didactic purpose; demonstrates essentialism. Sometime over to teach a particular les- the anti-realist elements in allegories ac- the course of the last four decades, such son. Science fiction readers tually constrict rather than expand your usage seems to have been dropped from don’t like allegories, be- imagination, keeping them lined up along US speech, perhaps around the same time cause allegories are moral the straight and narrow road of its lesson. that people started substituting the word dicta coated with the “gender” for certain uses of the word “sex.” trappings of non-realist Thus, for most science fiction and fantasy I don’t, of course, mean to suggest that elements. readers, they’re dry and stale and claustro- phobic. Reading generously each time I such discursive shifts necessarily indicate a read “Your Faces,” I invented new relations new clarity in thought, merely that certain between the “courier’s” sections and the usages go out of fashion and then begin to harsh, critical social perceptions intended sound wrong for reasons1 few people will to represent “reality.” To do this, I drew on trouble to think about.