Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Flying Cups and Saucers Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Debbie Notkin Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Debbie Notkin. Feminism and Science Fiction OSCLG 2002. Out of the Past and into the Future. James Tipree Jr. Award for gender-bending science fiction winners & short & long lists available on the website: http://www.tiptree.org/ Tiptree Jr, James . “The Women Men Don't See” (1973) reprinted in Star Songs of an Old Primate ; Ten Thousand Light Years from Home ; Warm Worlds & Otherwise ; More Women of Wonder ; Future Earths ; and “Houston, Houston Do You Read?” (1976) reprinted in TOR double (with Chaos Joanna Russ) (& in collections) These two stories are classics. The first is about an airplane crash in Mayan territory and a decision that two women make.he glory is in the quite details of perception and counteracting behavior between the male narrator and the woman who is the real protagonist. The second story is of a future earth without men (thanks to virus/gene-meddling laboratories) where three anachronisms arrive from a NASA accident. We see those we live with through the eyes of women who have never met those who cannot behave as people. Again, Exquisite language, and a most marvelous thought experiment, especially given all the current interest in cloning. Vonarburg, Elisabeth . Chroniques de Pays de M�res Qu�bec/Am�rique 1992 -- giving us in English: In the Mother’s Land . Translated by Jane Brierley, 1992 Spectra/Bantam. Maerlande Chronicles . Translated by Jane Brierley. 1992 Tesseract (Beach Holme). On the Tiptree 1992 short list. The first role reversal fiction that I ever found that is believable. Men destroyed the world with their play with armaments, so the survivors in the post-holocaust novel develop other social structures to make sure they never do it again, while coping with the genetic effects of pollution both for people and for the earth. A really marvelous book. [I have only found one other role reversal that I find convincing -- and it is a satire; utterly different in tone and impact: Brantenberg, Gerd. Egalia's Daughters: A satire of the sexes. The Seal Press translated from Norwegian by Louis Mackay 1977-85. “Linguistics is our best tool for bringing about social change and SF is our best tool for testing such changes before they are implemented in the real world, therefore the conjunction of the two is desirable and should be useful.” — Suzette Haden Elgin 1996. Elgin, Suzette Haden . Native Tongue (original 1984). Feminist Press Reprint edition 2000. Elgin invented L�adan, a constructed language by and for women, and a world with aliens where linguists are essential. In a way, this is an SF and linguistic answer to the more famous Handmaid’s Tale, and, for me, far more believable. The first time I read it I found it too realistic — the ERA has failed and the politicians in Washington have sent women back to the home, as though the Promise Keepers had been completely successful. The story is the development of the language. This is the first book of a trilogy; Feminist Press is just now bringing out Judas Rose and I understand that the third, Earthsong , will be out again soon. ”It was tough trying to keep writing while bringing up three kids, but my husband was totally in it with me, and so it worked out fine.” Le Guin’s Rule: One person cannot do two fulltime jobs, but two persons can do three fulltime jobs -- if they honestly share the work. The idea that you need an ivory tower to write in, that if you have babies you can't have books, that artists are somehow exempt from the dirty work of life – rubbish. —Ursula LeGuin http://www.ursulakleguin.com/FAQ_Questionnaire5_01.html#Autographs. Le Guin, Ursula K . The Birthday of the World & other stories . HarperCollins 2002. An excellent introduction with the relationship of the stories to each other & to the rest of the work. Many are Hainish. The introduction & 'Paradises Lost' are new; the rest are reprints. Overall, a wise, thought-provoking collection. 1) Coming of Age in Karhide — An 'inside' story of somer & kemmer. Nicely done, delicate & tender. Of adolescence & coming into adulthood & the formation of sexual mores where sex is not fixed. Complements 'Left Hand of Darkness', makes the people more believable. 2) The Matter of Seggri — A thought experiment about the imbalance of the sexes — now possible with selective abortion. A world where there is one man to 16 women — the men are spoiled & limited. Women run everything. It is an interesting look at stereotyping, limiting by category, men not being taken seriously intellectually, having no place to go, inequality in love relationships. As always, her great skill shows the emotional content of policy & culture. Nature of Freedom. Nature of competition. 3) Unchosen Love — From Planet of O — with 4 people in a marriage — the sudoretu, based on moities with a 4 person marriage where one has sex with to partners but with one prohibited. This story deals with a relationship unlooked for where one person feels so strongly it weighs on the second. A good love story with a fantasy element. Very nice on the emotional content of a cultural practice. 4) Mountain Ways— Another story from Planet of O involving difficulties in setting up a sudoretu — which illuminates the structure itself. Again, her deft and beautiful painting of emotions, without judgment, in their wise & foolish complexity. 5) Solitude — Children as research assistants! Neat! And also — how one's culture makes one's soul. An interesting definition of magic - which fits with the notion that language (prayer??) has actual physical results and that one must not violate another's autonomy with magic. There is the 'harmless magic' between women and men. The culture depicted is at an extreme of valuing personal autonomy and agency. Again, (as on O) women carry the culture; men have it rough. Also, clash of cultures and the Hainish way. The Mother is an ethnographer, the main character her daughter who actually learns the culture, rather than learning about. Very though-provoking. Magic being power over -- and a bad thing. Interesting. 6) Old Music and the Slave Women — A Hainish story. A local story of the horrors of war and the dehumanization of war - both sides. How a revolution may eat its own. How violence begets violence. And of love and affection even in such pockets. Compassion for who/what one is. Great beauty out of great misery and great wrong. 7) The Birthday of the World -- The death and creation of god and the limitations and values thereof. Quite a thought-provoking piece, from the point of view of god's daughter becoming god. It draws on a number of traditions, including Egypt & Peru. Nature of belief and what it creates. Personal affection even across enemy history. Depicts a paired god— without woman how can god create? Give birth? Gods created by believers. And lost by chance events, like the arrival of aliens. 8) Paradises Lost — a 6 generation ship story. What happens in generations who know ONLY a ship? Also developed is the nature of belief systems, the use of metaphor, interpretation. Human desire for / fear of change. Good language-over-time material - mostly vocabulary. Rise of belief systems - even among science types. Bradley, Marjorie Kellogg . Harmony . Roc Penguin1991. The author works in the theatre which she uses in the depiction of a domed future, when the air is too polluted to breath, and the threat of expulsion is the ultimate punishment. The cities become like independent states, and behave very much like multinational corporations. There is high tension between the cities themselves and ecology of the early. Well written. Thought-provoking on art, reality, magic, performance, values, group vs. individual, greed as well as on nature and the use of 'magic' and on nature and use of 'reason' and the value of outsiders to a closed society. She illustrates nice the fine line between: high/unknown/skilful technology & magic — a much thinner one than one might think. Tepper, Sheri S . The Fresco. HarperCollins 2000. This book is on this year's Tiptree short list for gender-bending SF and is a very, very good read. The author is also a mystery writer and this book partakes of both. It deals with religious dogma / doctrine is a most delicious wish-fulfilling way with quite fascinating ETs, our superiors, who come to cope the current insanity. The main character is an Hispanic woman from New Mexico (where the author lives).Along the way we get a look at family relations, the extreme right, international politics, and just what 'origin-myths' are after all, and the nature of sacred texts. It's a page turner, a perfect respite to have a good laugh and a good fantasy about what we could do with all the mess. Thomson, Amy . The Color of Distance. Ace1999. A most amazing book. The author invents a language based on color and lets a watch a biologist learn the language after she is shipwrecked on the planet. A most marvelous book, in every way. The aliens language media are the colors on their chests, a fully developed language in skin colors and patterns. Marvelous. And a race where death, for the fully adult, is optional, but new adults are made — by hormonal linking — only upon the death of an elder — perfect zero population growth. The contact situation — so beautifully done — is fully empathetic, yet still tied to human values, who behave not perfectly but also not badly — very, very well done. This is part of the growing literature on how difficult first contact is even if everyone is good-willed. It also is an ecological statement of consequence. The aliens are greatly sophisticated but in other ways; they are NOT primitive — and they promise not to teach humans anything that will harm them! There is a sequel, a good novel in its own right, Through Alien Eyes , dealing with a visit to Earth. Moon, Elizabeth . Remnant Population . Baen 1996. An old woman decides not to leave home when the powers that be order her to. She is a colonist on a planet believed to have no sentient species. Her own growth is a marvel to read, and her interaction with the inhabitants in a first-contact situation delightful to read — and a most unusual one. Corporate greed, inexpert ‘experts’, inability to listen as part of hierarchy — all lovely, very, very lovely. And an old woman as the protagonist! Others of interest not included in the paper (just a very short list): Arnason, Eleanor . A Women Of The Iron People . Morrow 1991. This book won the first Tiptree award at WISON 1992. Superb read! Deals with anthropologists, linguists & other experts on an alien planet where sex roles are not earthen. Main character is a woman, a linguist, who learns the trade language and becomes good friends with one of the iron workers, a woman. Butler, Octavia E . Parable Of The Sower . [Four walls, Eight windows 1993] and Parable Of The Talents . Seven Stories Press 1998. These two books post-holocaust, collapse of the cities. Set in southern California. The creation of a new religion together with associated liturgical language and text. The founder is a young black woman, girl, really, at the beginning. Earthseed religion is quite superb, has lots of good quotes. Griffith, Nicola . Ammonite. [Del Rey 1992] and Slow River. Del Rey 1995. Both of these are good reads. They are separate stories, but both deal with women in large diversity, with change over time, with respect of difference and with future technology also w/ ecology. Slow River won both the Nebula Award and the Lambda Literary Award. It is the story of Lore, born into a rich bioengineering family and deals what she learns about herself & her society after being kidnapped. Ammonite is the 1994 James Tiptree Jr. Award winner. An anthropologist on a planet where a virus has wiped out all the men and most of the women & the newborns are genetically diverse. Kress, Nancy . Beggars In Spain / Beggars And Choosers / Beggars Ride . Tor 1996. A triology -- about bioengineered people who need no sleep, and its social consequences. A set of twins, one bioengineered, one not. McHugh, Maureen F. China Mountain Zhang. Tor 1992, Tiptree award winner. This book is about what it's like to be a second class citizen of the world — China is first, covert racism, preference to Chinese. Also deals with homosexuality. The main character is a gay man. McIntyre, Vonda N . The Moon and the Sun . Pocket 1997.Tiptree short list 1998. A superb read; woman scientist without options in Luis the Sun King’s court; first contact -- water beast. Murphy, Pat . Wild Angel = Sarah of the Wolves . TOR Tom Doherty Associates 2000. Mary Maxwell Max Merriwell.Part of a trilogy that spoofs the genre. This one is a good read; set in the old West gold rush days, Sarah, the major character, has real agency. Zettel, Sarah . Playing God. Aspect / Warner 1998. Excellent. Good Humanistic questions — like agency. Good for pacifism — or at least anti-war. Good for questions of marginality & friendship across borders / cultures & individual vs. group. Excellent aliens. Results of war; blindness of war. Excellent main character — idealist, peacemaker, woman. Balance of power. One well-drawn anthropologist gone native & betrayed. Also see listings under course summaries for Linguistics and Science Fiction. 1999 “Linguistics and Science Fiction: A Language and Gender Short Bibliography” in Women and Language 22:1 Spring 1999 pp 47-48 [Some of the same books are included, but not all.] Broad Universe is a new organization with the primary goal of promoting science fiction, fantasy, and horror written by women. Anyone excited about that project is welcome to join us. If you would like more information, email [email protected] Flying Cups and Saucers Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology edited by Debbie Notkin and the Secret Feminist Cabal. "These stories are beautiful and thought-provoking. They make you laugh and help you to understand the world better; what more could you ask of literature?"-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Author of Antarctica and the Mars trilogy. Ever wonder what happened to the rest of the tea party when the saucers went off into space? Here's your chance to find out! What would it be like to go to a club where you could buy an injection of sexiness? To grow up in a world where you didn't know what gender you would be until puberty -- and the discovery could be painful? To find yourself and your secret pitted against the entire United States government? The James Tiptree, Jr. Award has been recognizing science fiction and fantasy novels and stories that explore and expand gender for the past six years. Although the award itself is given to one or two works of fiction a year, each jury also produces a "short list" of notable works that were considered for the award. This first anthology contains almost all of the short fiction that has either won or been short-listed in the first five years of the award. Contributors include Ursula K. LeGuin (who has won twice, for "A Matter of Seggri" and "Forgiveness Day"), Eleanor Arnason, L. Timmel Duchamp, Carol Emshwiller, Kelly Eskridge, Graham Joyce and Peter F. Hamilton, R. Garcia y Robertson, Delia Sherman, and more. Science Fiction Studies. Identifying the Alien: Science Fiction Meets Its Other. Nicola Griffith and Stephel Pagel, eds. Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction . Overlook Press (212-965-8407), 1998. 375 pp. $26.95 hc. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick begins her Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: U California P, 1990)—one of the seminal texts in the development of what has come to be called "queer theory"—with the assertion that "many of the major nodes of thought and knowledge in twentieth-century Western culture as a whole are structured—indeed, fractured—by a chronic, now endemic crisis of homo/heterosexual definition" (1). She adds that any attempt to understand modern Western culture "must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance" (1), insofar as that attempt fails to take into account "the centrality of this nominally marginal, conceptually intractable set of definitional issues to the important knowledges and understandings of [this] culture" (2). The editors of Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction , Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel, begin their own introduction by making two assertions which suggest, as I will attempt to demonstrate, an interesting, if not direct, relationship to Sedgwick’s assertion of the importance of the homo/hetero-sexual binary to contemporary culture. Griffith and Pagel’s fiction anthology, a companion volume to their similarly-titled collection of fantasy stories, brings together work by a diverse assortment of writers, some of whom identify themselves as gay or lesbian, some of whom make note of their heterosexuality, and some of whom choose to make no assertion at all about their possession of a "sexual identity." The purpose of the anthology, however, is quite overtly to explore the intersections of an understanding of sexuality—one that presupposes the very homo/heterosexual divide Sedgwick identifies as central—with a specific understanding of the nature of sf itself. In the editors’ own words, we wanted the writer to imagine a different landscape. The difference could be one of time, or place, or attitude. It just had to be some milieu that had not happened. That milieu then had to be combined with one of science fiction’s major preoccupations, its most enduring theme, which is that of the Alien, the Not-Self, the Other. (9) This "objective," as defined by the editors, had to be combined, by the writers, with one rule: "that the Other had to be a lesbian or gay man" (9). Having defined this combination of objective (the creation of a different landscape) with rule (the inclusion of a lesbian or gay Other), the editors note, parenthetically, what is perhaps the central thesis of the collection as a whole: that in modern Western culture, the experience of people who are sexually different is that in "a largely heterosexual society we are, after all, often treated as aliens" (9). When Griffith and Pagel go on, immediately after noting the association between sexuality and Otherness, to note that the authors of the stories collected in the volume often "interpreted liberally" the rule mandating the inclusion of a lesbian or gay Other, the implication is not so much that some authors defaulted by assuming a master narrative of heteronormativity, but rather that some of the stories transcend the specific notion of sexual identity that adheres to the words "lesbian" and "gay" in order to bring into view the importance of the homo/heterosexual definition to our understanding of human sexual ontology. In some cases, the different landscape becomes a landscape that is not structured by this definition; in others, the focus is on the implications of a landscape in which sexual identity is central to one’s sense of being even if it is often imposed upon one by others. One of the central themes of these stories is that it is rare for someone to choose the status of Other, that one does not usually wish to be an alien; however, what is revealed in some of the stories is that Otherness is not always constructed along expected lines. Sometimes that sense of self/Other crosses boundaries, reveals peculiar fractures in an apparently seamless landscape. In Charles Sheffield’s "Brooks Too Broad for Leaping," the reader is primed for a particular kind of landscape by the editors’ introductory paragraph, which quotes Sheffield on the common suspicion of the general public towards both gays and the military and suggests that the story provides "a look at how things might be if the military were exclusively gay" (163). One of the interesting elements of the story is that the gayness of its young protagonist, a man who has abandoned a military career after the death of his partner, is not immediately apparent; the reader is well into the story before learning that Jeth Mylongi’s partner was a man. The story operates on several levels: on the one hand, it works well as a highly ironic commentary on the US military’s current "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy towards gays and lesbians. It also deconstructs populist assumptions about the nature of same-sex attraction. For example, both Mylongi and the other ex-Service person he hooks up with, a young woman, are chased out of small towns, on the semi-colonised planet on which they’re been discharged, for talking to young people—in Mylongi’s case, a teenage boy, and in Verona Skipsos’s, a young girl. The readers’ expectation is attuned, by our own cultural assumptions, to see these expulsions as a result of the families and towns defending their young people from the dangers of exposure to homosexuality—sort of an off-world "Save Our Children" campaign—yet in both cases, the protagonists are talking to the youngsters about military service. Of course, in this landscape, there’s no difference. The final—and very nice—irony of the story comes when the protagonists, having had painful, expensive, and illegal operations to make them into perfect replicas of teenagers, re-enlist—and are caught doing so. But rather than exposing and dismissing them, the military welcomes them, unofficially (of course), as mentors and potential partners for new recruits who have lost their friends and, perhaps, been disowned by their families for joining up. Without being in the slightest bit obvious about it, the story neatly dissects the notion that the military is a masculine enterprise unsuited to both women and gay men, since the latter are always assumed to be effeminate. The implication is that courage, perseverance, and camaraderie are not, as we assume, gendered traits and that homosexuality may be an asset, not a hindrance, to the military. Another common theme of several stories is the influence of religious ideology on the treatment of gays and lesbians. Kathleen O’Malley’s "Silent Passion" examines the dilemma of Joshua, a researcher on the planet Trinity who discovers that his alien research subjects—the bird-like and intelligent Grus—have more in common with him, both in their willingness to love and in their acceptance of same-sex relationships, than the rigid fundamentalists of his own biological family. When Joshua and his lover, Ray, adopt an orphaned Grus baby, they assert the importance of love, rather than genetics, in defining a family. Both genetics and religion come together in Keith Hartman’s "Sex, Guns, and Baptists." This exploration of the all too probable consequences that might ensue if a "gay gene" is ever identified certainly serves to clarify Sedgwick’s assertion of the centrality of the homo/heterosexual difference to our cultural consciousness. Here Catholicism becomes a sign of gayness, because the Catholics have remained unbending on the practice of abortion, which in this landscape has become an even more polarizing social issue due to the ability to identify potentially "gay" fetuses. As the gay private investigator points out to his female client, "[t]he Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t like abortions. But it really doesn’t like homosexuals" (14). When the narrator does what he’s been paid to do and exposes his client’s Baptist husband-to-be as a closeted homosexual, she’s also able to overcome her scruples about the sixth commandment: she tries to murder her fiancé. When the narrator foils the attempt, she then tries to kill him and, finally, she tries to avoid paying her bill. While the story is actually quite funny, the narrator, despite believing that the woman has a right to know if she’s about to marry a gay man in hiding, is left with the sense that, although he’s followed all the rules, nothing he’s done has been right. The reader is left asking if any of the narrator’s actions—doing his job, saving "the damsel in distress" (25), exposing a fraud—make sense in a world that has little problem murdering gay fetuses. The story thus, on the one hand, exposes the naive assumption made by some gay scientists that a genetic basis for gayness will end prejudice and, on the other, that sexuality is the one essential basis for identity. Several of the stories in the anthology interrogate the problem that some things—and people—cannot be seen and some things cannot be said. L. Timmel Duchamp’s "Dance at the Edge" investigates the problem of visibility. Despite the necessity for homosexuality to exist in order to create heterosexuality, since every "self" must have its Other, lesbians tend to exist only within the heterosexual imaginary, since they are invisible in "real life." Duchamp’s story examines the problem of a society’s consensual agreement to blindness—and the concomitant necessity for one group that is allowed the peculiar and secret privilege of seeing what nobody else can, even though what is unseen is perfectly visible. The allegorical use of a physical landscape—the "edge"—to represent sexual marginality neatly recapitulates in fictional form much of the theoretical work around visibility that has taken place within the last decade or so. Nancy Johnston’s "The Rendez-vous" slyly plays two narratives of the invisible and the unspeakable against one another. Written in the flatly factual style of a journalist or a science reporter, "The Rendez-vous" purports to tell the story of a female Canadian alien abductee, Jeanetta (Netty) Wilcox. Interspersed in the report are quotations not from Wilcox herself, but from her estranged husband, Willard. Netty, it seems, has begun to behave extremely oddly: being tired and listless, falling asleep during the day, and losing interest in the housework. This behavior is unexplained until her husband wakes to find her driving away from the house one night; checking the odometer, he discovers the mileage matches the round trip distance to a reported crop circle location. Voilà : a UFO abduction is clearly the cause of Netty’s problems. The second section of the story consists of transcripts from a hypnotherapy session intended to recover Netty’s lost memory of her abduction. The transcripts tell a story that works well on two levels—one obvious to the astute reader, the other the perfectly flat and utterly naive interpretation of the hypnotherapist, the husband, and, ultimately, the UFO researchers. The story ends with a one-paragraph epilogue, in which these researchers report that Netty and Wilcox’s marriage has ended, that Netty has moved to Toronto "where she lives with her companion Ms. Alice Sharpe" (109), and, finally, that they are "deeply inspired by her spirit of cooperation" with the UFO investigation: her conviction "that ‘the truth will out’ has been, for us, an unwavering bright light" (109). The report cannot speak of Netty’s lesbianism and her husband will not see it, preferring instead to conclude that she has been abducted by aliens—as, indeed, she has. There are twenty-one short stories in this anthology, each one of which sheds some light on the contested question of how we live in a world that views lesbians and gay men as the Other, as aliens. Given the way in which the criteria for the stories was constructed, it is not surprising that quite a few of the stories take an ethnic model of sexual identity for granted. Yet the breadth and depth of the stories, the fractures and discontinuities revealed once they are assembled, reveal that sexuality is not easily accounted for within an epistemology that allows for only one axis of difference —that is, the sex of the object of desire. The differences among the stories are, in this sense, as valuable to our understanding of sexuality as are the things they have in common. Nevertheless, the one true commonality, the very one Griffith and Pagel seek to reveal in the anthology, remains axiomatic of our understanding of what it means, for those of us who are lesbians or gay men, to be aliens in our own culture. Without us, the rest of you would have no meaning— but the naming of us as Other that gives you meaning is imposed on us, as it is also on heterosexuals, by the sociocultural conventions under which we live, in exactly the same way as is the particular axis of difference that privileges the homo/hetero divide above all other sexual differences. So we are left in the queer position of embracing a sexual identity that is not chosen (in either an essentialist or a constructionist sense), while at the same time we may wish, either through narrative or through theory, to contemplate the potential for deconstructing the very definition that makes us what we are. Or, as Sedgwick has said, while. there are certainly rhetorical and political grounds on which it may make sense to choose at a given moment between articulating, for instance, essentialist and constructivist (or minoritizing and universalizing) accounts of gay identity, there are, with equal certainty, rhetorical and political grounds for underwriting continuously the legitimacy of both accounts. (27) Lesbians and gay men have become less alien in the world of sf in the last little while; we have, indeed, experienced a minor boom in the publishing of stories of "alternative sexuality," including Nicola Griffith’s own lesbian sf novels, Ammonite (1993) and Slow River (1995). Despite this, we remain aliens within that world in many of the same ways that our characters are aliens within those stories. And yet the work we do, in interrogating issues around the understanding and construction of sexuality in late twentieth-century Western culture, is of crucial importance, not just to ourselves but, as this anthology demonstrates, to everyone. For whether we adopt a rhetoric and politics of gay and lesbian identity or a rhetoric and politics of queer postmodernism, and whether we do so on the basis of political pragmatism or of faith, the very telling of these stories calls into question the assumptions that make us alien in the first place. [Editor’s Note: Too late for review, another important theme anthology arrived that converges with the concerns of Griffith and Pagel’s book: Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Debbie Notkin and the Secret Feminist Cabal for Edgewood Press (). The volume gathers stories that either won or were short-listed for the James Tiptree Award, given annually since 1991 to acknowledge sf and fantasy fiction that explores issues of gender in an innovative way. Authors represented in the book include Ursula K. Le Guin, Carol Emshwiller, James Patrick Kelly, and Eleanor Arnason.—RL] Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books. See how BookTrackr lets you customize WWEnd to reflect YOUR reading history. BookTrackr highlights the books you've read, your favorites, what you're reading now and what you want to read next. Some Strange Desire. This book does not appear to be part of a series. If this is incorrect, and you know the name of the series to which it belongs, please let us know. Synopsis. Tiptree and WFA nominated novelette. It was first published in Ellen Datlow's Omni Best Science Fiction Three (1993). The story can also be found in the anthologies Omni Best Science Fiction Three (1993), edited by Ellen Datlow, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventh Annual Collection (1994), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and in Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998), edited by Debbie Notkin. The story is included in the collection The Best of Ian McDonald (2016). Read the full story for free at Infinity Plus. Excerpt. No excerpt currently exists for this novel. Be the first to submit one! Reviews. Images. No alternate cover images currently exist for this novel. Be the first to submit one! Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and… Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. And Salome Danced - Kelly Eskridge. Odd Story, Didn't really captivate. The Lovers - Eleanor Arnason. An interesting story of a segregated society, where women and non-related men only come together to produce children. Its not a society of dominance, men go off to war, woman run the business and such. Its well written, great characters, but managed to capture the alienness of this society. It reads a lot like Ursula LeGuin. Chemistry - James Patrick Kelly. A story about created love vs real love, and what does it mean for relationships. Written well, but a bit unmemorable. Forgiveness Day - Urusula LeGuin - Typical LeGuin Story. Change in society creates change in a person. I've read this before, but keep forgetting it. Some Strange Desire - Ian McDonald. Its a story where sex equals living, where vampires don't drink blood but essence. Its not an easy story to read. Venus Rising - Carol Emshwiller. Typical Male tries to dominate Utopian type society. Doesn't see its positives only negatives. Another difficult story, but there is a positive flicker at the end of the it. Eat Reecebread - Graham Joyce and Peter F. Hamilton. I quite liked this story - a change in humanity scares the majority. Mortherhood, Etc - L. Timmel Duchamp. This can be a companion piece to "Eat Reecebread" similiar themes, similar outcome. I didn't like this one as much as Eat Reecebread, simply because the characters were more cardboard and acted as characatures of who they were supposed to be. The Other Magpie - R. Garcia Y Robertson. Didn't hold my attention so didn't finish it. Food Man - Lisa Tuttle. Strange story about a girl who wants to be in control of her life, including growing up, but lets her desire control her. Young Woman in a Garden - Delia Sherman. A young art historian finds that a love triangle isn't quite how it appears. Grownups - Ian McCleod. This story is creepy. Like skin crawling creepy - Definately intriguing, completely unexpected ending. Leaves you to ask when is a child an adult, and if you can truly define that line, how does society change. Interesting, but creepy. The Matters of Seggi -Ursula LeGuin. This is another thought provoking story by LeGuin. She creates a society where men are kept locked up and women rule. And as usual, she starts with a seemingly easy observation to make but turns it into something much more complex. ( ) Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy by Debbie Notkin. 13" x 11" hardcover, full color, $124.39, available here: https://tinyurl.com/EBC-Gomoll. My brother Steve is an engineer, a sports enthusiast, a salesman a very athletic guy, and a risk-taker. He downhill skis, preferring the most dangerous black diamond, "expert" trails. He almost broke his neck body surfing in Hawaii. He runs, plays basketball, waterskies, golfs, and probably engages in a dozen other sports I'm not even aware of. And he loves to travel, meet people and party. Where I tend to need to recover from social experiences like conventions or parties, Steve seems to recharge in those situations. I love to submerge myself in solitary projects; Steve likes to be active all the time. For the past many years, while he lived and worked out of Hong Kong, he'd come back to Wisconsin for a month-long visit and would invariably host a party at his house the day after the 22-hour flight from Hong Kong. So there are some pretty significant differences between us. So it was not an earth-shaking surprise when Steve told us that he was going to make a 15-day journey through Nepal to Everest Base Camp in October 2019. It was one of his life dreams, he said. (He has also said that another one of his life dreams is to visit Antarctica. I expect that he will start working on that one soon after he retires.) Steve trekked up to EBC with three other men whose ages ranged from 57–70. All were pursuing life dreams to trek to EBC. They became brothers and life-long friends as they hiked for 11 days, spent a total of 82 hours on the trail, and climbed (and descended) 9,163 feet during the month of October 2019. Steve appointed himself the team's photographer and took some truly gorgeous photos. I was very happy to spend time with these beautiful images as I laid out the book and communicated back and forth with Steve as we completed the final design. Steve provided a narrative for each day of the trip along with bios of his climbing buddies, guide and Sherpas. This text and a map make the book something more than a simple photo book. Steve notes in the acknowledgements of this book that our collaboration on this book was not easy: "Initially I was going to tackle this project on my own. It was Jeanne’s idea to help me. As we were working through the process of selecting pictures, placing them in the correct location on specific days, sizing them, putting captions on them, writing the narrations and the bios, there were moments when both of us wondered if, together, we would be able to make this work. We are Gomolls. That means we have strong opinions and get easily frustrated, and we both got frustrated. But we did make it work, and I can’t thank Jeanne enough for what we produced together. Best decision I made was to let Jeanne help me … I love you Jeanne." All true. And I love you too, Steve. Like my other family publication, Home Cooking, Our Trip to Everest Base Camp was not created in order to sell to a wide audience. The full- color pages in this large-format photo book make this an expensive publication. Steve goal was to present copies to his climbing buddies and some family members. But you can go to the Blurb.com page for this book and look through the pdf posted there if you'd like to see some of Steve's pictures. Empty Chairs by Anne Davidson Keller, Rocky Dell Press, 2017. One day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Anne Keller, who I'd never met. She'd gotten my name and contact information from a friend of a friend who knew that I was a freelance artist and designer. Anne wanted to talk to me about doing some artwork for a book cover, for a book she was planning to self-publish. "Oh, oh," I thought, a bit nervously. I've had the experience once or twice of talking with someone about a book idea for which they wanted my (free) help and being assured that I would get all sorts of valuable exposure from the final product. Nevertheless, Anne sounded like an interesting and sane person and I agreed to meet her for tea at a nearby coffee shop. After we'd settled down with our beverages, and chatted a bit to get acquainted, I asked Anne to tell me about her novel and she proceeded to tell me the story of Empty Chairs , about a family farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains during the 1940s. It was a totally delightful experience; Anne is a wonderful story-teller and her words sparked some images in my mind that seemed like they'd make interesting illustrations. In fact I sketched out an idea on the spot, right after she'd finished telling me the story, of a kitchen table with chairs all askew, as if the people sitting in them had just left. We discussed my fee and there was no mention of "exposure." Anne had so inspired me with her vision of the McDowell family, that I started work on the drawing almost as soon as I got home again. After changing the viewpoint from outside-through-a-window to inside-through-a-door, and after dropping the idea of having the father sitting at the table, I completed the drawing, colored it and offered it to Anne for approval. I was very happy with how the artwork had turned out and even happier that Anne liked it. After Anne struggled for a time with the on-line process of uploading her book to a print-on-demand publisher, she asked me to design the whole book and take on the job of publishing it. I was happy to do so. Anne is a careful and detail-oriented writer, so it was a joy to work with her. Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy , edited by Debbie Notkin and the Secret Feminist Cabal, book design with John D. Berry, 2008. This is the first Tiptree Award anthology of four, all edited by the Secret Feminist Cabal, or as they were more familiarly known at the time, Tiptree Motherboard members Debbie Notkin, Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jeff Smith. The purpose of this series of anthologies was to celebrate and keep in print some of the Tiptree short fiction winners and honor listees, as well as some related essays. The motherboard hopes to eventually publish more anthologies. The Otherwise Award (previously known as the James Tiptree Jr. Award) "celebrates science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender. We encourage each jury to take an expansive view of “science fiction and fantasy,” considering works that don’t fit into a narrow genre definition. We also seek out works that have a broad, intersectional, trans-inclusive understanding of gender in the context of race, class, nationality, disability, and more." John Berry designed the cover, featuring artwork by Freddie Baer; I designed the inside pages. Every Root an Anchor: Wisconsin's Famous and Historic Trees , by R. Bruce Allison, Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2006. I worked on this book while I was still employed as Senior Graphic Designer for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Later, after I'd left the state and started my own business (Union Street Design, LLC), I revised the design slightly for the Wisconsin State Historical Society Press. Bruce Allison was great to work with and I learned a lot about famous Wisconsin trees. I was especially enamored with Native American "trail marker trees," whose branches were purposely bent while they were saplings so that they would grow into obviously contorted shapes, thus providing signposts that translated as "Go This Way " to natives traveling through the forests. Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes , Photography by Laurie Toby Edison, Text by Debbie Notkin, Books in Focus, 1994. My dear friend Debbie Notkin asked me to design this book by herself and the fabulous photographer, Laurie Toby Edison. How could I possibly say no? Beautiful images, gorgeous photos, mind-bending, important essay.