In Th Is Issue

A LITERARY QUARTERLY April 2016 X Vol. 6. No. 2

Essay “I Begin to Meet You at Last”: On the Tiptree-Russ-Le Guin Correspondence by Julie Phillips

Poems Clear-Cut Spirit Song The Goddess of the Unseen The Gods of Tales #221 Woman Rising by Neile Graham

IN THIS ISSUE Men Who Aren’t Crazy by Sonya Taaffe Poetess Strikes Again by Gwynne Garfinkle

Grandmother Magma X Toward a Feminist Masculinity

The Will to Change, bell hooks Betsy James by Daniel Abraham

Book Reviews All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders The Merril Theory of Lit'ry Criticism by Judith Merril, edited by Ritch Calvin The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West edited by Cynthia Ward Damnificados “Since its launch in 2011 The Cascadia Subduction Zone has emerged as one by JJ Amaworo Wilson of the best critical journals the field has to offer.” h Jonathan McCalmont, February 18, 2013, Hugo Ballot Nomination Featured Artist Betsy James $5.00 Kath Arts L. Features Nisi Reviews Ann Managing

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y “I Begin to Meet You at Last”: On the Tiptree-Russ-Le Guin Correspondence by Julie Phillips

This was a talk given at the Univer- and talkative group of outsiders: sci­ sity of Oregon, December 4, 2015, ence fiction writers and fans. Unofficial at a symposium to honor the life and communication is important to all these work of Alice B. Sheldon and cel- groups, not only because it’s beautiful Alli’s papers are the place ebrate the donation of her papers to and fun and lively and sometimes ex­ where Tiptree lives. the University of Oregon Libraries. tremely funny, but also because it can Thank you for inviting me to speak, and help you learn to be yourself. It seems let me just say how great it is that you’ve to me that’s the story of science fiction: all come together for Alice S­ heldon this it’s the literature of imagination, but also year, the 100th anniversary of her birth. the literature of loneliness, of alienation, I’m especially pleased to be at an event and of connection. If you’re not like oth­ in honor of the Alice Sheldon papers. er people, and you can’t imagine what They’ve been donated by Jeff Smith, it might be like to be you, you’ve never who did a terrific job of keeping them all seen yourself reflected anywhere, you’re these years, and putting together editions wondering what planet you’d have to go of Alli’s work, and loaning them to me to to discover like minds, that’s when to write Alli’s life story. I know I became you start trying to dream up new possi­ very possessive about her papers while I bilities. And if you’re lucky, you can find was working on them, so I can imagine other people who can tell you something how hard it must be for Jeff to give them about who you are. [A]rchival research is the up — Jeff is now making crying faces in Within that conversation, I want to hot thing in academia right the audience — and I hope the University talk in particular about three writers now. Students and scholars i of Oregon appreciates his gift. whose lives were connected with each have taken a new interest other’s through the letters that are here. in letters and diaries and The papers are especially important 1 because Alice Sheldon’s entire imper­ Three writers who never met but who the private discourse that sonation of a male writer went on on knew each other intimately through goes on underneath and paper. It went on in the fiction she wrote their letters. I hope the University real­ around the public story. as James Tiptree Jr. and also a few im­ izes just how lucky they are to have the portant stories she wrote under a female papers not only of Alice Sheldon, but pseudonym, Raccoona Sheldon. And also of two other great writers, Joanna it went on in pages and pages of cor­ Russ and Ursula Le Guin. respondence with other writers. Alli’s Alice Sheldon, also known as Alli, also papers are the place where Tiptree lives. known as Tip, also known as James Tip­ Apparently archival research is the tree Jr. Born in 1915, she was an African hot thing in academia right now. Stu­ explorer, a debutante, a painter, an army dents and scholars have taken a new officer in the Second World War, a chick­ interest in letters and diaries and the pri­ en farmer, a research psychologist, and fi­ vate discourse that goes on underneath nally, became a published science fiction …that’s the story of and around the public story. Archives are writer under the name of a jar of jam. science fiction: it’s the full of discussions that are taking place From a young age, she’d felt herself literature of imagination, below the radar and outside the official to be different from everyone else, be­ but also the literature of view. I was just talking to Timmi Du­ ing bright and imaginative and also fall­ loneliness, of alienation, champ about what she called “the amaz­ ing into hopeless love affairs with other and of connection. ing power of conversation to shift your girls — one of whom died from a botched perspective.” And that’s it exactly; that’s abortion, just as Alli herself nearly died. what letters can do. She’d been well-liked, and very pretty — So when I heard this about archives I which creates its own problems — and immediately said, yes, of course, women, she learned to use her looks as a mask and LGBT people, and so on. But it’s for her differences, which served her fairly also true of another, particularly verbal well until at fifty-two she wound up, by Cont. on p. 2 I Begin to Meet You accident on purpose you might say, tak­ people in science fiction with the range at Last ing the intellectual role of a man. Her of interests that they had, who could go (Cont. from p. 1) performance as James Tiptree Jr. went from Philip K. Dick to Virginia Woolf on for about ten years, from 1967 to and back in the blink of a paragraph. 1977, and during that time she wrote Tip tended to put Ursula on a ped­ fan letters to, and started corresponding estal, and he certainly wasn’t alone in with, a number of her colleagues, espe­ this. While she was wrestling with the cially Russ and Le Guin. problem of feminist anger, she wrote to Ursula Le Guin was born in 1929. She Tip “I find […] that to some portions of grew up in Berkeley, California, where I our dear mutual Readership I have come think she must have absorbed science fic­ to represent Refinement, with a touch tion in the atmosphere. In the seventies, of Motherhood. Le Guin is the kind of after a visit to her family, she wrote to a sf writer it is safe to give your aunt for Ursula never transformed herself into a man, but friend, “I don’t understand how anybody Christmas. Jesus. Better, perhaps, they for a long time the main who has ever lived in California can ask should know the ugly truth. Some aunts characters of her stories me where I get my crazy ideas from. Sci­ are safe with me, others not. Bears just 1 3 were all men. ence Fiction is far behind Berkeley.” look cuddly.” Like Alli, she wasn’t at home in the Joanna Russ, the youngest of the three, world; she called high school a “Siberia” was born in 1937, a child of the 1950s. of mysterious social codes.2 She was at Like Alli Sheldon she was an only child; home in her family, but there was a cer­ like all three women she grew up very tain amount of competition between her bright and with a feeling of being iso­ and her three older brothers — all four lated and unrecognized. She was a senior blessed with great intellectual gifts and in high school at sixteen, when she was not shy about expressing them — and she a finalist in the Westinghouse Science H grew up determined to hold her own. Talent Search for 1953. At the awards Ursula never transformed herself into ceremony in Washington, she remem­ 2 a man, but for a long time the main bered saying to some of her fellow fi­ characters of her stories were all men. It nalists, “Even if we don’t know what had to do with a distance she needed be­ electrons are doing, it’s a comfort to tween her life and her fiction, but it also know that they know, don’t you think?” had to do with her sense of what heroes and suddenly realizing with a terrible could do, and what heroines couldn’t. feeling that even here no one else could 4 The fiction that was being written by make sense of what she’d said. women in the 1950s was alien to her, When she and Tip started correspond­ When [Joanna] and Tip and feeling alienated from a woman’s ing, in 1973, she was a committed femi­ started corresponding, voice, she ended up, like Alice Sheldon, nist and of the three she was the most in 1973, she was a writing from a male point of view. determined to find out what it meant committed feminist and of to write in a female voice. She was im­ the three she was the most She and Tip started corresponding in mensely good at tossing out ideas, determined to find out 1971, after Tip sent her a fan letter. They what it meant to write in communicated in part by exchanging though she could be very angry, too. a female voice. jokes. They loved playing around with She was a kind of brilliant loose cannon, each other’s names — Tiptree becomes partly I think because it just seemed so “Tree,” Ursula becomes “Bear” — and Ur­ impossible to her to be a woman and an sula sent him cartoons and drawings to intellectual, at least in her public life as a cheer him up. But the main thing was the professor. support they gave each other as intellec­ Every woman in academia I know tual women. There were very few women has had in some way to give up writing science fiction then, and very few being female (this means various things) in order to be a scholar, or 1 Le Guin to Virginia Kidd, 18 April 1978. 2 Le Guin, Ursula K. “My Libraries.” In The 3 Le Guin to Tiptree, 23 March 1975. Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the 4 Russ, Joanna. What Are We Fighting For?: Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism. Boston: Shambhala, 2004, 21. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998, xv. intellectual, or even artist. I gave “herself ” and wondering what that might it up very young, not even un­ mean. Of course “being yourself ” is one derstanding what was going on of those mysterious things. I think one in words — but by 14 I knew that reason people respond so strongly to Alli popularity, love, admiration, etc. Sheldon’s life is that a lot of people have etc. was not for me. The price was …the story I want to tell been in that place. They’ve been in a situ­ too high. […] I have been told by you here — and it’s an a colleague that I was an honorary ation where they’re trying to figure out unofficial story, full of male (!), and that “Of course your their identity and they don’t always have outtakes and digressions — sex doesn’t affect your teaching.” a lot to go on. Or they have a lot of dif­ is about who your friends ferent selves to draw on — and those are can help you to become, No, of course not; it’s this nasty, when you’re alone and furtive little vice I practice on my the people who end up becoming great 5 don’t know what to say or off-hours. writers, and of course great biography which self to be. So here we are with these literary ex­ subjects. There’s nothing more wonder­ changes, letter-writing being also the ful to write and think about than a com­ kind of vice one practices on one’s off- plex, contradictory personality. But they hours. And I feel like I should talk about don’t necessarily have an easy time of it the differences between a letter on paper in life. and electronic communication, and the And if you’re a student, and you’re way letters create a community that’s wrestling with this question, which you different from online communities, and anonymity online versus anonymity by almost certainly are, I should warn you mail. But that’s someone else’s essay, and that you’re never going to get it figured I hope one of you will write it. Actually out, and it doesn’t go away. And that’s what I really wanted to do with my time not a bad thing, because it’s kind of at up here was read all the parts of the let­ the core of living, but there are times i ters that I couldn’t fit in elsewhere, all when it isn’t easy. 3 the funny bits, like Joanna wondering Alice Sheldon dealt with “being her­ why men would like vampire movies, self ” by becoming someone else, Tiptree, and Tiptree’s brilliant comments on lit­ erature, and so on. Or I thought I would in her letters and her fiction. After nearly stand up here and do a PowerPoint of ten years of more and more intense cor­ Ursula’s cartoons. respondence and more elaborate imper­ 6 But as I was rereading the letters I sonation, it didn’t fit her very well. But There’s nothing more realized there’s a story I didn’t really after the revelation (for lack of a better wonderful to write and deal with in my book on Tiptree, or not word), at the end of 1976, Alli Sheldon think about than a enough. It’s about who you are when really felt like she didn’t have any self left complex, contradictory you’re corresponding — and of course personality. But they don’t at all. It happened at the same time as letters are as potentially dishonest a necessarily have an easy the death of her mother, and her death form as any other. You’re always using a time of it in life. persona when you’re writing, and there’s and Tiptree’s death, or departure, or un­ a certain amount of distortion for effect, masking left Alli stuck with what felt especially with writers, and the story that like nothing. She felt like the writing is told to an audience of one may not be was gone and here she was in real life, the complete story. But the story I want 6 Joanna, who had an uncanny ability to tell you here — and it’s an unofficial to see through Tiptree straight to Alli story, full of outtakes and digressions — without knowing she was doing it, got is about who your friends can help you into a discussion of secret identities to become, when you’re alone and don’t in which she wrote to Tip: “The really know what to say or which self to be. awful thing about having a cover, I After the revelation of her identit­ y, should think, is that you must be it (in Alice Sheldon was trying to write as order not to betray it) so it ends up being not an act but a schizoid split in 5 Russ to Tiptree, 18 September 1973. your very soul.” (24 November 1973). Cont. on p. 4 I Begin to “nothing but an old lady in Virginia.”7 there’s something I would not have told Meet You at Last She wrote to Ursula: James) and quite often feel as old as any­ 10 (Cont. from p. 3) My “real,” daily-life self is a long- body need feel and twice as tired!” elaborated kind of animated pup­ And in the rest of the letter she wrote pet show, with its own validity to about things she was doing, told about her be sure — it gets married and holds mother, who was then going through her jobs and does things like that last illness, and invited Alli into her life. [...] — but those 8 years in sf was Alli responded with sympathy and with the first time I could be really real. delight at the renewed warmth. “Your [...] Now all that is gone, and I am letter was […] spring rain after a drought back with the merry dumb-show so long I had forgot to feel parched. And 8 as life, and it doesn’t much suit. the pleasure — Do you know, I believe I “Everything I said was 11 true — all the feelings are For a long time Alli struggled with begin to meet you at last?” still there — yet some mold depression, and her health, and her hus­ And before you know it the two of is broken and a new one band’s health, and with a lot of other them are discussing the use of the pres­ yet to form.” practical problems, like their house, ent tense in fiction, and Ursula’s read­ (Tiptree to Le Guin) which was falling apart, and the demands ing of Lukacs, and the rise of Margaret of her mother’s estate. (I tell you all this Thatcher, and cats, they’re making lan­ because some people who read the book guage jokes and brainstorming titles for think, “Oh, her identity was revealed and Alli’s new novel. And Alli was able to then she got depressed and committed transform what I think must have been suicide,” and it wasn’t like that.) She had real love, in-love-with love for Ursula heart surgery, and that interrupted her into deep sympathy and concern. correspondence for a long time. Alli had always seen talking as a But a couple of years after the rev­ woman as a genuinely different mode of H elation Alli and Ursula, in their let­ communication, and being female as be­ ters, started working at picking up the ing a persona in its own right. In a letter 4 thread between them. Alli wrote Ursula to Ursula in 1980 she asked: that she didn’t know what to write, or in Do you have the problem, when what tone, or even on what stationery. chatting seriously with someone She complained about the clumsiness of (I’m sure I can’t imagine chatting age and said: “It’s so odd writing you as with no one — or can I? […]) that me — ‘just another woman’ — with all that your mind contains not only the somehow implies. Everything I said was main stream of converse, but a sort true — all the feelings are still there — yet of ever-changing scenic panorama some mold is broken and a new one yet of asides, associations, peripheral to form. […] Who is she? Who am I? Do qualifiers, etc. etc., much of which we correspond?”9 She worried that Ur­ comes across naturally in speech, …all this digression sula would never trust her again. especially with women, who are and joking around is important; it isn’t an Ursula wrote her back saying not to infinitely better conversers, but aside to the story, it is worry, “You aren’t the person who wrote which make trouble on the printed the story. me — but I’m not the person who wrote page? A lot of it is junk, of course you, either, so we proceed (as always) […] but a certain quantity is nec­ from here. No? — But my dear Alice essary for the larger accuracies.12 please stop pulling age on me!! I’ll be By “larger accuracies” she said she 50 in October and I get my god damn meant the “truth-in-context,” “the qual­ period every 3 weeks for 3 weeks (now ity of the emotional rapport.” In other 7 Sheldon, Alice B. “A Woman Writing words, all this digression and joking Science Fiction.” In Dupont, Denise, ed. around is important; it isn’t an aside to Women of Vision: Essays by Women Writ- the story, it is the story. What Alli re­ ing Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988, 52. 10 Le Guin to Sheldon, 19 April 1979. 8 Sheldon to Le Guin, 23 April 1977. 11 Sheldon to Le Guin, 23½ April 1979. 9 Sheldon to Le Guin, 14 April 1979. 12 Sheldon to Le Guin, 16 August 1980 ally means is that she refuses to see her directness that made it possible for her gender or her sexuality as “furtive little to address some of Alli’s dilemmas, and vices that she practices in her off-hours.” show her that they were shared dilem­ This was at a time when both she and mas, that Alli wasn’t alone, and to talk Ursula were rethinking their writing, about what might be the path forward and were having a difficult time with it. to being or becoming oneself. Ursula was just starting to turn to femi­ I want to finish up with one exchange nism, and to explore what writing as a between Alli and Joanna that took place woman might mean for her work. And in 1980, nearly four years after the big in this they were able to see each other, reveal and seven years before Alli, worn The junk is the selves, or partially, but nonetheless, to meet each out by bad health and depression, com­ maybe it’s what rubs off when the selves scrape other at last and to talk about what it mitted suicide. Alli had written to Jo­ against each other; it’s anna saying, might mean to be the Other, writing. the funny bits and the So this is my problem in talking to It occurred to me to wonder if I asides that go straight to you, because how can I convey the im­ ever told you in so many words your heart. portance of this correspondence without that I too am a Lesbian — or at myself becoming parenthetical, without least as close as one can come to telling you all the junk that’s so impor­ being one never having had a suc­ tant for the larger accuracies? The junk cessful love with any of the women is the selves, or maybe it’s what rubs off I’ve loved, and being now too old when the selves scrape against each oth­ and ugly to dare try. Oh, had 65 er; it’s the funny bits and the asides that years been different! I like some go straight to your heart. It’s the junk men a lot, but from the start, be­ fore I knew anything, it was always that’s so valuable that it’s preserved in 14 boxes in a climate controlled room, to be girls and women who lit me up. studied by students who will determine Joanna responded with a nine-page let­ i its value for future generations. ter, and here’s some of what she said: I’ve been reading your letter and 5 The other person with whom Alli crying, on and off. I’m very moved. went on sharing all this essential “junk” No, you never told me. I always is ­Joanna Russ. Joanna, in letters, is a dif­ wondered, though — first of all ficult character, with a lot of anger, which because I find you very beauti­ did a lot of real damage, to Ursula among ful in your photographs, in that others. Yet the anger is part of the way high-handed sort of way I love in Joanna can recognize Alli’s experience. women. I mean you look real and Where Alli directs her anger inward, full of Tiptreeness. As well as, ob­ Joanna gives her a model for turning it jectively, quite lovely, something I outward, and for using the imagination know you’ll never believe. Joanna also mentions to transform situations and points of Joanna also mentions the attractive­ the attractiveness view. What I mean is, in one of her earli­ ness of Tiptree’s female characters, and of Tiptree’s female est letters to Tiptree she fantasizes about Tiptree’s “amazing facility at male im­ characters, and Tiptree’s turning on one’s oppressors, “like the rat personation” — except that he was a man “amazing facility at male who runs up the broom handle (they do who was too good to be true. “I was impersonation” — except this) when you’re trying to hit it. I like madly in love with Tiptree and sensed that he was a man who rats and bats (who are not only mice, but uneasily that this was odd, since no real was too good to be true. they fly). Imagine a mamma bat saying man, and no real man as truly revealed in to baby bat: ‘Show your teeth, dear. Look literature has ever had that effect on me rabid. That’s right.’”13 of intimacy and ‘I know you.’” And Joanna didn’t have the prob­ Alli’s depressions also made her sus­ lem that Alli and Ursula had of being pect, she said. cautious around difficult subjects. She I think I asked you once point- waded right in, with an honesty and a blank about the connection ­between 13 Russ to Tiptree, 18 September 1973. 14 Sheldon to Russ, 25 September 1980. Cont. on p. 6 I Begin to Meet You ­Lesbianism and depression and face of suppression and confusion. at Last you said Mmfp wmpf murble yes Which is a gift. (Cont. from p. 5) no never mind. […] I’m so glad you wrote me and The terrible thing is how all this is so moved. […] A world that slices hidden from us — what is a Lesbian up human feelings into separate anyhow? It’s unthinkable, invisible, parts and sticks them in compart­ ments marked “personal,” “imper­ This is the value of ridiculous, Somebody Else, duck- tail haircuts and leather jackets, all sonal,” “normal,” “abnormal” — all correspondence… 15 It’s about refusing to that nonsense. […] that nonsense! Well, it’s bad. divide up human feelings, Dear Tip, have you any IDEA of This is the value of correspondence, of refusing to separate the the women all over the U.S. of A. all the asides and the humor and the sud­ personal from the official, den flashes of insight. It’s about refusing celebrating the way people who would trample each other into mulch just for a chance to kiss to divide up human feelings, refusing to live and love each other separate the personal from the official, and drive each other crazy. your toes? celebrating the way people live and love And then Joanna confessed that she her­ each other and drive each other crazy. self had really had very little experience Pseudonyms have so many uses, and with women in bed. not all of them are harmless. We’ve seen It takes such a lot of WORK!!! a lot of examples of that online lately. First there are the decades of find­ Another name can provide a safe cover ing out — making headway against for cruelty and slander. Another self can the whole world, it seems — and let a troll express the unacceptable, and then the decade finding out What not only to the outside world; I imag­ To Do (which depends entirely ine it makes a safe compartment in the I think one thing everyone on one’s circumstances and what psyche for hate — oh, no, all that hating H loves so much about Alice year it is) […] and then learning is just a thing this other person does; it Bradley Tiptree Sheldon that sex isn’t all that crucial. We’re isn’t really me. When anonymity is mag­ 6 is that she used her so surrounded with ersatz images nified by the echo chamber, it can enable pseudonym for good. that the real thing has to be dis­ anything from Occupy to Gamergate. entangled utterly — and it is im­ I think one thing everyone loves so portant, to know and feel it, but so much about Alice Bradley Tiptree Shel­ unimportant to live up to all that don is that she used her pseudonym for magazine-y, book-y, movie stuff. good. She used it to escape from a place […] If I go to my grave celibate, at in which she wasn’t being seen as herself. least I’ll be me and have the kind She became another to say something of friendships with women that about that self, and in keeping her let­ sexuality makes possible. ters she offered her conversations to us, her readers, so we can meet her, and our­ […] Erotics is important, I guess. selves, at last. To dive down into the bottom of it and come up with a silly smile on Note: Permission for publication of one’s face, saying Burble. And then the correspondence has been given sink to the bottom and lie there by ­Ursula K. Le Guin, the estate twiddling one’s toes, a small chain of Joanna Russ, the estate of James Julie Phillips is a book of bubbles rising… Tiptree Jr, and the University of critic and the author of the Oregon Libraries as owners of NBCC and Hugo Award- […] I didn’t know. I followed the physical property rights to the winning James Tiptree, Jr.: women all over and loved women collection: Special Collections and The Double Life of Alice and was jealous and anxious and in University Archives, University of B. Sheldon. She lives in love and still didn’t know! Amsterdam, where she’s Oregon Libraries. working on a book about […] Oh, yes, I know those wom­ writing and mothering, to an-woman loves: just absolutely be called The Baby on the right and recognizable, something Fire Escape. inside that says “I know” in the 15 Russ to Sheldon, 29 September 1980. Men Who Aren’t Crazy Poetess Strikes Again by Sonya Taaffe by Gwynne Garfinkle Your father, the doctor, a rational man “Scholars Discover New Poems from from his stethoscope to his scalpel, Ancient Greek Poetess Sappho” — crisp as a hospital jacket, The Daily Beast, January 28, 2014 hearty as a cold plunge, impermeable as a padded door. there’s that word again Your fiancé, the man-about-town, word that starts like spit and ends Gwynne Garfinkle lives in so well-versed in the vagaries of women with a pretended caress Los Angeles. Her poetry he offered London and fiction have appeared with all its back streets and night fogs word to cut a giant down to size The Incredible Shrinking Poetess in such publications as carelessly to your blood-trance as Strange Horizons, as his own white-collared throat. okay, word, go through your dance Interfictions, Mythic Your guest, the professor, riffle through her pages Delirium, inkscrawl, and prescribing counter-charms cross out, rip out whatever bits don’t fit The Mammoth Book of like laws of science, Dieselpunk. She is working for every shadow its wolfsbane, paint the claws of a lioness with pearly on a book of poems for every mist its cross, pink polish, just try it inspired by classic films, for every mystery its stake. glue taffeta onto a marble goddess’s TV, and pop culture. No wonder you did not scream breasts and hips the night you woke to find him efface her drifting through your room if you can reach her face like a lost haunting, or stuff her into your poetess box the lunatic in his shirtsleeves and watch her spring free i who grinned like a death’s-head and sobbed like a broken-hearted boy 7 and held out his wrists as candidly as pouring a drink. What had you to fear from a man who knew without asking how eyes could turn to lips and dreams to hunger no invalid’s broth could ease? Even now, instead of lilies The Goddess of the Unseen in the sanitarium’s graveyard, you leave him bones of small things by Neile Graham that once held blood — I want to see inside when all the men around you the leaves, their dark wet made decisions for your life, unders the inners, the bones the madman of their hands. Inside watched the moon set over the lawn, their green, their brown/orange/red talked of ghost ships, their cell linings, the space mourned for his lost spiders, between their atoms that Neile Graham's life is full and asked if you had ever kept a cat. theoretically could walk through me of writing and writers. A I want to see what holds graduate of the Clarion them up what glues West Writers Workshop, them together. Me up. she currently serves as their Sonya Taaffe’s short fiction and award- You together. workshop director. Her winning poetry have appeared in multiple poetry collections include venues. Her latest collection is Ghost Signs. Spells for Clear Vision and She is currently a senior poetry editor for Blood Memory, and a spoken Strange Horizons. word CD. y Toward a Feminist Masculinity by Daniel Abraham The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, by bell hooks. Washington Square Press, 2004. Reprint. $15.95, paperback, $11.99, ebook.

…hooks takes the tools One of the structural ironies of hu­ of feminist analysis and man interaction is that the people most turns them to the subjects intimately engaged in a struggle — those of men and masculinity… best informed and with an understand­ ing that is most deeply considered and The process of training boys to be men in the tested — are often the easiest to dismiss patriarchal system, hooks as arguing to their own self-interest. says, is exquisitely cruel. People who are able to clearly and thoughtfully advocate for those unlike themselves — the man who speaks out for the autonomy of women, the white per­ son who stands against white supremacy, the oil company executive who calls for renewable energy, the Wall Street trader who demands more regulation, etc. — are more difficult to dismiss because the ­ar that patriarchal norms cultivate fear and guments they make don’t appear to be to violence in men. their immediate advantage. This is why And, bravely, hooks implicates the ways bell hooks is able to be such a powerful H in which early feminists, including her­ advocate for men. self, failed to address the deformations In The Will to Change, with a rare and 8 that patriarchy visits upon men. “De­ powerful compassion hooks takes the spite all the expressed feminist longing tools of feminist analysis and turns them for men of feeling, when men worked to to the subjects of men and masculinity get in touch with their feelings, no one and of how traditional patriarchy de­ really wanted to reward them. In femi­ grades both individuals and the cultural nist circles men who wanted to change narratives that surround them. She ac­ were often labeled narcissistic or needy.” knowledges the reputation feminism has Hooks addresses the experience of be­ gained — often, but not always, undeserv­ ing a boy naively born into a patriarchal edly — of casting men in the role of the system, violence as an integral part of the enemy and then takes her stand against cultural experience of masculinity, popu­ the exclusion and denigration of men lar images and models of manhood, and by the patterns and customs of patriar­ the overburdening of male sexuality. chy. She explicitly says that the book is The process of training boys to be “about our need to live in a world where men in the patriarchal system, hooks women and men can belong together.” says, is exquisitely cruel. She considers Throughout The Will to Change, she the process of taking fully human, rich- draws from her experiences with men hearted boys, creating a test of manhood who were in relationships that should that haunted the men hooks speaks for, have been expected to be loving: her and “the moment that they were com­ father, her brother, her boyfriend. She pelled to give up their right to feel, to talks about her experiences as a teacher love in order to take their place as pa­ whose students bring their reports of triarchal men.” Through religious tradi­ their own fathers and brothers and lov­ Grandmother Magma tion, through patterns of generational ers and selves. She uses all of this and her violence, through the punishment by own long experience as an intellectual other men and the contempt of women and social critic to illuminate the ways trained to expect emotional numbness, hooks argues, boys are taught that they tional male roles, the question of what, if must narrow themselves emotionally in anything, exists in patriarchal masculin­ exchange for safety and become in turn ity that is not simply violence — deserve the guards in their own prisons. When much more discussion than any single addressing violence, hooks pulls no volume can offer. It’s not her job to do …she’s carved our culture punches. She outlines the tremendous it all. That she has shown feminism as a at the joints. price that male violence exacts, both on pathway to a full, healthy, loving, nur­ women and children and between men. turing masculinity is a great kindness, The training of boys into violence is, she and important not only to the experi­ argues, so pervasive as to be invisible. ence of men but also to the long-term The exceptions made allowing men success of feminism as a civilizing force to express and experience emotion — in human culture. anger and sexual desire — leave men ill- Anyone who is or loves a man — broth­ equipped to have a fully human life. er, father, friend, lover, or son — would do Anger is forced to do double or triple well to sit with hooks for a few hours duty as an expression not only of rage and imagine with her how revolutionary but also of grief and despair. Sexual de­ it might be for men to be healed too. That she has shown sire is called on to carry not just healthy feminism as a pathway lust, but any kind of longing, frustration to a full, healthy, loving, or need, and when sexual release does nurturing masculinity is a not answer the underlying and incoher­ great kindness. ent needs it’s called on to satisfy, there is no other healthy, humane outlet. But hooks does see an alternative. Even within the small sample of her own family, the impulse toward love and Award winning and NYT i away from the standard deformations of bestselling author and television patriarchy does sometimes win through. producer Daniel Abraham also 9 “Ultimately the men who choose against writes as MLN Hanover and violence, against death, do so because the James half of James SA they want to live fully and well, because Corey. He has twenty-three they want to know love. These are the books in print and over forty men who are true heroes, the men whose published short stories. lives we need to know about, honor and remember.” The Will to Change is a difficult book. But it is written clearly, accessibly, and with a depth of feeling and personal ex­ perience that are hard to look away from. The experience of men is not a subject that is often treated with both deep com­ passion and critical intelligence. The au­ thor’s analysis is powerful, and speaking as someone whose life experience over­ laps with Dr. hooks’ very little, I found the world she describes profoundly rec­ ognizable. I, for one, believe she’s carved our culture at the joints. The vision of an anti-patriarchal masculinity that hooks builds toward is, I think, still in its infancy. Many is­ sues that hooks raises in the book — ho­ mosexuality and masculinity, the part played by women in enforcing tradi­ y An Outcast Romance Facing the Apocalypse All the Birds in the Sky,y b Charlie Jane Anders, Tor Books, January 2016, 313 pp., $25.99, hardcover, $12.99 e-book. reviewed by S. Qiouyi Lu

All the Birds in the Sky is many things: it’s a love story, an apocalyptic tale, and a coming of age novel. But readers go­ Anders does a masterful ing in expecting a classic story of the job of showing both the destruction of the Earth will be disap­ humor and the sadness pointed; the novel isn’t structured with inherent in growing up in the apocalypse at its core. Nor does it difficult situations.… feel like the apocalypse is meant to be Patricia and Laurence are embodiments the main event. Instead, the relationship of that conflict. Various forces conspire between Patricia Delfine and Laurence to pull Laurence and Patricia apart. Yet Armstead is the true center of the story. the two find themselves drawn to each Patricia and Laurence are childhood other again and again, even forming a friends — or perhaps it’s more accurate romantic relationship. At the end of the to say that they’re childhood misfits who book, a cataclysmic event pushes them found company in each other. Consid­ together once more as the world hurtles ered outcasts by the other students at toward apocalypse. Together, they face school, the two of them seem to under­ the destruction of the Earth and struggle stand each other, though they’re reluc­ to find a solution. tant at first to form a friendship. Even H Anders’s writing is brilliant. There’s so, they keep spending time with each such a strong voice through All the Birds other, and their relationship deepens. 10 in the Sky, and Anders does a masterful They find their aptitudes: Laurence is job of showing both the humor and the fascinated by technology, whereas Patri­ sadness inherent in growing up in diffi­ cia explores magic, which she discovered cult situations: “[Patricia’s parents] locked through a number of strange encoun­ Patricia in her room for a week, sliding ters. But, while mentors encourage Lau­ food under her door. The bottom of the door rence’s interest in science, and while tended to scrape off the top layer of whatever Patricia is enthusiastic about helping type of food it was. Like if it was a sand- Laurence with his supercomputer proj­ wich, the topmost piece of bread was taken ect, Patricia finds that her own powers away by the door. You don’t really want to only cause her isolation and misunder­ eat a sandwich after your door has had the standing: when she shows Laurence that first bite[.]” Even as the narrative darkens, she can talk to cats, Laurence panics and Anders continues to inject moments of runs away from her. humor, which never feel misplaced. The After a period of separation and the youthful voices of Patricia and Laurence end of their tumultuous childhoods, Pa­ are distinct and three-dimensional. Even tricia and Laurence find each other again the most minor characters have their own as young adults in the “hipster mecca” of personalities and quirks that make them San Francisco. Patricia, a graduate of the feel like they’re fully realized people. Eltisley Maze school of magic, has de­ Although the main focus of All the veloped her magical skills and become Birds in the Sky is character and relation­ much more powerful. Laurence has be­ ship development, an undercurrent of come a technological whiz kid, part of commentary on gender runs through­ a prestigious “ten percent group” that is out the story. Laurence, a boy, gets in­

Reviews working on a massive technological in­ volved with technology, and Patricia, novation. Science and magic are estab­ a girl whose core strength is empathy, lished in the narrative as opposites, and gets involved with magic. Rather than feeling stereotypical, though, these as­ scope. It’s difficult to fully describe the signments become a backdrop to cri­ narrative because Anders touches on so tique: we see Laurence coasting through many topics, yet combines them seam­ life and being encouraged at every step lessly into an engaging story. Autonomy to pursue his dreams, whereas Patricia’s and service, love and friendship, nature Although focused on two experiences are denied, and her natural and nurture, science and the natural, people, All the Birds in talents suppressed again and again. Lau­ philosophy and humor all weave togeth­ the Sky dares to be epic rence is permitted the room to develop er into a beautiful story, its iterations as in scope. an ego, whereas Patricia is chastised for myriad as all the birds that fly through­ “Aggrandizement,” magic users’ term for out its pages. mistakenly believing oneself to be more important than others. At the same time, S. Qiouyi Lu is a writer, we see Laurence’s flaws and Patricia’s artist, narrator, and translator strengths. Anders writes a complex nar­ whose work has appeared in rative that reflects the contemporary sup­ Clarkesworld and inkscrawl. They pression of feminine-coded traits in our enjoy destroying speculative culture and society while challenging it. fiction as a dread member of the Although focused on two people, All queer Asian SFFH illuminati. S. the Birds in the Sky dares to be epic in lives in Ohio with a tiny black cat named Thin Mint.

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Cottonwood, Betsy James

Cont. on p. 14 y A Major ’60s SF Critic Gets Her Due The Merril Theory of Lit’ry Criticism, by Judith Merril, edited by Ritch Calvin, Aqueduct Press, March 2016, 360 pp., $22, trade paperback, $8.95 e-book. reviewed by Michael Levy

I kind of grew up with Judith Merril. For a major writer at a time when ma­ jor writers were supposed to be prolific, she actually wrote relatively little, but For years I used Merril’s as a voracious reader of anything sci­ reviews as a buying guide, ence fictional in the 1960s and 1970s, and her anthologies gave I consumed the majority of her fiction, me practically my first from paperback reprints of her two solo access to the fiction of novels, Shadow on the Hearth (1950) and Ballard, Aldiss, Disch, The Tomorrow People (1960) to Gunner Ellison, and the exciting Cade (1960), one of her two underrated world of New Wave collaborations with C. M. Kornbluth online version of the book contain­ science fiction. using their Cyril Judd pseudonym, to a ing a more extensive sampling of Mer­ variety of her short fictions, most nota­ ril’s work. Anyone who purchases the bly her first published story, the classic physical volume receives a complimen­ “That Only a Mother” (1948), which I tary version of this e-text. The book is actually still teach in my science fiction the fourth in Aqueduct’s rather eclectic course. But what really impressed me Heirloom Books series, which has here­ about Merril was her literary criticism. I tofore included Suzy McKee Charnas’s H know that sounds odd considering I was neglected 1986 literary fantasy, Dorothea a teenager, but it’s true. On a momen­ Dreams, Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett’s 12 tous occasion in my youth a neighbor obscure, late-nineteenth century femi­ had hired me to help her clean out her nist utopia New Amazonia, and talent­ garage, and as payment she gifted me ed if largely forgotten leftist SF writer with two large boxes containing, among Chandler Davis’s collection of selected other things, a nearly complete run of fiction and nonfiction,It Walks in Beauty. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fic- The Merril Theory of Lit’ry Criticism be­ tion. In F&SF, beginning in 1965, Merril gins with an essay by Calvin titled “The published her somewhat eccentric book SF Aesthetics of Judith Merril,” which reviews. Also in those boxes was a com­ gives a brief but useful overview of her plete run of Merril’s The Year’s Greatest life, her (at the time controversial) defi­ Science-Fiction and Fantasy anthology nition of science (or speculative) fiction, The introductions show series, replete with many pages of her her aesthetics, and other key aspects of Merril at her conversational opinions about science fiction, politics, and sometimes thorny and life in general. For years I used Mer­ her critical work. It then goes on to pro­ best, making clear her ril’s reviews as a buying guide, and her vide three kinds of nonfiction: The intro­ gradually evolving agenda anthologies gave me practically my first ductions to Merril’s The Year’s Greatest for putting forward what access to the fiction of Ballard, Aldiss, Science-Fiction and Fantasy volumes she called the New Thing… Disch, Ellison, and the exciting world of from 1956 to 1966, her monthly F&SF New Wave science fiction. review columns from 1965 to 1969; and I’m pleased, therefore, to see this new a number of miscellaneous pieces writ­ selection of Merril’s critical work, ed­ ten for various reasons and published in ited by feminist science fiction scholar varying venues; these last include essays Ritch Calvin of Stony Brook University. on Theodore Sturgeon (only in the e- Merril’s nonfiction is voluminous, how­ version) and Fritz Leiber (two authors ever — way too much to fit in a single she much admired), and a two-part es­ physical volume — so publisher Aqueduct say “What Do You Mean? Science? Fic­ has thoughtfully created a much larger, tion?” that originally appeared in early issues of the scholarly journal Extrapola- immersing those ideas in a hack-work, tion in 1966. pulp plot: “I don’t think any amount of The introductions show Merril at her effort or ability could have made this …she generally preferred conversational and sometimes thorny odd hodgepodge of concepts stick to­ to analyze genre-related best, making clear her gradually evolv­ gether” (133). Harlan Ellison’s own take trends in the publishing ing agenda for putting forward what she on the New Thing, as featured in his industry — what was new, what had gotten stale, called the New Thing (which we now mammoth anthology Dangerous Visions how many venues there know as the New Wave), as the most (1967), seemed to Merril to be very were for short science exciting, the most aesthetically and in­ much a mixed bag and hardly as danger­ fiction — or just to go tellectually challenging, and the highest ous as he claimed. Frederik Pohl’s work, on about whatever she quality sort of science fiction being pro­ for example the novel A Plague of ­Pythons thought was important duced in either England or the United (1965), was not without value, but was inside SF or outside of it. States. Sometimes she talked about in­ too often trivial (interestingly, Merril dividual stories in these introductions, had been married to Pohl from 1948 to but she generally preferred to analyze 1952). genre-related trends in the publishing Also fascinating is the fact that al­ industry — what was new, what had got­ though Merril is generally assumed to ten stale, how many venues there were have been a strong feminist — she cer­ for short science fiction — or just to go tainly conducted much of her life that on about whatever she thought was im­ way — feminist politics rarely if ever ap­ portant inside SF or outside of it. Her peared in her nonfiction and (as might brand of leftist politics is particularly be noted from her list of favorite writ­ interesting. ers above) she reviewed and praised very Nearly everything that Merril had few women writers — Phyllis Gottlieb to say is interesting, though on this re­ gets a brief, fairly positive mention for Merril was at the center of one of the most exciting reading, I found that what I enjoyed Sunburst (1965), and Zenna Henderson periods of change in our i and a very young Ursula K. Le Guin also most were the places where she was be­ field, and her introductions ing most contentious, playing either the receive some praise. and book reviews provide 13 controversialist or the curmudgeon, so to Today Merril, who died at the age of one of the very best speak. Cases in point: In Merril’s opin­ 74 in 1997, less than a year after being records of that excitement. ion J.G. Ballard, author of The Wind from named Guest of Honor at WisCon, is Nowhere (1961), was clearly the best sci­ not all that well remembered outside of ence fiction writer on the planet, being the close-knit community of feminist SF “well on his way toward becoming the fans. “That Only a Mother” continues first truly conscious and controlled liter­ to be anthologized with some regular­ ary artist s-f has produced” (95). She also ity, however, and her novels, collections, had numerous good things to say about and anthologies are generally available in the work of Brian Aldiss, Cordwainer used or electronic editions. Merril’s auto­ Smith, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, biography, Better to Have Loved (2002), Theodore Sturgeon, Richard McKenna, co-authored with her granddaughter Harlan Ellison, John Barth, Fritz Leiber, Emily Pohl-Weary, shows twelve new Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, and and fourteen used copies available on (interestingly enough) Clifford Simak, Amazon (order one today). And now though even these favored writers came Ritch Calvin and Aqueduct Press have in for criticism when they produced given us this generous selection of her Michael Levy teaches a book or short story that Merril con­ nonfiction. Merril was at the center science fiction and children’s literature at the University sidered to be too overtly commercial or of one of the most exciting periods of of Wisconsin-Stout. A change in our field, and her introduc­ not up to her aesthetic standards. Philip widely published scholar and K. Dick’s work went from earning high tions and book reviews provide one of reviewer, his books include praise to receiving harsh criticism in less the very best records of that excitement. Children’s Fantasy Literature: than a paragraph. In Merril’s opinion This is a lovely book, and belongs on the An Introduction, co-authored Frank Herbert, while he had a few neat shelf of anyone interested in the history with Farah Mendlesohn. He’s ideas in Dune (1965) and worked very of science fiction. past-president of both the hard at it, basically ruined the book by SFRA and the IAFA. y Secret Histories of Olondria’s Women The Winged Histories, by Sofia Samatar, Small Beer Press, March 2016, 300 pp., $24, hardcover, $14.95, e-book. reviewed by Tansy Rayner Roberts

With the rise of a violent rebellion in Olondria, history is made on the battle­ field as well as behind closed doors. But whose history are we reading? The Winged Histories explores the way that the perspectives of women are often Sofia Samatar writes the first things to be lost (if they were gorgeous prose, so recorded at all) when history pins down lyrical and thoughtful the “important” aspects of world events in her choices that I am reminded of reading (when studying the history of women warrior — and how other people, includ­ Patricia McKillip for the you learn early on that the definition ing her fellow soldiers and their various first time. of “important” has traditionally meant hosts, deal with her dual nature. In the “things done by men”). The secret histo­ later histories we learn that Tav shares ry of women is a theme that has always credit for the rebellion with her head­ fascinated me, in historiography as well strong cousin Prince Andasya and is as in fiction — and it’s something that I perceived by most (including her sister delight in seeing expressed in the con­ Siski, the fourth protagonist of the nov­ text of a fantasy world. el) as a bold, revolutionary warrior figure. Sofia Samatar writes gorgeous prose, We meet other women along the H so lyrical and thoughtful in her choices way: Tialon of the History of the Stone, that I am reminded of reading Patricia daughter and successor living in the 14 McKillip for the first time. It’s easy to shadow of her High Priest father’s leg­ be swept away by the language so thor­ acy, and Seren of the History of Music oughly that unless you pay very close at­ whose love affair with Tav is disrupted tention, the story itself can take second by the greater events of the nation at war. billing. I very much enjoyed Samatar’s Siski’s story is framed around the use of debut novel, A Stranger in Olondria, but I young royal women as political pawns, often did find myself so distracted by the whose fates rise and fall with the sta­ prettiness of it all that I failed to pay at­ tus of their family. The most important tention to what was going on in the plot. This wasn’t the case for The Winged woman in the story who does not narrate Samatar’s heroines read her own History is Mardith, Queen of books, write their own Histories, possibly because the theme is Olondria and the ruthless matchmak­ stories and songs, and of such strong interest for me, but also dig their way out of the because of the mosaic novel structure, ing aunt of Tav and Siski. I would have marginalia of the history which provides a solid framework to loved to read her contribution; though that confines them. contain Samatar’s lovely prose: the text it’s not like she holds back her opinion is separated into four novella-length and perspective in both of the Histories Histories (of the Sword, of the Stone, presented by her nieces! of Music, and of Flight), each from the Each History revolves around a book point of view of a different female pro­ or some other notation of events past, tagonist: swordmaiden, priestess, bard, whether it be the volume of military and princess. philosophy that Tav holds so dear to her Tavis, our first heroine, is a niece of heart (which her aunt destroys in a fit of the royal family of Olondria, who has cruelty), Tialon’s unsettled relationship caused a scandal by training as a soldier with the book documenting the great­ and serving in the military. Through ness of her father (in which she, the un­ Tav’s eyes we see how she navigates her named daughter, is barely a footnote), liminal status as a woman as well as a Seren’s collection of songs, dances, and past loves as a complex, epic oral his­ inevitably, fail to capture anything but a tory, or Siski’s attempts to reconcile the shadow of the real life events). incomplete, unsatisfying Dreved Histo­ This is not a novel to be read in a hurry. This is not a novel to be ries — a book of portents — with what is It requires diligence and close attention. read in a hurry. It requires really happening to her darling cousin/ But there is so much to be discovered in diligence and close lover Dasya. this complex, layered, fragmented his­ attention. Samatar’s heroines read books, write tory that you might even forget (as I al­ their own stories and songs, and dig most did) that Olondria is an imaginary their way out of the marginalia of the kingdom. history that confines them. The Winged Tansy Rayner Roberts is a Tasmanian Histories is about how history warps and author, editor, and podcaster. Her changes reality, even as words and books published work includes Cranky (and historians) try to pin down the Ladies of History (as editor), Love & “truth” about the world (and ultimately, Romanpunk, and the Hugo-winning feminist SF podcast Galactic Suburbia, now in its seventh year of production. y The Real West, Full of Stories Lost Trails: Forgotten Tales of the Weird West, edited by Cynthia Ward, WolfSinger Publications, September 2015, 316 pp., $16.95 paperback, $5.95 e-book. reviewed by Kristin King

When most people think of Westerns, ure with the power to transform humans we think of the Hollywood version, with into animals; and the Cree Wolverine the lone white gunman walking from Woman. On top of that, there are outra­ i an empty desert into a town of onlook­ geous alternate histories and incursions ers, shooting the outlaw, and moving on. by people from outer space, or other di­ 15 That’s given us potent cultural myths — mensions, or other times. And zombies of justice that’s swift and fair, of the heralding the Second Coming, because power of one individual. hey, why not? Too bad that Hollywood version is a One of the strengths of this anthology lie. The people of the real West, which is the depth of the research that went into runs all the way north into Canada so many of the stories, and the ways this and south through Mexico, were Native is combined with a twist of magic, tech­ Americans, Canadian Métis (mixed) nology, or alternate history. For example, people, Chinese railroad workers and the story “Assiniboia” by Misha Nogha miners, runaway slaves and free blacks, plays off the life of Louis Riel, a Métis prostitutes, homesteaders, grandmoth­ leader, founder of Manitoba, and leader of ers, manly men who loved other manly resistance movements against the Cana­ One of the strengths of men, and so much more. Nobody settled this anthology is the dian government. In it, “Father Francis,” an empty land: the immigrants arrived depth of the research that peaceably, or took over traditional lands, a Roman Catholic priest with a striking went into so many of the or engaged in bloody conquest, exter­ similarity to Riel, faces a mystical confu­ stories, and the ways this mination, and forcible conversion. And sion of identity, which not even Wolver­ is combined with a twist in the anthology Lost Trails: Forgotten ine Woman may be able to resolve. of magic, technology, or Tales of the Weird West, these people had Then there is the alternate history alternate history. different gods, spirits, and tricksters — “Thirteen Days of Glory” by Scott A. from La Llorona, the Weeping Woman Cupp. What at first appears to be a stan­ who preys on lonely mining men, to the dard tale of the Alamo takes a turn for Hebrew Malakhim, angels of the Lord. the queer when the narrator joins Davy And Guan Yu, the Chinese God of War, Crockett and other men in a cross- who has come to the Boise Basin gold dressing defense against the Spanish rush; the Nagual, a Mesoamerican fig­ Inquisition. Cont. on p. 16 The Real West No matter how imaginative, any an­ Tesla invents a death ray, then complains (Cont. from p. 15) thology of Westerns would be woefully to General Villa that it’s being misused incomplete if it didn’t address the fun­ because it was intended to make war im­ damental injustice upon which North possible. Then a soldier named Alejan­ America is based: the theft of land from dro proceeds to hijack the narrative and the native peoples and the repeated the airship Cucaracha to strike at the true extermination campaigns run against heart of America: Hollywood. them. Fortunately the anthology does And why does Alejandro want to take No matter how imaginative, not flinch from that work. Hollywood? “Simple. Natural. Hol­ any anthology of Westerns Some of these stories challenge the lywood had taken something that be­ would be woefully legacy of theft, erasure, and forced as­ longed to me, and I wanted it back.” incomplete if it didn’t similation of First Peoples. In “What Never mind Hollywood. That “empty” address the fundamental Happened at Blessing Creek” by Nao­ desert? It’s full of stories. injustice upon which North mi Kritzer, settlers come to Kansas to America is based… find that the home of Osage people is defended by dragons. And in “Soldier’s Coat” by J. Comer, different tribes of Indians fight alongside different tribes of whites. Johnny, a California Indian Kristin King is the working with the Americans as a med­ author of the short story ic’s assistant, teams up with Tatyana, a collection Misfits from Russian-speaking leader of the Aleut, the Beehive State (2013). to capture a giant cannon. Their joint Her work has appeared plan is to take on the whites’ ways, but in Strange Horizons, without giving up their own. As Tatyana Calyx, The Pushcart Prize XXII, and the anthology H puts it, “Water sprinkled on you does not make spirits go away.” Missing Links and Secret Histories (2013). She Another injustice was the violent ex­ 16 blogs at kristinking. traction of natural resources — for ex­ wordpress.com. ample, the search for gold referred to in “How Five-Gashes-Tumbling Chaneco Earned the Nickname” by Rudy Ch. Garcia. In this satirical, slapstick tale, the narrator explains his desertion from the expedition of Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate — a man who, in his search for the fabled city of gold, found it expedi­ Overall, this anthology ent to cut off the feet of every adult male is a dazzling array of in Acoma Pueblo and enslave its women. stories that took me on In extreme contrast, the sweet love a fulfilling historical and story “Midnight at the Lariat Lounge” emotional journey. by Kathleen Alcalá features an outer- space uranium speculator, who arrives during a 1980s bust period and extracts that hot commodity by…paying for it. Overall, this anthology is a dazzling array of stories that took me on a fulfill­ ing historical and emotional journey. I enjoyed it all, but there is a special place in my heart for the outrageous final sto­ ry, “Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus” by Er­ nest Hogan. On seeing the title I figured I was in for a madcap adventure, and I was right. It’s the kind of tall tale where y Trash Wars and Radical Mythmaking Damnificados,by JJ Amaworo Wilson, PM Press, January 2016, 274 pp., $15.95, paperback, $8.95, e-book. reviewed by Victoria Elisabeth Garcia

Damnificados is a strikingly fresh, swirl of characters who, though united powerful, and singularly engaging new in poverty, come from a plethora of dif­ work by first-time novelist JJ Amaworo ferent backgrounds and speak a dazzling Wilson. Set in Favelada, an imaginary, variety of languages. As a result, the polyglot city where poverty is ubiqui­ book has an almost carnivalesque sense tous, conflicts over garbage often end in of multiplicity and abundance, which death, and magic is a rare but expected persists even as the characters face the aspect of everyday existence, Damni- most harrowing of tribulations — plagues ficados follows the trials and triumphs of mosquitoes, military sieges, flooding, of a group of squatters who take over From the very first packs of feral beasts, and hunger. sentence, the book an abandoned skyscraper and build new The book’s polyglot tone is especially lives for themselves. With prose at once fascinates and compels: well-suited to its subject matter. Dam- Wilson is blessed with a vivid, direct, and elegant, Damnificados is nificados takes obvious inspiration from subtle but dark sense of a quick and engrossing read. This, cou­ Venezuela’s Tower of David — a 45-story humor and a tantalizingly pled with its celebration of resistance, skyscraper, abandoned in 1994 before distinctive voice. difference, and intentional community, construction was complete, that became means the book will appeal mightily to home to a highly organized group of many Cascadia Subduction Zone readers. squatters in 2007. (With electricity, run­ From the very first sentence, the book ning water, a number of small businesses, fascinates and compels: Wilson is blessed and a tightly regulated social order, the i with a subtle but dark sense of humor and Tower of David existed as a thriving, if a tantalizingly distinctive voice. While controversial, community for seven years, 17 echoes of the great magic realists can be felt (Asturias, in my opinion, reverber­ until the collective’s eviction in the sum­ ates with particular strength), the book’s mer of 2014.) In this context, Wilson’s sensibility and idiom are entirely Wil­ characters’ splendid array of languages, son’s own. This kind of newness is always ethnicities, and backstories creates the exciting, but it’s especially impressive in impression of a reverse Tower of Babel: a first novel. United in their experience of struggle Clues to how an apparent newcomer and need, in their desire to create a home came to create something so sharply and of their own, and in the depth of their thoroughly unique can be found in Wil­ differences from the dominant para­ Wilson’s characters’ son’s background: Before turning his fo­ digm, the characters are able to under­ splendid array of cus to fiction, Wilson spent many years stand and empower one another and to languages, ethnicities, traveling the world teaching English. He reinforce each other’s strengths, with or and backstories creates has lived in numerous countries, includ­ without a common tongue. Because of the impression of a ing Columbia, Lesotho, Egypt, Germa­ this, despite the book’s frequently ab­ reverse Tower of Babel… ny, and Italy. And while Damnificados is ject and trash-filled milieu, it often feels his first novel, it is by no means his first thrillingly and profoundly hopeful. book. Prior to this, he published over a Considered as an exercise in myth- dozen pedagogical texts about TESOL making, the book is likewise thrilling. (Teaching English as a Second or Other Its focus skates easily from character to Language). In addition to this, he is also a character, with long passages in the om­ successful playwright, as Wilson’s cosmo­ niscient point of view. In less able hands, politan, language-focused résumé shows. this might be distancing, but here it of­ Though Wilson’s fantastical city of ten gives the book a wondrously fractal the poor has a decisively Latin Ameri­ and folkloric flavor. Wilson’s take on the can quality, it is peopled with a riotous squatters’ world is touched with absurd­ Cont. on p. 18 Trash Wars ism and is mildly fantastical — a band human behavior in planned communi­ (Cont. from p. 17) of dangerous felons battles a village of ties (as in Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia escaped psychiatric patients, and loses; books, or B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two), soothsayers do business in bars, while and for these folks, Damnificados may be two-headed wolves roam the streets; a bit disappointing. (For anyone inter­ and an epic flood leaves an inexplicable ested in the interpersonal and practical quintet of monumental stone heads in aspects of squatting, I strongly recom­ its wake — but, delightfully, the folkloric mend Stacy Wakefield’s 2014 novel, The Wilson’s take on the feeling persists even in parts of the narra­ Sunshine Crust Baking Factory. Though squatters’ world is touched tive that aren’t conspicuously strange. As set in 1990s Brooklyn and not SFnal in with absurdism and is a result, anecdotes about everyday priva­ any sense, it makes for a pleasing com­ mildly fantastical. tion and survival are imbued with a sense panion piece to Damnificados.) of deep, mythic power. This is yet another Though most of the book’s shortcom­ of the book’s commanding strengths. ings are similarly minor, it does suffer Alas, though the book’s fantastical from one very significant flaw, and given character gives much, it also takes some­ the book’s deeply multicultural soul, it is thing away. Over the course of the book a rather surprising one: (as one would expect) the squatters face The vast majority of the characters in a number of obstacles and existential Damnificados are male. And while the threats to life, limb, and home. In the book does include one major, self-deter­ first half of the book, these are genuinely mined female character (a volatile and harrowing, and their solutions feel both highly entrepreneurial beautician) she By and large, males are hard-won and real. However, near the is, for the most part, presented in terms the heroes and defenders; book’s midpoint, an especially menac­ of her romantic and sexual relationship the ones who lead, invent, ing enemy is neutralized via the surprise with one of the male leads. In addition H and rescue. The women, intervention of an apparently magical to this, labor is allocated within the col­ meanwhile, are far more entity — and though the moment itself lective (and, to a lesser extent, within the likely to garden, forage, 18 is luminous, evocative, and satisfying, it world as a whole) in a rather dispiriting groom, and nurture — when is nonetheless a classic deus ex machina, way: By and large, males are the heroes they’re visible at all. and it robs subsequent hazards of much and defenders; the ones who lead, invent, of their impact. For this reason, though and rescue. The women, meanwhile, are …the book’s many strengths are more than the entire book is fascinating and in­ far more likely to garden, forage, groom, sufficient to justify tensely worthwhile, the first half is far and nurture — when they’re visible at all. weathering its weaknesses. more compelling than the second. Also troubling is the complete absence And while it is true that the characters’ of characters who present as anything quotidian moments are rendered power­ other than cis-gendered and heterosexual. fully, it must be made clear that the ev­ This sort of thing would be irritating in al­ eryday work of community-building and most any novel, but because of this book’s squat-keeping is not the book’s focus. utopian overtones, it is especially galling. Once it’s established, the majority of the Still, despite this significant issue, the threats to the collective come from out­ book’s many strengths are more than side. We do not, as a general rule, see the sufficient to justify weathering its weak­ hard work of consensus-building, per­ nesses. A fascinating work by a compel­ sonality management, and rule negotia­ ling new author, it should not be missed. tion — nor do we see how the squatters deal with the sequelae of their doubtless Victoria Elisabeth traumatic pre-squat lives. I myself would Garcia’s fiction has been tend to classify this as a valid, artistic published in Polyphony, the Indiana Review, and choice and not a per se failing. Many elsewhere. She lives in SF-oriented readers may have a strong Seattle with her husband, interest in the nuts and bolts of creating comics creator John de novo governments (as seen in Kim Aegard, and a chunky but Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars) or in agile little dog. rigorous and detailed speculation about Clear-Cut Spirit Song by Neile Graham — for Devin — The Gods of Tales What remains? Waste all around me and I still stand. What am I spared for? by Neile Graham Spared. Which means alone, doesn’t it? A story first formed so long ago Which means sole survivor. But I’m not. shaped like bear or cat or fire. We stand and stand with wastelands Home or shelter or fear. between us. We stand witness to each other That’s not what matters. standing. Though we can’t reach each other. Since the connections between us are gone. The words have always shifted like rain, spilling over the story, All but the still-green and guilty wind its fingers chilly tapping ghostly messages soaking into it, like the teller, stretching its bones into a on our bark-bound skin, echoes from the ones who are gone. Who can say they’ve gone to waste? soggy new shape, or drying like the forest in a drought year, In the maelstroms that cut them down. Storms sometimes of their own making, its skin stuck to its bones till no one can remember it Sometimes the accidental anger of lives spurned and burned and burning to fire. fleshy and new. Tales wrought by their tellers. By the listeners. To fire upon. A perfect storm: one human i and its weapons. All the various blades. By the games the children play as they snuggle against 19 Look down. Each toe is a root, from them tendrils seek the deepest, safest dark. their parents, all ears. The games the parents play, as they listen Our legs are twinned trunks, solid and more stolid, a plinth, a pedestal. to the cut of words their lovers mouth, lips curling, tongue clicking, Up, and each arm is a branch, bearing all the weight of sap, of the air earning touch. New words, new lies added to old to tell Truth. of sprouting leaves and branching thoughts, reaching to the sky It’s how we describe our world but not to surrender. To worship air once Raven has stolen the sun, and light and breathing still. once the bright and faery queen It is not all stumps and slaughter. has stolen her Thomas. Fire We’re scorned as timber, beloved of the sky. lilies, lunar bears, elk large But how the wind blows, love, how it blows. as whole countries steal We Daphnes clothe this naked hill. into the human world. My hand, your hand, shapes the words, our tongues sing them like an anthem, like a lullaby. Sleep, sleep and dream, children. Arise and wake and dream. y Image to Word: The Morning Series by Betsy James

Of course we’re aware of the events of Naive, and stressed; at a time when life our day-to-day world. But as writers and had me backed into a corner, I got reck­ artists we learn to listen for the drama less enough to go looking in my memory that goes on in the parallel universe of for the stories I had written as a teen and the unconscious. The unconscious is hidden in a tin box under my bed. They more broadly aware than the accultur­ were full of passions, angers, and loves ated conscious mind, and because it of which my family and society did not employs intuition rather than logic it approve; I had hidden them, torn them entrains with the oceanic flow of life up, and pushed aside even their memory, that is the sea we swim in, and keeps us in order to “grow up and be sensible.” In flowing with it. denying them I had denied the intensi­ ties and tasks embedded in them, and I The unconscious speaks to us in sto­ suspected I still had a responsibility to ries. It borrows images from experience those lost poignancies. and imagination and uses them as meta­ I wasn’t a writer yet. I was a profes­ phor to play out deeper issues. An ex­ sional illustrator, so I told myself the sto­ ample I’m fond of: ries in pictures. Because early morning My mother, at ninety, began to be “de­ was the only time I had to paint, I called mented.” Yet if you listened, you’d real­ them The Morning Series. I wasn’t far into ize she was perfectly sane — she had just the project before the stories were telling mislaid the collective metaphors and was me: telling me how to tell them. using an alternate set. A few days before It wasn’t my first experience of the her death she told me happily, “I’m wait­ willing obedience that artists live for, but H ing for the train to Wales! Dad’s gone it was an intense one. I found I had only ahead, and we’ll meet there. But I don’t two rules: 20 have my ticket yet.” 1. I would ask for an image, and She could intuit that soon she would paint whatever I was shown. Even go where Dad had gone — but not quite if it was frightening, shocking, or yet. Her mind, as it began to unmake it­ bizarre. self, had mislaid the “realistic” explana­ 2. I would love it. I would not tion (itself a metaphor) for her situation: say of any painting, “This isn’t any “I’m dying.” So it groped around and good.” I would love each one the found another, quite creative one, a train way I would love my child. journey, to frame the same thing. I worked almost every morning for The writer of speculative fiction delib­ two years. Three hundred and fifteen erately invites the unconscious to dress paintings. itself from the costume-closet of meta­ At last I came to a stopping place. phor and, thus made visible, to take the Not to an end; each lifetime has the writer on a journey. vastness of the universe to wander in. This practice is wonderful, terrifying, Rather, it was as though I had been giv­ humbling. en so many stories that some of them had to expand out of the paintings and find words: at last, to be let out of the The Morning Series box under the bed. They became four novels: Long Night If we weren’t naive we’d never risk Dance, Dark Heart, Listening at the Gate, anything. When I began to paint the and now, from Aqueduct Press, Roadsouls. images that would become The Morning

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