Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland. The short version: Jennifer Pelland lives outside Boston with an Andy, a cat, an impractical amount of books, and an ever-growing collection of belly dance gear and radio theater scripts. She's garnered two Nebula nominations, and many of her short stories were collected in Unwelcome Bodies , put out by Apex in 2008. Apex also released her debut novel, Machine , in 2012. She is currently in temporary retirement from writing to concentrate on belly dance instead. The long version: I'm a short-story author with one published novel and am probably best known for two Nebula-nominated short stories "Captive Girl" (2007) and "Ghosts of New York" (2010). "Captive Girl" also made the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards short list. To get serious about writing, I started by taking a class at Grub Street, then went through three Writer's Respites at WisCon and Ann Crispin's workshop at Shore Leave, completed the Viable Paradise science fiction workshop in 2002, and the Strange Horizons workshop in 2003. I have been a member of the Broad Universe advisory board, and have been a workshop pro at WisCon for several years. I was also a SFWA web volunteer, worked on the program books for United Fan Con and Noreascon 4, spent two years as support staff for Viable Paradise, and was a Speculative Literature Foundation online mentor in their pilot program. My other creative outlets are bellydance and radio theater. I'm one-half of the tribal fusion duo Tassellations, and perform as a soloist as well. I'm one of the voices in The Fantastic Fate of Frederick Farnsworth the Fifth , and have performed extensively with the Post-Meridian Radio Players. Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland. My short fiction collection was released on February 29, 2008. It contains the following stories: To read more, visit my Unwelcome Bodies page. Short Fiction: Note: Many of the stories below are available to read online. " Big Sister/Little Sister ," Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 3, Fall 2005 Reprinted in Best of Apex 2005. " Blood Baby ," Apex SF and Horror Digest issue 8, Winter 2006 Reprinted in Best of Apex 2006. " The Body Shop ," Alien Skin Mag, April/May 2006. " Brushstrokes ," Unwelcome Bodies, February 2008. " The Burning Bush ," Here and Now, issue 5/6, May 2005 Podcasted at Escape Pod, September 22, 2005 (direct link) " The Call ," Fictitious Force, issue 2, Spring 2006. " Captive Girl ," Helix SF , issue 2, October 2006 (Transcriptase archive link) Awards: 2007 Nebula Nominee, 2007 Short List for the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards. Reprinted in The Nebula Awards Showcase 2009. " Clone Barbecue ," Apex Online, issue 17, April 2006 Also printed in Space Squid, issue 2 (May 2006) " Dazz ," Coyote Wild, Spring 2007, Volume 1, Issue 2 (direct link) " Erasure ," Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 4, Winter 2005 Reprinted in Best of Apex 2005. " Flood ," Abyss and Apex, 1st Quarter 2006. " Firebird ," Unwelcome Bodies, February 2008. " For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great ," Strange Horizons, May 19, 2003 (direct link) " Ghosts of New York ," Dark Faith, May 2010 Awards: 2010 Nebula Nominee Reprinted on the Apex blog (direct link) Podcasted at PodCastle, April 19, 2011 (direct link) " Immortal Sin ," Tales of the Unanticipated, issue 26, November 2005 Podcasted at Escape Pod, October 25, 2007 (direct link) " In the Manner of His Own Choosing ," Demon Lovers: Succubi, June 2012. " The Kennel Club ," Helix SF , issue 9, July 2008 (Transcriptase archive link) Reprinted in Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good, March 2015. " The Kindest Cut ," Space and Time Magazine, Fall/Winter 2014. " Last Bus ," Electric Velocipede, issue 11, November 2006. " The Last Stand of the Elephant Man ," Helix SF , issue 6, Fall 2007 (Transcriptase archive link) " MarsSickGirl ," Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, issue 21, October/November 2005 (click here to read the deleted ending) Reprinted in full in issue 22, January/February 2006. " Mercytanks ," Helix SF , issue 4, Spring 2007 (Transcriptase archive link) " Minya's Astral Angels ," The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Three , February 2009. " Organ Nell ," Apex Magazine, December 2, 2008. " Sacrifice ," Dark Faith: Invocations, September 2012 Reprinted in Apex Magazine, September 2012 (direct link) " Sashenka Redux ," Electric Velocipede, issue 14, May 2008. " Songs of Lament ," Unwelcome Bodies, February 2008. " Star Dancer ," Glitter and Mayhem, August 2013. " Team Player ," The Writer's Hood, August 2002. " Temporal Shimmies ", Unidentified Funny Objects, November 2012. " . That Has Such People in It ," Apex Magazine, July 6, 2009. " 'Til Death Do Us Part ," Shock Totem, issue 1, July 2009. " Wedding Day, " Neo-Opsis, issue 11, Spring 2007. " What to Expect When You're Expectorating ," Apex SF and Horror Digest, issue 11, Winter 2007. " When Science Fiction Clich�s Go Bad ," The Town Drunk, August 24, 2006 (direct link) Non-Fiction. " In Praise of Mature Women, or, Why Donna Noble and River Song Totally Need to Call Me ," Queers Dig Time Lords, Mad Norwegian Press, June 2013. Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland. This week's short was Jennifer Pelland's Captive Gir l, published in Helix magazine. Monkey Head Nebula, viewed by the Hubble Telescope Honestly, this story was a little bit outside of my comfort zone. It tells the story of one girl, Alice, who 'volunteered' to be hooked up to a surveillance system on humankind's first extra-solar colony. Ten years previously, the colony had been attacked by unknown assailants who then vanished. The program involved blinding, deafening, and crippling the subjects used in the program so that the implants could work. The implants could only work with a juvenile mind. We first meet Alice as she is out of body surveying the space around the planet. I found the idea of a mind out of body interesting, and the fact that there were sacrifices to make it so (essentially crippling the user) interesting as well. The delving into the consequences of those sacrifices (especially when the program was discontinued and Alice underwent surgery to repair all the damage) was the most interesting to me. I would have been interested to see more of Alice and Jayna as roommates after everything that happened to them. But I did not like the idea of it being done only on adolescent girls. And the whole subplot of the care taker Marika (and it's concluson) had an ick factor to me. The subplot's ending was unsatisfying as well (love = suffering through old traumas?). Overall, this short had some really interesting ideas, but it wasn't a favorite of mine. If you are a fan of this story or the idea of extra co mputerized perception out of body, you might like the award winning* novel by Ann Leckie -- Ancillary Justice . This novel is told from the perspective of Breq -- who was an AI in control of a whole ship, battle contingent. etc. It is an interesting narrator to say the least! * What award, you ask? Pretty much all! 2014 Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Rating: 2.5/5 Favorite line: In the choreographed chaos of space, she searches for patterns that do not fit. She listens to the hiss and murmur of the interstellar winds; she peers into the visible spectrum and beyond. Whistling particles stream by, and her mind sizes them up, then discards them as harmless background radiation. Just flotsam on the solar winds. Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland. Display preferences: Use the options below to adjust the size, style and colors, and click 'Apply' below. By Jennifer Pelland. Copyright © 2006 by Jennifer Pelland First published at Helix Issue 2, 2006. Cover image Copyright © Passigatti | Dreamstime.com Cover design Copyright © DeAnna Knippling. Published by Apex Publications at Smashwords. Jennifer Pelland is a short fiction writer whose work has earned multiple Nebula Award nominations (“Captive Girl” and “Ghosts of New York”). “Captive Girl” was also shortlisted for the Gaylactic Spectrum Award. Jennifer lives outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, an impractical amount of books, and an ever-growing collection of belly dance gear and radio theater scripts. Find out more at: www.jenniferpelland.com. “ Her already-glowing reputation may still be just a hint of promising light on the horizon of those who like their fantastic fiction smart, imaginative, and driven by the mysteries of the human spirit, but each new story as brilliant as ‘Brushstrokes’ and ‘The Last Stand of the Elephant Man’ brings her inevitable future even closer. Trust me on this: Jennifer Pelland’s star has only just begun to rise.” —Adam-Troy Castro, author of Emissaries From the Dead. Captive Girl by Jennifer Pelland. The subject matter is so weird and out there that I just had to read it till the end – also it was so short, really… But it’s the story set in the future of this poor girl who sacrificed her outer appearance to be hooked to machines (hence: being captive) to check the skies and space for another attack from perhaps aliens (they’re not sure) that killed her family. She’s been doing this for the government since she’s a child, and now she’s a young adult and in love with her caretaker. When it’s possible for her to get a normal appearance back with a bunch of surgeries, her caretaker doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore… so she goes back to the prosthesis and mask and shit to get her caretaker back in her life. Will it work? Talk about sacrifice. This was not a joyful or even pleasurable story for me, but I got through it because of the writing. The quality of the writing is really great, so even if the subject matter isn’t all that appealing to everyone, it’s worth reading it just for the prose. It’s short anyway, it’s bound to keep your interest long enough.