The Cascadia Subd uction A LITERARY Z QUARTERLY on 2018 X Vol. 8. No. 3 e IN MEMORIAM Kate Wilhelm and Gardner Dozois by L. Timmel Duchamp POEMS jungle red by Gwynne Garfinkle The Shadow of the Peak by Alexandra Seidel FLASH FICTION Roots by Sara Codair The Canonization of Junipero Serra by Nancy Jane Moore IN THIS ISSUE GRANDMOTHER MAgmA Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue and Láadan reviewed by Amy Thomson DUST LANES Stories in Capricious #9 edited by A.C. Buchanan reviewed by Karen Burnham BOOK REVIEWS The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley reviewed by Kathleen Alcalá Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport reviewed by Phoebe Salzman-Cohen A Study in Honor by Claire O'Dell “If your takeaway…is that The Cascadia Subduction Zone sounds really reviewed by Cynthia Ward interesting, you’re not wrong—it’s a wonderful journal filled with thoughtful The Invisible Valley and insightful criticism.” by Su Wei reviewed by Arley Sorg h Niall Harrison, The Guardian, May 12, 2016 FEATURED ARTIST $5.00 Jeanne Gomoll Managing Editor Arrate Hidalgo VOL. 8 NO. 3 — 2018 Reviews Editor Nisi Shawl IN MEMORIAM Features Editor Kate Wilhelm and Gardner Dozois L. Timmel Duchamp by L. Timmel Duchamp h 1 Arts Editor OEMS Kath Wilham P jungle red by Gwynne Garfinkle h 3 $5.00 The Shadow of the Peak by Alexandra Seidel h 4 FLASH FICTION Roots by Sara Codair h 3 The Canonization of Junipero Serra by Nancy Jane Moore h 5 GRANDMOTHER MAgmA Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue and Láadan reviewed by Amy Thomson h 6 DUST LANES Stories in Capricious #9 edited by A.C. Buchanan reviewed by Karen Burnham h 8 BOOK REVIEWS The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley reviewed by Kathleen Alcalá h 12 Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport reviewed by Phoebe Salzman-Cohen h 14 A Study in Honor by Claire O'Dell reviewed by Cynthia Ward h 16 The Invisible Valley by Su Wei reviewed by Arley Sorg h 18 FEATURED ARTIST Jeanne Gomoll h 20 Subscriptions and single issues online at: To order by check, payable to: www.thecsz.com Aqueduct Press Print subscription: $16/yr; P.O. Box 95787 Print single issue: $5 Seattle, WA 98145-2787 Electronic Subscription (PDF format): [Washington State Residents $10 per year add 9.5% sales tax.] Electronic single issue: $3 In This Issue Cover banner collagraph of the Cascadia subduction zone by Marilyn Liden Bode y In Memoriam: Kate Wilhelm (1928-2018) and Gardner Dozois (1947-2018) by L. Timmel Duchamp Scott Bradfield begins hisLA Times for or opposition to the US’s war in Viet- “Kate Wilhelm: An Appreciation” (March nam, I hadn’t realized that the war with- 13, 2018) with an anecdote that stunned in the field over boundaries and borders me with the shock of recognition. The had been quite that fierce half a century anecdote serves, of course, to provide a ago. (The positions of writers in the two context for appreciating the work and conflicts might make for an interesting career of Kate Wilhelm, but also, I think, Venn diagram.) When I began reading for situating that of Gardner Dozois, a sf/f in the late 1970s, I took the field’s full generation younger. At age 14, Brad- riches as a given. (The Einstein Intersec- field witnessed his first Nebula Awards tion was my introduction to the field, ceremony, in 1970, as an usher. He notes notwithstanding my having read books that Gene Wolfe’s “The Island of Doctor like 1984 and The Time Traveller in my Death,” Kate Wilhelm’s “A Cold Dark early teens.) Although I soon developed Night with Snow,” and R.A. Lafferty’s favorites, I began by reading widely and “Entire and Perfect Chrysolite” were somewhat indiscriminately, and so it among the nominees for the short story didn’t occur to me that bitter disputes category. Bradfield suggests these three aimed at keeping certain kinds of writ- were all writers influenced by the “New ers out were a recurrent aspect of the Wave,” which is to say, writers who “were field’s history. Imagine my indignation happily experimenting with the form, many years later when I read, in SF Eye, style and content of traditional science an all-out attack on women writers for fiction. In fact, they were so good at these having emasculated science fiction. Not experiments that it was often impossible long after that came the war between the to tell where one genre ended and an- “humanists” and the cyberpunks, which i other began — or whether genre had any I couldn’t really fathom, since I couldn’t influence on the stories at all.” When “No imagine giving up either. I soon learned 1 Award” was announced as the winner of that in one form or another, a battle over the category, Bradfield writes: definitions of the field was nearly always in progress. After a pause, several dozen SFWA It was around then that I began writ- members stood and began to clap. ing short fiction and sending it out. Al- The applause, continuing for sev- though two of my earliest sales were to eral minutes, came as quite a avowedly feminist anthologies, I kept shock to me. For the first time, reading everywhere that feminist sf was I realized that many writers and over. Would there, could there, be a place readers didn’t like this strange new for a writer like me, in the field where fruit appearing in the branches of I felt I belonged? Kris Rusch bought their familiar old trees — stories some my work for Pulphouse. One of my that were literary, poetic and jour- most overtly, in-your-face feminist sto- neying far from the tales of in- ries was picked up by Bantam for their terstellar battles and first-contact premier Full Spectrum series. And then that had made the “Golden Age” Gardner Dozois started reading my sub- so, well, golden. These people didn’t missions, remarking that he’d found my want anything to change; what Full Spectrum story interesting. He was they wanted — and often said they grumpy with me from the first because wanted — was escape from the he couldn’t tell from my cover letter how disturbing street-fought conflicts to address me. Actually, grumpy was his of their country into outer space personal style. He was grumpy because tales of adventure and romance. just an additional paragraph was needed, Doesn’t this sound familiar? Oddly which was why, he said, he wasn’t return- enough, though I was well-acquainted ing the ms to me but would like me to with the rift that broke out over support mail him just the last page, with the re- Cont. on p. 2 n In Memoriam write. After he’d had to ask for just one shops, helped set the standard for prose (cont. from p. 1) more paragraph at the end — a “grace in the field, and her fiction, like that of note,” as he called it — two or three the women associated with feminist sf of more times, he got really grumpy, telling the 1970s, provided me with the mod- me that I should know by now to do it els beginning writers need to internal- without his asking me to. And once he ize in order to create intelligible stories was grumpy that I’d sent him a fantasy (as Samuel R. Delany describes it in his story (“The Apprenticeship of Isabetta magisterial About Writing). I devoured di Pietro da Cavazzi”) that he said he her enormous body of work because it had to take in spite of its being fantasy. fed my hunger for stories in which or- Over the decade I sold many stories — all dinary but intelligent, self-respecting novellas and novelettes, the real-estate women struggled not only for indepen- hogs of print magazines — to Asimov’s, dence and survival but also for what we stories that I knew lay at the margins of now call “social justice.” When, in the the field but that Gardner nevertheless last two decades of her career, she chose welcomed. to focus most of her creative work in the Traditionally, notable editors in the mystery genre, she gave us an ensemble field made their names by favoring and of characters headed by attorney Bar- promoting certain styles and types of bara Holloway of Eugene, Oregon, who narratives. Gardner was almost self- defended clients usually up against the effacing, though, in his unstated effort to agenda of highly privileged interests. represent the field as a whole. Perhaps The roles both of these writers played this began with his editing Year’s Best in the field, although as different as the anthologies and his famous annual sum- bodies of fiction they produced, never- maries of the year in sf/f. In any case, his theless contributed to the expansion of inclusiveness made an enormous differ- the field in new and sometimes surpris- ing directions, a tendency that most writ- L. Timmel Duchamp’s ence to my own career as a writer as well ers (except for those who believe the field H latest novel, Chercher as expanded the mainstream’s sense of the field. ought to be restricted in ways it has never 2 La Femme, has just been released by Kate Wilhelm’s work affected me actually been) now take for granted, just Aqueduct Press. more indirectly, but likely as powerfully. as they do the demand for polished prose I did not attend any of the workshops in pro venues, which both of these writ- she taught, but her indefatigable work ers also insisted on.