My life in books

Yeah, I’ve been reading anthologies again. Here are thumbnail comments on the most recent ones.


Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures, ed. Lynne Jamneck

This was a real delight. Jamneck has put together a very satisfying volume of stories, all of which in some way look at possible futures – some welcoming, some terrifying – in which the question of desire and erotic love between women is a major element. There wasn’t a single story in the volume that I didn’t enjoy, although as always there were some that spoke to me more powerfully than others. My favourites: Nicola Griffith’s “Touching Fire” (also collected in With her Body, published by Aqueduct Press), Gwyneth Jones’ “The Voyage Out,” Kristyn Dunnion’s “They Came From Next Door,” Lyda Morehouse’s “Ishtartu,” Tracy Shellito’s “Mind Games,” Melissa Scott’s “The Rocky Side of the Sky,” Elspeth Potter’s “Silver Skin” and Sharon Wachsler’s “Sideways.”


The Future is Queer, eds. Richard LaBonté and Lawrence Schimel

This anthology, which also looks at queer futures, is not quite as solid a collection of stories as the volume edited by Jamneck. For me, the stand-out pieces were L. Timmel Duchamp’s “Obscure Relations,” a look at issues of power, identity, incest and narcissism via the practice of cloning, and Rachel Pollack’s “The Beatrix Gates,” a story of healing and love and transformations; I also enjoyed Joy Park’s “Instincts,” Candas Jane Dorsey’s “… the darkest evening of the year…” and Hiromi Goto’s “The Sleep Clinic for Troubled Souls.”


The James Tiptree Award Anthology 3, eds. Karen Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin and Jeffry Smith

You know in advance that when you read a selection of winning and short-listed pieces for the James tiptree Award, you are going to be reading pure gold. And all I can say about this third volume is: What a feast! Gems from some of my favourite writers - Nalo Hopkinson’s “The Glass Bottle Trick,” Ursula LeGuin’s "Mountain Ways," Eleanor Arnason’s “Knapsack Poems,” Vonda McIntyre’s “Little Faces,” Tiptree’s own “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” a critical piece by Dorothy Allison, “The Future of Female: Octavia Butler's Mother Lode,” and an essay by L. Timmel Duchamp, “Letter to Alice Sheldon,” which discusses the perceptions held of “women authors” as compared to “authors in general. Also, the first chapter of Geoff Ryman’s Air, which I have not yet read but am not quite strongly minded to, and interesting stories by Ted Chaig, Aimee Bender and Margo Lanagan, and “shame,”an essay by Pam Noles on how Tvland treated LeGuin’s classic A Wizard of Earthsea - must reading for those who don’t already know why LeGuin (rightly so, IMO) disowned this presentation of her own work.


In the Shadow of Evil, eds. Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers

Imagine that the battle between Good and Evil is over, and Evil won. The forces of Good are out-manned, out-gunned, out-classed. Now, what kind of fantasy story would you write? That’s the question that editors Greenberg and Helfers set to the writers represented in this anthology. The answers, from such writers as Tanya Huff, Michelle West, Fiona Patton, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Julie E. Czerneda and Jane Lindskold, are in many cases both inspirational and heart-breaking.


Sword and Sorceress II, ed. Marion Zimmer Bradley

This was a re-read that I recently re-acquired because I was trying to collect all of the Dossouye stories written by Charles R. Saunders. But in going back almost to the beginning of what was a truly ground-breaking series of anthologies that helped to establish a wide and eager audience for fantasy in which women do the adventuring, took the risks and won the glory – or at least managed to do what they needed to do – I was also gifted with the pleasure of reading again so many earlier stories from writers, like Saunders, who have contributed so much to science fiction and fantasy: Vera Nazarian, Diana Paxson, Rachel Pollack, Phyllis Ann Karr, C. J. Cherryh, Charles de Lint, Jennifer Roberson, Deborah Wheeler (now writing as Deborah J. Ross). A great trip down memory lane, with some great female protagonists for company.