Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the …
-
5 stars
This is maybe one of the best and weirdest books I've ever read? Or maybe it just hit me right today because I feel kinda nuts and just crushed most of it in one day and it covers a lot of emotional ground. Either way I can't believe my luck that there's 6 more volumes (although I have to wait for them all to come out and be translated)
In the linked stories of Reservoir Bitches, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is …
-
4 stars
Read the whole book on half a plane ride. It was really easy to get into and the payoff of the connections between the stories happens pretty fast. Its like, so so violent but I think if you read the summary you know what youre getting into. This is maybe the 3 or 4th book I've read that Julia Sanches has translated and I've really liked all of them.
In the distant future, humans are on the verge of extinction and have settled in …
-
4 stars
This was kinda vague and difficult to follow until basically the last 50 pages where some stuff coalesced and I ended up reeeeally liking it. FFO vibey Japanese fiction and impressionistic ruminations on the future of humanity (or lack thereof)
The Female Man, We Who Are About To, and On Strike Against God are all extremely great 5/5 stories that are completely different asides from sharing a type of narrator that is uniquely Joanna Russ.
And if you don't know who she is, she's the angry lesbian of the new wave of science fiction, and probably a pound for pound better writer than Ursula K. Le Guin (and Ursula's one of the best...).
After the first three novellas are the Alyx stories. So far, these are light, fun adventure stories that draw on Fritz Leiber's tales about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in terms of style and content. Fritz Leiber is disappointing in some respects but the fact that he was in open dialogue with Joanna Russ is a point in his favor. It is nice to read these stories after We Who Are About To, which is one of …
The Female Man, We Who Are About To, and On Strike Against God are all extremely great 5/5 stories that are completely different asides from sharing a type of narrator that is uniquely Joanna Russ.
And if you don't know who she is, she's the angry lesbian of the new wave of science fiction, and probably a pound for pound better writer than Ursula K. Le Guin (and Ursula's one of the best...).
After the first three novellas are the Alyx stories. So far, these are light, fun adventure stories that draw on Fritz Leiber's tales about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser in terms of style and content. Fritz Leiber is disappointing in some respects but the fact that he was in open dialogue with Joanna Russ is a point in his favor. It is nice to read these stories after We Who Are About To, which is one of the best stories in scifi but also simultaneously the most mercilessly brutal, fully played out, takedown of golden age scifi and the new wave.
I really admire Joanna's range as a writer.
As a note, I am almost ready to take a break on the new wave. James Tiptree Jr., Kate Wilhelm, Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch, and Robert Silverberg are people whose work I need to spend more time with but the end is in sight for me in terms of re-evaluating the whole project.
