A Handful of Links

You’ll find my review of Tricia Sullivan’s most recent novels, Double Vision and Sound Mind, up today at Strange Horizons. http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2007/05/double_vision_a.shtml

At <http://ktempest.livejournal.com/187256.html> Angry Blackwoman (aka Tempest Bradford) is seeking help with describing (for Gordon Van Gelder) what she means by the characterizations “penis” and “vagina” stories as she valiantly struggles to shed some light on the lack of space for certain kinds of stories in the genre’s leading short fiction markets.

This isn’t new, just new to me: http://reconstruction.eserver.org/054/merrick.shtml. This is a paper titled “Alien(ating) Naturecultures: Feminist SF as Creative Science Studies” by Helen Merrick, examining “the potential of feminist science fictions to act as ‘cross-cultural’ narratives in encounters between the humanities and sciences. Merrick argues that the conjunction of disciplines figured by the term “science fiction” bears re-examination as a resource for science studies, and a potential mediator in science-humanities dialogues.”

Those who’ve been reading the Marq’ssan Cycle will understand my interest in the World Social Forum. Here’s a piece by Walden Bello <http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4196> that argues that the WSF is at a crossroads, at least partly because of the nature of coalition politics (which are, of course, a vital aspect of all progressive activism).

And finally, perhaps because I recently reread Pat Murphy’s very fine “Rachel in Love” (with an accompanying essay by Joan Haran, in Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, ed. Justine Larbalestier): William J. Kole’s AP story, “Activists Want Chimp Declared a ‘Person’” <http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/05/1000/>, about a court case involving a Viennese chimp who is in danger of becoming homeless because the animal shelter he’s been living in has just gone bankrupt. The activists’ definition of “person” is interesting, when considered vis-à-vis the Bush’s Administration’s policies: “We mean the right to life, the right to not be tortured, the right to freedom under certain conditions.”