Stuff you'll want to check out

--Alisa Krasnostein's Wait, what did you say? takes on Realms of Fantasy's recent call for "girl writers," as well as a comment made to Graham Sleight's Omnivoracious interview of Farah Mendlesohn (marveling, "What a piece of work is man!") and a discussion about one-off all-female special issues of magazines.

--At Belletrista, Tania Hershman writes about short fiction by women writers in Stopping to Smell the Roses, and reveals, when discussing the pleasures of Kelley Eskridge's short fiction, that Dangerous Space was her gateway into science fiction.

The accompanying press release said this was "feminist science fiction" and I am embarrassed now at what went through my mind when I read that (female starship commanders, maternal aliens!). What I discovered were, as I said in my review, poignant, sensual and often poetic stories, of musicians, actors, theatre directors, journalists, most of whom inhabit worlds much like my own but with slight twists, shifts of fundamental rules and expectations....I now read as much "science fiction" as I can, because it is here that writers seem to truly allow their imaginations free rein, and if that isn't the point of fiction, then what is?

--Nancy Jane Moore's Exactly What I Wanted: Gems from the Small Press offers a few suggestions for how to spend any holiday gift cards you might have received, focusing on books from Tachyon Publications, PS Publishing, and Aqueduct Press.