Three Thumbs Up

Here follows a quick catch-up of reviews of Aqueduct Press books that we've had a few in print publications, not yet mentioned here.

In the new issue of Locus, Gary K. Wolfe reviews 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. "It's as much a delight as you would expect," he writes.

[T]he most evident recurring theme is a rediscovery of one's own passion for reading, and the realization that one of the main sources of that passion is someone you can still talk to. As impressed as we are at these heartfelt tributes from names as resonant as [Pat] Murphy, [Nancy] Kress, [John] Kessel, Eileen Gunn, Karen Joy Fowler, Molly Gloss, Sarah Le Fanu, Ellen Kushner, Jo Walton, Lisa Tuttle, Patrick O'Leary, Eleanor Arnason, and others, what this book finally reminds us of, and what it finally celebrates, is our own discovery of Le Guin's fiction, and if we're lucky, our own meetings with Le Guin herself...Le Guin is one of the few writers in our field about whom it might be said that discovering her is discovering parts of ourselves, and 80! is a wonderful and convincing testimony to that.

In the Oct 2010 New York Review of Science Fiction, Mike Levy reviews Tomb of the Fathers and Mammoths of the Great Plains by Eleanor Arnason. "Because she has always been a thoughtful writer, Arnason's novels tend to have a leisurely pace, and, when it comes to shorter fiction, she tends to do her best work at novella length, as shown in the two stories I will be reviewing here." He characterizes Tomb as "an enjoyable and thoughtful piece of science fiction," and says that both Mammoths of the Great Plains and Tomb of the Fathers should be "must" purchases "for anyone interested in Arnason's work or in high-quality feminist or leftist sf."

And in the Summer 2010 SFRA Review, Sandra J. Lindow reviews Tomb of the Fathers. She concludes her review with this:

Arnason has a dry humor and a well-developed sense of the absurd. Her take on human foibles is reminiscent of Pamela Sargent's "Danny Goes to Mars" (1993). Conceptually, Tomb resembles Le Guin's "Sur" (1983) and Joan Slonczewski's The Children Star (1998). Although Tomb of the Fathers is deceptively short and mild-mannered, Arnason is a master storyteller, demonstrating craft and craft---creating engaging characters and steering her story craftily through a moral and political agenda without being too intrusive--and thought provoking enough to inspire other grand conversations.