Aqueduct has released three new titles in e-book formats:
--Gwyneth Jones's
Spirit
A space opera set in Gwyneth Jones's Aleutian universe,
Spirit re-visions
Dumas's
The Count of Monte Cristo and further explores the workings and
consequences of the series' Buonarotti Transit. Bibi, the sole survivor of
her tribe, serves Lady Nef, the wife of General Yu, whose forces
exterminated Bibi's tribe. Constantly embroiled in court intrigues and
conspiracies, Nef and Yu are sent on a dicey diplomatic mission to Sigurt's
World, which culminates in murder and betrayal, resulting in Nef's and
Bibi's imprisonment in the ultimate oubliette, from which escape is
virtually impossible. As Karen Joy Fowler noted in her review for the
Guardian, "Escape is costly; revenge complex." This is, indeed, Dumas for
the 21st Century.
--Rebecca Ore's
The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid
In 2067, human cloning is a part of everyday
life. But it is a bizarre form of cloning: not actually the direct copying
of a humans, but rather the construction of custom-made reproductions of
humans using animal DNA. The CIA uses these so-called "chimeras" for
various undercover operations, and one of their technicians, Simon Boyle,
has a sideline making illegal copies: chimeras based on famous criminals,
for rent. His Billy the Kid, a creation unable to comprehend or sometimes
even recognize the sorts of things that didn't exist before the 1880s and endowed with powerful sex pheromones, is
quite popular for a night of historically convincing passion with rich
women, particularly the part where Boyle (as sheriff Pat Garrett) guns him
down. As the story progresses, Billy the Kid starts remembering things from
his previous lives. One of Boyle’s clients sets Billy loose into the mean
streets of the 21st century, where he struggles to seize control of the
myths in his ROM. Jane, a worker in a shelter for abused chimeras, has her life turned upside down as she's caught up in a struggle for possession of Billy. Sex pheromones or not, not only is Billy's identity as a real person at question, but the notion of masculinity as well.
Eleanor Arnason's
Ordinary People (Conversation Pieces series Vol. 7)
Spanning thirty years, this volume collects six stories, one poem, and a
WisCon Guest of Honor speech. In the richly ironic "Warlords of Saturn's
Moons," first published in 1974, a cigar-puffing woman writes space-opera
while the drama of real-life inner-city Detroit goes on around her; "The
Grammarian's Five Daughters" offers a playful explication of the uses of
the parts of speech; "A Ceremony of Discontent" takes a humorous approach
to a modern-day feminist problem; and Arnason's wise, earthy tales of
hwarhath serve up new myths explaining the origins of the world and
morality (among other things). The work in this collection entertains with
its wit, delights with its precision and imagination, and challenges and
provokes with its bluntness.
Ordinary People offers a small, potent
taste of the oeuvre of an important feminist sf author.
Like all of Aqueduct's e-books, these can be purchased, DRM-free,
through our site in both mobi and epub formats, as well as from Weightless Books, Wizard's Tower, and Amazon.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment