In a private place

Today is Ursula Le Guin's 81st birthday--Happy birthday, Ursula!-- which means it's also the official release date of 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin. Although the release date marks the end of Aqueduct's pre-release special, it's also the first day we are offering an e-book version, for $9.95.

(Speaking of e-book editions, you might be interested to know that Aqueduct is also now offering individual volumes of the Marq'ssan Cycle in e-book edition. Imagine, all those words, free of the physical dimensions and weight of the printed books. Almost makes me giddy to think of it.)

Rick Kleffel, at the Agony Column, discusses 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin:

Ursula K. Le Guin is the sort of writer whose work you remember reading. You remember where you were, how you felt before and how the reading changed your feelings. This is not a part of the reading experience that is often acknowledged. It happens in a private place, after all.

That brings us to '80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin' (Aqueduct Press ; October 21, 2010 ; $19), edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin, a collection in which writers explore and display the influence that Ursula K. Le Guin had upon their lives.

This is, from its conception, a very private book. We are told that Kim Stanley Robinson originally came up with the idea of a "Festschrift," that is, a privately published collection of appreciations for Le Guin from her fellow writers. From there, Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin, "who know a good idea when they hear one," according to the Acknowledgements at the back of the book, did the legwork and word work necessary to create '80!' It lives up its subject.

You'll find pretty much every kind of writing you can imagine in '80!', from fiction to criticism to poetry to memoir, to writing advice — you name it, you think it, and there's a version of it in this book. That variety makes the book itself easy to read, because you can pick it up, turn to just about any page, and if the style or content is not to your liking at the moment, then a quick flip will find a new style, and in some cases, a sort of writing that is truly unique.

Read the rest of what he has to say here.

The Marq'ssan Cycle and Jane Mayer's The Dark Side

I've just finished reading Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, which chronicles the torture and other excesses of Bush's so called war on terror. And once again, I am overwhelmed by how well Timmi Duchamp nailed such horrendous actions and the people who committed them in the Marq'ssan Cycle.

My reaction to the book -- which I've documented in cross posts on In This Moment and Open Salon -- is that we need to prosecute all the people responsible for these actions.

I don't advocate this for partisan political reasons, but for a more basic reason, one Timmi also gets at in her series: We need to uncover the truth, and look at it carefully, so that in the future we won't commit -- or allow -- excesses like these.

In Tsunami, Martha Greenglass, dealing with a scandal within the Free Zone, says,

One of the things the Marq'ssan have made me see is that until humans begin to scrutinize their mistakes and learn from and remember them, nothing will significantly change.
Many of us here today would like to "settle" this matter and lay it to rest. Which is to say we want to satisfy our consciences or desires -- depending on which "side" of the issue we are positioned -- and then go on as though nothing had happened.

And that's the key point, to uncover the facts about the horrors committed in our name, figure out how we allowed them to happen, and learn how to do things differently. We need to know the truth.

Right now, criminal prosecution is our best tool to uncover the truth, though Congressional investigations could also be useful. But these can't be witchhunts, or efforts to cover up the matter with a few show trials that make these actions look like aberrations. We must understand what happened, and why so many let it happen, or it will come back to haunt us again and again.

Stuff of Interest

I'm back in Seattle, wishing my two nights away had been three. Yesterday we had Jeanne Gomoll's interview; today we have a couple of interesting posts by Aqueduct authors Sue Lange and Kelley Eskridge. Sue has a guest post-- The Singularity Trap-- today at the Mumpsimus; while Kelley has posted Just Say No To Gender Stability on her blog. Also, I've just seen a lengthy review of the Marq'ssan Cycle by Frann Michel (who gave an interesting paper on Octavia Butler's work at WisCon 32) on her KBOO Radio blog. Check them out!

Us, Elsewhere

Jeff VanderMeer, for Omnivoracious: L. Timmel Duchamp's Marq'ssan Cycle: An Epic Progressive SF Series Decades in the Making.

Stretto, the fifth and final book in L. Timmel Duchamp's stunning Marq'ssan Cycle has just been published by Aqueduct Press. Taken as a whole, the Marq'ssan Cycle is one of the most ambitious political SF series to appear in the last twenty years. The novels have received praise from the likes of Samuel Delany and Cory Doctorow, with Doctorow calling them "a refreshing read and a rare example of deft political storytelling." (There's quite a bit more to follow.)

Matt Staggs has posted Brief Interviews with Women Writers of the Fantastic #8: Kelley Eskridge

And Kelley Eskridge has posted Why are we so scared of naked people?

Stuff to Check Out

Now that I'm no longer living WisCon 24/7, I can begin to catch up with stuff going on elsewhere. Here are a few links:

Kelley Eskridge is interviewed by LeeAnnKriegh on AfterEllen.com.

David Rovics eulogizes Utah Phillips, who died this weekend.

Lesley A. Hall reviews Blood in the Fruit, the fourth volume of the Marq'ssan Cycle, for Strange Horizons.

Kaolin at GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominaor) Magazine reviews Sue Lange's We, Robots.

Kelley Eskridge and Nicola Griffith will be reading on Friday at A Different Light Bookstore in West Hollywood. You can catch the details here.

The last volume of the Marq'ssan Cycle

It's done. The last volume of the Marq'ssan Cycle, Stretto, has arrived here from the printer. I feel as though I ought to be celebrating, ought to have finally, after more than twenty years, a sense of closure. And yet, instead I'm experiencing the same flatness I always feel a day or two after I've finished writing a novel. The feeling is too complicated to articulate easily. Why is it, I wonder, that (for me, anyway) elation lies in the writing process itself-- especially as I'm beginning a novel? I suppose that elation lies in the magic of possibility, the magic of stepping into a new world, never before explored. Finishing means closing the door on that world, so that all future exploration will be strictly private, inside one's own head...

But I'm supposing to be announcing that Stretto is back from the printer, not talking about my feelings. Here's the deal: Stretto its available now through Aqueduct's site for a special pre-release price of $15. The official release date is July 1, by which time it should be available at all the usual venues. Here's a brief description:

Stretto, the grand finale of the Marq'ssan Cycle, weaves together the major threads of the Marq'ssan story and encourages readers, as Joan Haran says, "to write beyond the ending." The novel, like the series as a whole, inquires Whose world is it? and shows several possible ways of answering the question through the respective perceptions and perspectives of the novel's five viewpoint characters: Alexandra Sedgewick, heir to the Sedgewick estate; Anne Hawthorne, Security operative; Hazel Bell, subversive activist; Celia Espin, human rights lawyer; and Emily Madden, star pupil of the maverick Marq'ssan, Astrea l Betut san Imu. As always, never predictable, never finished, the consequences of all that has gone before continues to play out.

Joan Haran wrote this blurb:
The final volume in the Marq'ssan series will encourage its readers to write beyond the ending. There are no gift-wrapped resolutions or easy redemptions on offer, rather there is a clear-sighted focus on the always-unfolding consequences-intended and unintended-of personal and political action taken. This is a series that is deeply invested in social transformation while resisting any temptation to consolation. As a resolute utopian, I see this as a hopeful strategy.

And here is a chunk of Donald D'Ammassa's review:
Like its predecessors, this is very much a novel of ideas and personal relations rather than of action or adventure. The author is more interested in the clash of ideas than in describing pitched battles in the streets of Washington. If you enjoy books designed to stimulate thought as well as entertain you, Duchamp's speculations about the forms of government and the ways in which people in power interact should prove very rewarding.

About the series, Jeff Vandermeer said a few weeks ago that it "is the most important political SF published in the last decade. Praised by the likes of Cory Doctorow and Samuel Delany, Duchamp's accomplishment here is deadly, sharp, emotional, and intelligent."



The first forty-seven pages, by the way, can be read here.

Another Link

Liz Henry's Enough Reality! I've Got the Space Bug at the Feminist SF Blog discusses her recent reading, viz., Wen Spencer's Endless Blue, Maureen McHugh's Mission Child, my own Blood in the Fruit, Naomi Mitchison's Solution Three, Elizabeth Bear's Dust, and Karl Schroeder's Permanence (which she classifies as "Dudely SF that pisses me off").

Naturally my attention zoomed right in on her discussion of the Marq'ssan Cycle in general and Blood in the Fruit in particular. Here's a chunk of it:

Throughout the Marq’ssan series I have been more and more impressed with Duchamp’s skill at unpacking the infinite detail, the fractalness of thought, in human relationships, laid bare so relentlessly it feels like seeing another sort of interrogation — of the characters — and thus we can’t avoid interrogating and examining our own lives and relationships in similar ways. I know that some people will pick up Alanya to Alanya and won’t get it. But if you are the sort of science fiction reader who likes Middlemarch and books like that… You will be well rewarded by plowing through all the Marq’ssan books though I fear for most people it will take till the middle of book 2 to get really hooked. Then once you are hooked, watch out. It’s painful and scary. Talk about axe for the frozen sea. These are books that leave you staring at the ceiling for several nights or violently sobbing as you reevaluate bits of your life and think of all your failings and self-lies, denials and blindnesses and hypocrisies. I don’t think I’ve read anything that so well entangles that personal detail and complexity with political complexity, other than The Orphan’s Tales, which is a completely different flavor of story. How do people make moral decisions? What makes them tick? What is evil? Why is our society so gendered? What the hell? Can people of different social classes, or genders, ever really trust or believe each other? What truth is even possible? Can non violent revolution succeed, and how would we measure its success, and while we’re at it let’s think more carefully about what we mean by violence… Who is fighting what, and why, and how, and what result might it have? ZOMG. Like that.

Wow. My cup runneth over.