Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean, Gwyneth Jones, Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress, Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman, Robin McKinley, Laurie Marks, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman,Rosemary Kirstein, Karen Joy Fowler, Susan Cooper, Ellen Klages, Lisa Goldstein, C.J. Cherryh, Kate Elliott, and Molly Gloss.

I keep noticing that a lot of the authors I want to profile with this series wear a lot of hats, and that is certainly true of Madeleine Robins. (Also could probably rock a stylin' cloche, but Marissa Picks Hats For Writers is a different blog series, let's not get sidetracked.) Robins has published in fantasy, mystery, and romance. I can only vouch for the first two, but they're both really good, and I would make a bet on the last one based on that.

I think one of the things I particularly like about the Sarah Tolerance mysteries that is also true of Robins's two stand-alone fantasies is that they have a very strong sense of place. In most of her work, that place is urban in some way or another, but also she has a keen eye for characterization within its context. (Which...is the ballgame. Characterization without context is incoherent.) Her books are witty but never jokey at the expense of the story, fun without losing sight of serious life issues. In fact in some ways I think they'll be the perfect pandemic rereads.

Let's get on that.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean, Gwyneth Jones, Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress, Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman, Robin McKinley, Laurie Marks, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman,Rosemary Kirstein, Karen Joy Fowler, Susan Cooper, Ellen Klages, Lisa Goldstein, and C.J. Cherryh.

Kate Elliott has had a prolific and varied career in SFF that is only getting stronger every year. She has even, conveniently, put together a page to tell you where you might want to start with her books depending on your tastes! I call that considerate.

My personal favorites are--and everyone who knows me will be shocked to hear this--the trilogy with "cold" in their titles--Cold Magic and its sequels. They're funny and adventurous and doing an alternate history thing that is not the common run of alternate history things. (Phoenicians many years on!) But the other series range from space opera to epic fantasy with lots of non-standard stops along the way. Elliott is great at taking a genre and constructing it, rather than deconstructing it--deciding what makes an epic fantasy interesting to her and doing it that way from the ground up rather than borrowing bits and pieces of genre furniture. Many/most of her books are medium-to-long books that exist in series, but generally with defined endings rather than meandering around.

Elliott has been at this since the mid-90s, and while she's definitely picked a few things up along the way, I still like the Jaran books quite a lot--I feel like they hold up. The other thing she's managed to do since the mid-90s, and with increasing skill, is to be a supportive presence around the writer community. In both cases, we're very lucky.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean, Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress, Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman, Robin McKinley, Laurie Marks, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman,Rosemary Kirstein, Karen Joy Fowler, Susan Cooper, and Ellen Klages.

Critical discourse about the speculative genres often focuses on alienation. And Lisa Goldstein does a lot with that theme--but she often does it in the slightly gentler realm of visitor/tourist. The bewildered traveler--either metaphorically or literally--estranged from the world around them but interested--is a common theme through Goldstein's books. With this angle comes the willingness to experience new things but also the struggle to free oneself from previous perspective.

The first time I read Tourists, Ivory Apples, and A Mask for the General--my three favorite of Goldstein's novels--this common thread didn't strike me as strongly as it does on this time around. Maybe it's because I'm staying put myself. Maybe it's just having a little more perspective. It's not like she didn't hand us clues to what she was doing: her collection is called Travelers in Magic, for heaven's sake. But right now, in the middle of our pandemic shutdown, I'm particularly appreciating the strangely familiar feel of this kind of long strange trip. And I'm particularly glad that Lisa Goldstein is still around imagining new places to take us. We need them now.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean, Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress, Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman, Robin McKinley, Laurie Marks, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Rosemary Kirstein, and Karen Joy Fowler.

Some poetry you memorize on purpose, because you want to keep it with you always. Some poetry you memorize accidentally, because you read it enough times, over and over again, that your brain automatically knows that the verse says wood bronze iron fire water stone and not the order in which those elements appear in the book. That's where I am with the prophecy poems in the Dark Is Rising series: I read them so many times that there are entire passages, not just the poems, that will be with me always. If that series was all Susan Cooper had ever written, it would be worth appreciating her for just that.

But, of course, it's not. There's the Boggart trilogy, a very different take on the same region's myths. There's the dreamlike Seaward; there are historical and time travel books. Cooper has also written picture books and screenplays. Her breadth is startling--many people who adored Greenwitch or Over Sea, Under Stone have no idea what a variety of other things Cooper has done. She keeps turning her hand to new things, and we're so lucky that she does.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede,Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress,Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman,Robin McKinley,Laurie Marks, Ellen Kushner, and Delia Sherman.

The Steerswoman series. There are four out already, apparently Rosemary is at work on not one but two more (oh that is so hopeful), but the four that already exist make me so happy.

The thing about the Steerswoman books is that they are about people who are trying to figure out their world. They're about people who value knowledge. And they're about people who have actually followed through on what that means in practical terms and come to a lot of ideas about kindness and equality that serve advancing knowledge really well, that unfortunately a lot of people in our world don't think ahead enough to get to. But one of the great things about books that are thoughtful about that kind of thing is that they encourage their readers to be more thoughtful too.

They are beautifully exploratory, these books. The protagonists are allowed to make extremely human mistakes in love and deduction and everything else that is important in life. And yet they keep on. In the face of sometimes staggering odds, they keep on. I only meant to reread the first two for this project, but now that I have, I just want to keep going--because they're not just philosophically great, they're also delightful page-turners, well-characterized and tightly plotted. I am over the moon to find that we have two more coming. I simply cannot wait for more of Kirstein's work, and if you haven't had the joy, run don't walk to download the ebooks or order paper copies delivered from your nearest friendly struggling retailer.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede,Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress,Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey, Greer Gilman, Robin McKinley, and Laurie Marks.

The first several times I mentioned a book by Ellen Kushner, my mother would ask, is it that Ellen Kushner? It is, it is that Ellen Kushner--because my mother listened to NPR's Sound and Spirit, and that was how she knew Ellen's name.

But for me, Ellen Kushner meant Riverside, and still does. She's written other things--Thomas the Rhymer, notably, although there have been others--but her masterwork in fantasy is the series of stories clustered around Riverside, starting with Swordspoint and blossoming into more, The Privilege of the Sword and The Fall of the Kings and eventually the Tremontaine serial.

Though these settings have been shared with other writers, starting with her wife, writer Delia Sherman and going on to a bevy of other talents through the serial, a reread of Swordspoint makes it clear how many of the ideas were layered in from the very beginning. Other talents have brought their own strengths and richness to the stories--but only because Kushner built the space for them into it in the first place. Some of the references are tiny, astonishing in retrospect. Some anticipate current trends by decades. It is a marvel of concise implication, and it isn't even my favorite of her works. (That would be The Fall of the Kings.) I think this is actually a case where taking up any thread will give you an edge of the tapestry, and I definitely recommend that you do so.

Every time certain other Kushners are referred to by their last name alone, I think, "WHAT? She would neve--oh, that guy," and remain staunch in my conviction that if they don't mean Ellen Kushner, they really should specify. Because we all know which is the original.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede,Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress,Diane Duane, Candas Jane Dorsey , and Greer Gilman.

There's a lot of pressure for sequels in this world. Robin McKinley basically doesn't do sequels. Sometimes this makes those of us who have been her fans since we were staggering around the grade school thinking big dragon thoughts tear our hair and scream. Sometimes it leaves us with basically part of a story, waiting to see if the promised sequel ever comes. That way lies madness, friends. It might. But you can't actually wait for it. That's not what she's doing.

What you can do--what you should do--is enjoy what's here. Because what's here is delightful. What's here is its own thing in all sorts of explosively different directions. I don't know of any other author who can write two retellings of the same fairy tale and have them feel as completely different as McKinley's Beauty and the Beast retellings that they can feel so utterly non-repetitive. The same author did something as sweet as The Outlaws of Sherwood and as dark as Deerskin--and fairly close together, too. The two Damar books are listed as related to each other, but they are such different views of the same land as to be completely transformative of it. What is Damar, what are its customs and mores, what do its people mean and think and do? Utterly transformed things over time--and yet connected, related. I could have--would have--read a dozen books about Damar. If you'd asked me, when I was a tiny child who had just finished reading about Narnia, I would have expected to. And instead I got Sunshine and its bakery and the way that it tells a vampire story when I thought I never wanted another. What else will there be. I can't begin to guess, but McKinley's body of work has taught me to appreciate what there is, and that is itself such a gift.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede,Lois McMaster Bujold, Nancy Kress, and Diane Duane.

My first exposure to Candas Jane Dorsey's work was the singular Black Wine, which did more with themes of servitude and slavery than the vast majority of science fiction prior to its publication. From there I went on to A Paradigm of Earth, the kind of near-future SF that was present-SF by the time I read it, one where aliens were trying to figure out humans and gender, and friends, couldn't we really use some confused aliens going "wait but what but wait" on this one because it's not like we've got a good fix on it ourselves, and poking at it with an alien is not a bad plan at all, nor is it in the book in question.

Most lately, though, and the one that made me think of writing a Present Writers post about Dorsey, was Ice and Other Stories. Because it is such a far-ranging collection in tone and mood and time and genre. It is doing so many things, it is reaching for so many things and then actually achieving them, that it was a sudden reminder: oh! Oh yes, she's been doing this a minute! She's gotten quite good at this! (And that, if you recall, is what this series is for.)

But when I looked up her bio, it turns out that Dorsey, like so many of the writers in this series, had done so much more than what I'd already realized. Television and stage scripts, arts journalism and arts advocacy...it makes me want to send her a fruit basket and a comfy place to sit down for a moment. But that's what these posts are for: to say, we see you, well done, keep doing it, here is your internet fruit basket for continuing to do the thing.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean,Gwyneth Jones , Caroline Stevermer, Patricia C. Wrede, and Lois McMaster Bujold.

I've talked on the record about how Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain, the novel version, was one of the most formative books of my teen years, one of the books that my father found for me as a random no-occasion present that made me sit up and say, this, I'm going to do this. But when I went to write this post, I turned to the thing that turned out to be even more formative for me, which was Kress's short story collections.

Now, I've been gradually rereading a lot of the short story collections I read in the Nineties, and frankly I've been disappointed in a lot of them. So I picked up Trinity and Other Stories with bated breath. It was the first one, she hadn't even really hit her stride, how would it strike me now, in my 40s instead of my teens?

I needn't have worried. I was not even all the way through the first story before I relaxed into the prose, into the characterization, into the ideas. I moved on to Beaker's Dozen to find the Kress I remembered--the Kress of the Nineties, the Kress who shaped my idea of how short stories worked, still there, still writing about both biology and compassion, both spacetime and interdependence, social ecology. She's won Nebulas, Hugos, a Campbell, a Sturgeon, written dozens of novels and even more shorter work, not to mention books on writing--taught and lectured and keynoted, hell, sang and danced and for all I know probably juggled.

And...when I read through these collections, I remembered the sigh of relief that I felt, that someone else in the field I was trying to work in knew and understood that heart vs. brain was not a reasonable theme because there was no "vs." there, what you wanted was an ampersand. Because embracing that "vs." made us all worse. I realized, on this reread, what I couldn't see as a teenager: that Nancy Kress is the science fiction writer who is most like my mother. (Not "like a mother to me" but like my own specific mother.) Who sees the overlooked ideas of the lower-class women, the caregivers, the people whose life demands are not entirely polished, not entirely tidy...who can see into the shiny boardrooms and labs and also the world that is not entirely techno-black-matte-finish, and translate between the two. Why did this work feel so entirely right, oh, I see now, I am so happy to see now.

In some previous entries I've included a disclaimer that the author is a personal friend. I can't say that here--I've never met Nancy Kress. But rereading these short stories, thinking happily about rereading some of the novels, I think that she is probably the head of the list of authors I'd gladly buy lunch if we were at the same convention. What these stories did for me was so huge, and--what a relief to find that they are still themselves, that they have not diminished as I have grown up. What a relief to find her work, as herself, so steadfastly present in this field.

This is the latest in a recurring series! For more about the series, please read the original post on Marta Randall, or subsequent posts on Dorothy Heydt, Barbara Hambly, Jane Yolen, Suzy McKee Charnas, Sherwood Smith, Nisi Shawl, Pamela Dean, Gwyneth Jones , and Caroline Stevermer.

I swear I'm not going to shift to making this series all about people I'm personally friends with...but neither am I going to neglect people whose work fits the series concept just because they happen to be good company for lunch.

The size and variety of Pat's oeuvre gives lots of room for variety, and obviously some works will stand out as more favorite than others. My obscure faves are the stories in the shared Liavek worlds, handled deftly and now available in Points of Departure along with Pamela Dean's stories in the same world. The handling of wry humor, family dynamics, and worldbuilding in these stories charmed me from the first one I encountered, but they're even better as a set.

I recently reread a better-known favorite, Dealing With Dragons, which reminded me of some of the things I love about Pat's work--the wry tone, as above, perhaps obviously. But also the way that women have a wide variety of relationships with each other. The first page made me think, oh, I don't remember this very well, is it going to be one of those books where golden-haired girls who like embroidery are Bad and you have to be Not Like Them to protag? And I should have remembered that it was Pat, she was not going to do that, and sure enough there's room for a wide range of skills and interests--and for a wide range of reactions to and interactions with each other. This was ground-breaking for so many "why don't you ever see a heroine who" conversations, and it holds up so very well.

Just rereading one made me want to go back and reread the entire series. And also Sorcery and Cecelia. And also Snow White and Rose Red. It's like quicksand. But in a good way. It's like very complimentary quicksand that knows how to play the beats on a widely varied set of tropes...so percussionist quicksand...look, this is a good thing, I promise, let's get back to the dragons.