EXTRA(ORDINARY) PEOPLE

by Joanna Russ ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 10, 1984

Five recent stories, three reprints and two brand-new--with the tenuous link that they're all being told to a skeptical pupil by his robot tutor. For openers, there's the magnificent Nebula-winning ""Souls,"" set in 12th-century Germany--where a wise, competent, and compassionate abbess (with odd mental gifts) defends her charges against conscienceless Viking raiders. Another dazzler, ""The Mystery of the Young Gentleman"" (Speculations, 1982), exposes male conceits in withering, witty style--as a telepathic woman is obliged to masquerade as a man while crossing the Atlantic by steamer. But the remaining stories are more didactic, less straightforward, and sometimes irksomely allusive: 20th-century persons encounter social-sexual problems when resurrected into a laid-back, sexually ambiguous future; a woman disguised as a hideous demon explores a feudal alternate world of superstitution and magic. Plus--an opaque, quasi-autobiographical flight-of-fancy. A typical Russ spectrum, then: talented, radical, sometimes angrily intolerant, ranging from the sublime to the self-indulgent.

Pub Date: April 10, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION