The Future is Female!: because Shameless Ploy to Cash in on a Feminist Slogan Plus One Random Story by Ursula K. Le Guin...
A story collection, edited by Yaszek (Science Fiction/Georgia Inst. of Technology), billing itself as a set of science-fiction classics written by women.
With a title like this, readers may assume they’ll get a sweeping look at all science fiction written by women from the early to mid-20th century. And that is the case—to a point. Upon closer examination, 24 of the stories are taken directly from pulp magazines, except for Ursula K. Le Guin’s contribution, which, in this version, appeared in her 1975 collection, The Wind's Twelve Quarters. The selection of pulp stories is somewhat questionable. For instance, the introduction recounts how the editor of Weird Tales “closed his office for the day in celebration” upon reading C.L. Moore’s story “Shambleau.” If that piques your interest, too bad: That story isn’t here. Moore’s “The Black God’s Kiss” is—but it’s sword-and-sorcery with a hint of eldritch horror, not science fiction. And why acknowledge that Marion Zimmer Bradley has been accused by her daughter of sexual abuse yet still include her in this anthology? These issues aside, make no mistake: The quality of the stories here is unassailable. “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain,” written by James Tiptree Jr. in 1969, still adeptly offers the chilling fear of a global pandemic. Alice Eleanor Jones’ post-apocalyptic “Created He Them” is surely just as disturbing as it was in 1955. Zenna Henderson’s “Ararat,” with its what if everyone on The Waltons were actually aliens? vibe, is also a delight. This could have been a thoughtful collection, specifically highlighting the women of pulp magazines, but this theme is unconvincingly broadened, apparently to accommodate a perplexing title. Also, the editor shoehorns in recently deceased Le Guin, whose selection never appeared in a pulp magazine, and her inclusion on the cover feels like cynical marketing. These stories—and the women who wrote them—deserve far better.
The Future is Female!: because Shameless Ploy to Cash in on a Feminist Slogan Plus One Random Story by Ursula K. Le Guin (RIP) wouldn’t fit on the cover.Pub Date: Sept. 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-59853-580-8
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Library of America
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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