marissa lingen

UNCANNY MAGAZINE #38 (January/February 2021) Edited by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas

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Since its inception I’ve been one of the Space Unicorns supporting Uncanny Magazine. Yet, among all the genre outlets, it is probably the one that I’m most divided on among typical story content. The type of story they feature sometimes works fantastically for me, but then other times falls flat; this is even with authors who are typical favorites. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it to explain the reasons behind those personal tastes, but just accept that Uncanny will feature an even split for me.

“Tyrannosaurus Hex” by Sam J. Miller — One of my two favorite stories in the issue. For me, Miller can take a story concept that I’m not all terribly excited about and still turn it into something engaging and interesting; this is a case in point. At a dinner, a young girl joins an even younger boy in virtual reality entertainment through their implants, while the adults obliviously chat. The girl quickly realizes something is not quite right, and very dangerous, with the program the boy is running. Namely the malware that has infected it. An interesting take on generational tech divides, shared digital experiences, and lazy parenting.

“A House Full of Voices Is Never Empty” by Miyuki Jane Pinckard — You stopped reading this early in.

“Pathfinding!” by Nicole Kornher-Stace — A second story on children in simulations, with a director and individuals named with numbers, à la Stranger Things. Written in third-person present across 31 numbered sections, it felt long to me. I had no serious problems with it, but didn’t take to its themes or style particularly either.

“In That Place She Grows a Garden” by Del Sandeen — A reprint from a story I first read in Fiyah Magazine, from an issue themed around ‘hair’. A young African American girl is disciplined at school for failing to conform to discriminatory codes that ban traditional Black hairstyles. Despite their attempts to control her body, her head has other plans for what it will grow. Really adore this one, even a second time.

“Beyond the Doll Forest” by Marissa Lingen — My other favorite new story in the issue, again by an author I often enjoy. A nanny ponders her young charge who fears curses, the miniature forest that the girl has built in her playroom that seems to show small changes and fleeting glimpses of creatures, and the absent siblings the girl speaks of. A creepy fantasy of magic, illness symbolized, and the strength/powers of childhood imagination.

“Femme and Sundance” by Christopher Caldwell — Two men start a passionate relationship and plan a bank heist, utilizing charmed masks provided by a curandera one of them knows. Then starts a wild ride on the run with the money, but the magic of the masks still vibrating, and others in pursuit. A fun urban fantasy adventure.

“Distribution” by Paul Cornell — This one certainly fits within the ‘uncanny’ moniker. It’s filled with deep themes of human nature, memory, and social obligations, and it’s set within a vaguely post-disaster setting where fragments of rebuilding occur that hearken to the past, but amid continued near-future technology from our present. Mostly consisting as an interview conversation between two characters, I found it hard to get into and appreciate despite themes that usually resonate.

The issue also features editorials from the editors and “Imagining Futures: Where Our Works Go from Here” by Elsa Sjunneson; poems “Medusa Gets a Haircut” by Theodora Goss, “Kalevala, an untelling” by Lizy Simonen, “bargain | bin” by Ewen Ma, “What The Time Travellers Stole” by L.X. Beckett, and “Fish Out of Water” by Neil Gaiman; essays “Weird Plagues: How Fear of Disease Mutated into a Subgenre” by John Wiswell, “Milk Teeth” by Octavia Cade, “Hayao Miyazaki’s Lost Magic of Parenthood” by Aidan Moher, and “Trash Fantasias, or Why Mass Effect 3‘s Ending Was Bad Actually” by Katherine Cross; interviews of Miyuki Jane Pinckard and Paul Cornell by Caroline M. Yoachim; and thank you messages to Patreon supporters and Kickstarter backers.

Women Destroy Science Fiction!, Edited by Christie Yant

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Women Destroy Science Fiction!
Lightspeed Magazine #49 (June 2014)
Edited by Christie Yant
Publisher: John Joseph Adams
ISBN: 1499508344
488 pages, paperback (special ed.)
Published 1st June 2014
Source: Personal purchase

Fiction Contents:

“Each to Each”, by Seanan McGuire
“A Word Shaped Like Bones”, by Kris Millering
“Cuts Both Ways”, by Heather Clitheroe
“Walking Awake”, by N.K. Jemison
“The Case of the Passionless Bees”, by Rhonda Eikamp
“In the Image of Man”, by Gabriella Stalker
“The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick”, by Charlie Jane Anders
“Dim Sun”, by Maria Dahvana Headley
“The Lonely Sea in the Sky”, by Amal El-Mohtar
“A Burglary, Addressed By a Young Lady”, by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall
“Canth”, by K.C. Norton
“Like Daughter”, by Tananarive Due
“The Greatest Loneliness”, by Maria Romasco Moore
“Love is the Plan the Plan is Death”, by James Tiptree, Jr.
“Knapsack Poems”, by Eleanore Arnason
“The Cost to Be Wise”, by Maureen F. McHugh
“Salvage”, by Carrie Vaughn
“A Guide to Grief”, by Emily Fox
“See DANGEROUS EARTH-POSSIBLES!”, by Tina Connolly
“A Debt Repaid”, by Marina J. Lostetter
“The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced”, by Sarah Pinsker
“#TrainFightTuesday”, by Vanessa Torline
“The Hymn of Ordeal, No. 23”, by Rhiannon Rasmussen
“Emoticon”, by Anaid Perez
“The Mouths”, by Ellen Denham
“MIA”, by Kim Winternheimer
“Standard Deviant”, by Holly Schofield
“Getting on in Years”, by Cathy Humble
“Ro-Sham-Bot”, by Effie Seiberg
“Everything That Has Already Been Said”, by Samantha Murray
“The Lies We Tell Our Children”, by Katherine Crighton
“They Tell Me There Will Be No Pain”, by Rachael Acks

Also including a novel excerpt, nonfiction, personal essays, artist gallery,  and author spotlights

 ‘Women don’t write real science fiction.’ ‘That isn’t what a story written by a woman should be like.’ ‘If women try to write science fiction they will just destroy it.’
Many things out there seem to be an all-male’s club (or predominantly so). It kinda boggles my mind that statements like those above were ever tossed around in the field – or that they even are still today. Compared to the past there are a lot of women science fiction writers out there, as this collection testifies. Part of any issues I feel come down to the matter of the definition of science fiction. What is ‘real’ science fiction? There is no single answer, and to some the answer is a sub genre that may be called hard science fiction which ultimately will come down to facts related to physics.
As there appears to be fewer women in the ‘hard’ sciences (a separate problem in itself) it comes as not too big a surprise then that there aren’t many female science fiction writers that could be put in that category of ‘hard SF’. Yet, even when they could, it seems like their inherent gender make people consider them something else.
Take Margaret Atwood – a writer whose stories feature reasonable futures based on present-day scientific reality (a relatively narrow, but common definition of hard SF as put forth recently for example by Norman Spinrad in Asimov’s). Her work is easily classified as hard science fiction. But she herself eschews the label, preferring to call her work speculative fiction to avoid the negative associations of ‘science fiction’ with a particular kind of space story and an interest in scientific details over a more human or literary picture.
Whatever the definitions and whatever the reasons why some have an issue with women writing science fiction, the stories here prove that one should be overjoyed if they continue to find voice in ‘destroying’ science fiction.
The stories included here make this easily a year’s best of collection in itself. They are varied in tone from the humorous to the serious, and in genre from hard and futuristic to the more fantastic (alternate) historical. As such, unless you enjoy a wide range of types of stories, there may be some stories in here that just don’t interest you despite each truly being top-notch. I personally had my favorites within each section of new fiction, reprints, and flash fiction. And there were some I just didn’t enjoy though I recognized their merits as intended. However, even if you only like a particular kind of story in the SF landscape, the collection is well-worth the cheap admission price.
I particularly liked the opening story by Seanan McGuire. Out of all the stories in this collection I feel this one significant to discuss due to its embodiment of what the entire collection represents.
There are conflicting expectations in a collection with the theme this Lightspeed issue has. On the one hand one has the expectation that the stories will relate the female-specific condition within the confines of the genre. They ‘should’ feature female characters that aren’t stereotypes, they ‘should’ deal with feminist issues, they ‘should’ focus on matters unique to female biology and social practices built around that.
Yet, on the other hand the point is that women writing science fiction should be no different, no less worthy or capable, than men writing it. And the point is that there is no single thing that women writing science fiction ‘should’ write about. If a female author writes a story with no female characters that says nothing about her gender, does that matter? Does it by virtue of her gender automatically become a feminist work even though the story itself is so devoid?
Seanan McGuire’s “Each to Each” is brilliant in its playing with expectations of what females are, the roles they ‘should’ serve, and how they are viewed both by others and by themselves. These sorts of themes echo throughout the remainder of the collection, whether explored implicitly or explicitly. The stories (and the nofiction in the issue) don’t offer any kind of clear answers to the matters of dealing with gender disparities, or of dealing with the general Other. Instead they offer a celebration of what all is possible with women writing science fiction. That celebration shows that women writing science fiction is just simply humans writing science fiction – a world of disparate experiences and possibilities, with aspects that no one really has a premium on beyond the fact that each is a personal story, unique and meaningful each to each.
They are women, but they are not just women. They are Charlie Jane Anders. They are Rachel Swirsky. They are Marissa Lingen. They are Nisi Shawl. They are. And listening to their voices is the closest we can come to understanding them, and for that their talented and competent voices deserve to be heard, however they choose to raise them.
One of the things I really enjoy with Lightspeed Magazine are the author interviews that accompany each story, that highlight the individual and personal nature of each story. These give insight into the author’s inspirations, writing process, and at times show interpretations which may coincide or be different from the reader’s. The other nonfiction here includes a host of personal essays. I found these okay by and large, though I do wish there were one or two longer and more in-depth essays or analyses rather than the more brief or superficial feel that some of these had.
If you haven’t picked up this issue yet, I really encourage you to do so, and to look for the two upcoming Women Destroy… issues featuring a Fantasy and a Horror focus, and the Queers Destroy… issue that will follow.
Decades ago a large part of science fiction was not just about technological or scientific speculation but also social speculation, a means to explore the disenfranchised and the Other. It is nice to see something returning in full force to this purpose.
Five Stars out of Five