Books 2012: Outlaw Bodies
Oct. 19th, 2012 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbBooks 2012: 201
Not-201: Christopher L. Bennett, Only Superhuman. Tor, 2012. e-ARC courtesy of the publishers, via NetGalley.
I bailed on this after fifty pages. Science fiction with superheroes. All the flaws of the superhero genre and few of the benefits. Excruciatingly infodumpy, contains far too much male gaze, general feeling after thirty pages is: Why should I care about your brittle emotionally-stunted superhuman of a girl protagonist? and after forty: Shit, only complete fuckups of Irish parentage would call their daughter Emerald.
Maybe it picks up from there, but I can't be arsed to find out. Not recommended.
201. Lori Selke and Djibril al-Ayad, ed.s, Outlaw Bodies: a speculative fiction anthology. Future Fire Publishing, 2012. e-ARC courtesy of the publishers.
I'm not usually much for short stuff. It's not what I read by preference or habit. And this collection I read last night in the throes of angry sleeplessness, so I wasn't exactly feeling the happy.
That said, this is an interesting collection. Two of its constituent pieces, one of the strongest and (by me) one of the weakest, previously appeared elsewhere: the others appear for the first time in print. It is, naturally enough, uneven: Vylar Kaftan's "She Called Me Baby," (first published 2005 in Strange Horizons) is perhaps the most vivid piece, about the uncomfortable reconciliation of a daughter and a mother. Other strong contenders include Jo Thomas's "Good Form," an interesting and uncomfortable piece; "Millie," by Anna Caro, whose protagonist doesn't have a body, not in the normal sense of the word; and Tracie Welser's "Her Bones, Those Of The Dead," which has a striking central image and concerns itself with its protagonist's choice of self-determination, of abnegation of the fleshly body in favour of a machine one. Stacy Sinclair's "Winds: NW 20km/hr" is an interesting and compelling look at pregnancy and strangeness, and I'd rate it second behind Kaftan's story, out of the whole collection.
Fabio Fernandes' "The Remaker" has an interesting conceit, but lacks power in the conclusion. M. Svairini's "Mouth" posits an interesting division of genders but is far, far too involved with sex what is so Not My Kink for me to have an opinion other than Not My Kink. "Elmer Bank," by Emily Capettini is... odd, and seems like a second-wave-feminism War Of The Sexes story. And Lori Selke's "Frankenstein Unravelled" appears to concern itself primarily with the bureaucracy of the American (lack of) healthcare system, and really doesn't work for me.
The collection is weighted towards science fiction. There is an argument to be made for reading "Winds: NW 2okm/hr" and "Elmer Bank" as modern fantasy, but they could as easily be read SFnally. Of these, two are post-apocalyptic underground-civilisation, and more than one of the remainder has a dystopic flavour.
There's not a single unambiguously fantastical story in the bunch, which is, I think, a sad loss in a collection titled Outlaw Bodies. Still, it's interesting reading, and if you like short stuff more than I do, worth checking out.
Not-201: Christopher L. Bennett, Only Superhuman. Tor, 2012. e-ARC courtesy of the publishers, via NetGalley.
I bailed on this after fifty pages. Science fiction with superheroes. All the flaws of the superhero genre and few of the benefits. Excruciatingly infodumpy, contains far too much male gaze, general feeling after thirty pages is: Why should I care about your brittle emotionally-stunted superhuman of a girl protagonist? and after forty: Shit, only complete fuckups of Irish parentage would call their daughter Emerald.
Maybe it picks up from there, but I can't be arsed to find out. Not recommended.
201. Lori Selke and Djibril al-Ayad, ed.s, Outlaw Bodies: a speculative fiction anthology. Future Fire Publishing, 2012. e-ARC courtesy of the publishers.
I'm not usually much for short stuff. It's not what I read by preference or habit. And this collection I read last night in the throes of angry sleeplessness, so I wasn't exactly feeling the happy.
That said, this is an interesting collection. Two of its constituent pieces, one of the strongest and (by me) one of the weakest, previously appeared elsewhere: the others appear for the first time in print. It is, naturally enough, uneven: Vylar Kaftan's "She Called Me Baby," (first published 2005 in Strange Horizons) is perhaps the most vivid piece, about the uncomfortable reconciliation of a daughter and a mother. Other strong contenders include Jo Thomas's "Good Form," an interesting and uncomfortable piece; "Millie," by Anna Caro, whose protagonist doesn't have a body, not in the normal sense of the word; and Tracie Welser's "Her Bones, Those Of The Dead," which has a striking central image and concerns itself with its protagonist's choice of self-determination, of abnegation of the fleshly body in favour of a machine one. Stacy Sinclair's "Winds: NW 20km/hr" is an interesting and compelling look at pregnancy and strangeness, and I'd rate it second behind Kaftan's story, out of the whole collection.
Fabio Fernandes' "The Remaker" has an interesting conceit, but lacks power in the conclusion. M. Svairini's "Mouth" posits an interesting division of genders but is far, far too involved with sex what is so Not My Kink for me to have an opinion other than Not My Kink. "Elmer Bank," by Emily Capettini is... odd, and seems like a second-wave-feminism War Of The Sexes story. And Lori Selke's "Frankenstein Unravelled" appears to concern itself primarily with the bureaucracy of the American (lack of) healthcare system, and really doesn't work for me.
The collection is weighted towards science fiction. There is an argument to be made for reading "Winds: NW 2okm/hr" and "Elmer Bank" as modern fantasy, but they could as easily be read SFnally. Of these, two are post-apocalyptic underground-civilisation, and more than one of the remainder has a dystopic flavour.
There's not a single unambiguously fantastical story in the bunch, which is, I think, a sad loss in a collection titled Outlaw Bodies. Still, it's interesting reading, and if you like short stuff more than I do, worth checking out.
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Date: 2012-10-19 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2012-10-19 08:51 pm (UTC)