From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Apr 30 15:07:50 1992 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic2!mcsun!uunet!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!usenet.coe.montana.edu!nntp.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!raven.alaska.edu!never-reply-to-path-lines From: warda@vax.oxford.ac.uk Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: ALIEN SEX, edited by Ellen Datlow Message-ID: <1992Apr28.193615.3667@raven.alaska.edu> Date: 28 Apr 92 19:36:15 GMT Sender: wisner@raven.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Organization: Oxford University VAXcluster Lines: 106 Approved: wisner@ims.alaska.edu ~title: ALIEN SEX Author: Ellen Datlow (ed.) A collection of 19 short stories, edited with a discriminating eye by Ellen Datlow, sharing the common theme of... sex. More specifically, stories which shed light on human sexuality by using non-humans or just outre relationships as a method of exploration. I remember reading stuff like Philip Jose Farmer's "The Jungle Rot Kid On The Nod" (in this collection) during my teenage years and being slightly shocked, greatly intrigued and having my horizons widened a little. Harlan Ellison uses similar sexual shock tactics, and John Varley's nonchalant assumption of universal bisexuality (once sex-changing is easy and commonplace) made me think - (a) Of course!! and (b) Oh no!! Alien Sex walks in the same borderzone - it shocked, provoked and stimulated me. I wouldn't describe any of the stories as "erotic", and some are positively repellent, but they try and persuade you to think about male/female relationships in different ways to the norm. Some of the stories are familiar friends - I think Connie Willis' "All My Darling Daughters" was a Nebula nominee (and if not, why not?). James Tiptree Jr's "And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill's Side" is a true classic - the desire for alien contact is an integral part of many SF reader's psyches, but the price of loving a superior being may be too high.... Edward Bryant's "Dancing Chickens" feels Delanyesque to me, and still gives me a sad chill. Larry Niven's "Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex", although hardly a serious exploration of sexuality, is enormously entertaining and possibly worth buying this book for in itself - should there still be anyone out there who hasn't read it. Others are by (to me) less well-known authors - Roberta Lannes "Saving The World At The New Moon Motel" is a wonderful flight of fancy based on a true-life drama the author witnessed at an all-night diner. For the record, the authors are: Leigh Kennedy, Rick Wilber, Harlan Ellison, Scott Baker, Larry Niven, K.W. Jeter, Philip Jose Farmer, Lisa Tuttle, Bruce McAllister, Edward Bryant, Pat Cadigan, Geoff Ryman, Connie Willis, Richard Christian Matheson, Lewis Shiner, Roberta Lannes, James Tiptree Jr., Michaela Roessner and Pat Murphy. One caveat - Despite the presence of a couple of cyberpunk luminaries on this list, and an interesting if somewhat pretentious foreword by William Gibson, this is NOT a cyberpunk collection (IMHO). Just a good one. Out of the 19 stories, I only disliked one. Despite the tacky title (wait till you see some of the ALTERNATIVE titles suggested to the editor!), and the unappealing cover blurbs this is a wonderful book, and deserves a tryout from anyone who enjoyed or admired e.g. "A Boy And His Dog", "The Left Hand Of Darkness", "The Female Man", "Dhalgren", "Dangerous Visions", Anne Rice, "The Phantom Of Kansas" and other sexually challenging pioneers. I loved it. Bill Bennett WARDA@UK.AC.OXFORD.VAX P.S. For readers in the UK encouraged by my e-mail address, I'm afraid I bought this on holiday in Toronto where it's just come out, so don't start searching in your local bookstores just yet. -- %A Gibson, William %A Kennedy, Leigh %A Wilber, Rick %A Ellison, Harlan %A Baker, Scott %A Niven, Larry %A Jeter, K.W. %A Farmer, Philip Jose %A Tuttle, Lisa %A McAllister, Bruce %A Bryant, Edward %A Cadigan, Pat %A Ryman, Geoff %A Willis, Connie %A Mathieson, Richard Christian %A Shiner, Lewis %A Lannes, Roberta %A Tiptree Jr., James %A Roessner, Michaela %A Murphy, Pat %B Foreword: Strange Attractors %B Her Furry Face %B War Bride %B How's The Night Life On Cissalda? %B The Jamesburg Incubus %B Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex %B The First Time %B The Jungle Rot Kid On The Nod %B Husbands %B When The Fathers Go %B Dancing Chickens %B Roadside Rescue %B Omnisexual %B All My Darling Daughters %B Arousal %B Scales %B Saving The World At The New Moon Motel %B And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill's Side %B Picture Planes %B Love And Sex Among The Invertebrates %C New York %D March 1992 %E Datlow, Ellen %G ISBN 0-451-45142-2 %I ROC Science Fiction %O US $4.99, Canada $5.99, paperback %P 317 %T Alien Sex From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:45:40 1994 Path: liuida!sunic!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.intercon.com!udel!news.sprintlink.net!dg-rtp!sheol!dont-reply-to-paths From: gdr11@cl.cam.ac.uk (Gareth Rees) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: Review: Alien Sex edited by Ellen Datlow Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Organization: U of Cambridge, England Message-ID: <1994Mar1.121634.17714@infodev.cam.ac.uk> Date: 02 Mar 94 01:29:51 GMT Lines: 67 Alien Sex edited by Ellen Datlow A book review by Gareth Rees Copyright 1993 Gareth Rees `When men in sf films say `It's a strange alien life form like nothing we've met before, and we can't possibly understand it'' says Gwyneth Jones, talking about her new novel White Queen, `what I hear is `Women! Who can understand them?'' Well, that's Alien Sex deconstructed, right? Well, not really. Ellen Datlow's new collection is full of sophisticated and intelligent stories that bear this kind of analysis lightly. Of course there's fluff too, but even that is mostly delightful. There's Larry Niven's oft-reprinted `Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex', about the problems of conceiving a child when your sperm are faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive; Philip Jose Farmer wonders what Tarzan would have been like if it had been written by William rather than Edgar Rice in `The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod'; Geoff Ryman describes a universe dedicated to fucking itself in `Omnisexual'; Roberta Lannes parodies the anthology's theme in her hilarious `Saving the World at the New Moon Motel', Harlan Ellison's rather disappointing dirty joke `How's the Night Life on Cissalda' has a funnier introduction by Datlow, and Scott Baker pads out the pages with the dull and unreconstructed `The Jamesburg Incubus'. Among the serious stories, two authors comment on the nasty side of male-female politics using the human-alien metaphor, K W Jeter in `The First Time' and Michaela Roessner in `Picture Planes'; there are variations on the demon lover by Richard Matheson and Lewis Shiner; three stories take as a theme the destructive effect of the cargo culture induced by the appearance on Earth of vastly superior aliens; `War Bride' by Rick Wilbur, `When the Fathers Go' by Bruce McAllister and `And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side' by James Tiptree Jr. The stories which approach the alien sex theme best are `Dancing Chickens' by Ed Bryant and `Roadside Rescue' by Pat Cadigan which go beyond merely sex with aliens to consider kinds of activity which humans might have trouble recognising as sex. Leigh Kennedy supplies `Her Furry Face', a story about a failed relationship, Lisa Tuttle provides original and interesting speculations on the role of gender in `Husbands' and Pat Murphy has some kooky theories about the future of evolution in `Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates'. The most challenging of the stories here, and worth the price alone, is Connie Willis' controversial `All My Darling Daughters'. In the story, genetic engineering has produced a creature called a `tessel', which is essentially a living vagina, whose attraction to the male characters in the story is not only that it is incapable of defending itself, but that when penetrated, it emits a scream `the sound a woman must make when she is being raped. No. Worse. The sound a child might make.' You can see why such a story might prove controversial. Male critics, notably Orson Scott Card, have accused Willis of being anti-male, and avowed that they could never find anything attractive about the tessel. Female critics have found more to disagree about. Mari Kotari, writing in Science Fiction Eye #9, argues that since the tessel reduces sexual vulnerability to its essential form, the story provides a reductio ad absurdam demonstration that vulnerability does not define or constitute femininity; that it is something alien. `Just as the tessel uncovered its users' sexual politics rather than its own identity, so the textuality of `All My Darling Daughters' unveils the reader's own political sexuality.' A book titled Alien Sex could have become an anthology of pornography, but Datlow has instead assembled an almost uniformly excellent collection of entertaining and intelligent stories. %T Alien Sex %E Ellen Datlow %I Grafton %D 1991 -- Gareth Rees From /tmp/sf.4146 Tue Aug 9 01:52:05 1994 Path: lysator-ifm-isy.liu.se!lysator.liu.se!news.kth.se!aun.uninett.no!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!EU.net!uknet!pipex!bnr.co.uk!corpgate!news.utdallas.edu!rdxsunhost.aud.alcatel.com!aur.alcatel.com!news From: Evelyn.Chimelis.Leeper@att.com () Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews,rec.arts.books,alt.books.reviews Subject: SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: Fri, 01 Apr 1994 02:20:36 GMT Organization: not specified Lines: 54 Approved: sfr%sheol@concert.net (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Message-ID: <9403310901.ZM363@mtgpfs1.mt.att.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: aursag.aur.alcatel.com Xref: lysator-ifm-isy.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:497 rec.arts.books:77724 alt.books.reviews:2701 SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling AvoNova, ISBN 0-380-71875-8, 1993, 411pp, US$4.99. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper There is a revival in the fairy tale (or "marchen," to use the German word, since as Windling points out in her introduction, there is no true English equivalent). One even sees panels on them at science fiction conventions--and not in the children's programming. The twenty authors here have also returned them to their adult origins after decades (or more) of being watered down for children (though some--Hansel and Gretel, for example--would be hard to sanitize without destroying them completely). The authors split about fifty/fifty on how they do this. Some retain the ancient, never-never land settings for their stories. Others move them into modern cities and give their characters urban apartments and VCRs instead of cottages and magic mirrors. This follows the pattern of the "Fairy Tale" books that Windling edits, and SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED could be considered as part of that series. (It's not officially, of course, since the series name is owned by Tor. Still if there were no labels on the books, this would certainly *look* like part of the same series, especially with the gorgeous Tom Canty cover.) I never thought of myself as a fan of fairy tales, so I was somewhat surprised to find myself enjoying several of these stories. Not all, mind you, and the ones I enjoyed seemed to be mostly the ones that frame an old fairy tale in a modern setting. (I've also recently enjoyed THE WAR FOR THE OAKS by Emma Bull, JACK THE GIANT-KILLER by Charles de Lint, and BRIAR ROSE by Jane Yolen, the latter two also from the "Fairy Tale" series.) Even if you are not a fantasy reader, you might want to give the stories in SNOW WHITE, BLOOD RED a try. Or perhaps especially if you're not a fantasy reader, since it almost seems to have been designed as an introduction to the modern fairy tale, complete with essays by Windling and Datlow, and a recommended reading list at the end. (The latter, by the way, lists several out-of-print books, but inexplicably--to me, anyway--omits the Charles Lang "Fairy Books," which are where my mother first read her fairy tales and are still in print from Dover.) %B Snow White, Blood Red %E Ellen Datlow %E Terri Windling %C New York %D December 1993 %I AvoNova %O paperback, US$4.99 %G ISBN 0-380-71875-8 %P 411pp -- Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 908 957 2070 | ecl@mtgpfs1.att.com / Evelyn.Leeper@att.com "Remember, high-tech means breaks down next week, while cutting edge means breaks down this afternoon. -Bruce Sterling From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Apr 21 11:23:07 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!news.sprintlink.net!noc.netcom.net!netcom.com!postmodern.com!not-for-mail From: .@midway.uchicago.edu Subject: review: Black Thorn, White Rose (REPOST) Message-ID: <199504101644.LAA14612-repost@midway.uchicago.edu> Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: mcb@netcom6.netcom.com Organization: The Internet Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 21:11:44 GMT Approved: mcb@postmodern.com (rec.arts.sf.reviews moderator) Lines: 58 Black Thorn, White Rose. Edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. New York: William Morrow, 1994. review by Mark Diller Collections of short stories are always a mixed bag, especially ones such as the present work which is comprised of modern re-envisionments of the classic fairytales. The stories here included range from close copies of the Brothers Grimm model to some which bear no apparent relationship to fairy tales at all, apart from their appearance in this volume. Most of the stories, though, represent serious and/or whimsical attempts to reformulate the old stories from a modern perspective, and the disjunction or resonance between old and new makes for entertaining and thought-provoking reading. The individual stories are an eclectic mix, with something for everyone to like and dislike. The book opens with Nancy Kress' "Words Like Pale Stones," a dark retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin tale in which most of the values of good and evil, protagonist and antagonist are inverted. The reader is consequently forced to look anew at familiar categories and engage the familiar story in new and challenging ways. Many of the stories follow the same narrative strategy, including Tim Wynne-Jones' "The Goose Girl," a familiar story told this time from the handsome prince's viewpoint, and Storm Constantine's "Sweet Bruising Skin," a rather horrible re-envisionment of The Princess and the Pea as told by a wicked, and wholly unrepentant, mother-in-law. These stories are among the most readable and successful in the collection. Other authors have attempted to take fairytale themes and set them within modern narratives. Among these are Ann Downer's "Somnus's Fair Maid," a telling of the Sleeping Beauty tale which somewhat recalls A.S. Byatt's _Possession_, Isabel Cole's "The Brown Bear of Norway," which touches on the role of mythic and fairytale themes in the formation of the adolescent self, and Roger Zelazny's "Godson," an enjoyable study of a very ambiguous benefactor. As modernity progresses, the reader of ancient tales is increasingly challenged to examine the text critically, noting what is transcendent and what merely antique within the old stories. The authors who follow the above strategy have attempted to parallel this activity in the narrative itself, and though they sometimes achieve an air of spooky enchantment within their modernist settings, the overall lack of conviction in the stories they tell reveals perhaps a certain alienation from their material. Perhaps the lesson to be learned here is that the fairytale's success is in part dependent on its temporal distance; its very distinctness from the here and now opens the reader to unlimited possibility in a way that contemporary fiction can only weakly emulate. Not all the stories here work; Peter Straub's "Ashputtle" in particular is, in my opinion, an excruciating read that bears no apparent relation to any fairytale that I've ever seen. Other stories are so self-indulgent as to be virtually unreadable. However, if like me you've come with time and age to appreciate fairytales more than a child ever could, this might be the book for you. %A Datlow, Ellen and Windling, Terri, eds. %T Black Thorn, White Rose %I William Morrow %C New York %D 1994 %G ISBN 0-688-13713-X %P 381pp, biblio pp. 382-86