---item---
storytitle: The Oracle Lips
firstname: Storm
lastname: Constantine
firstname2: Lawrence 
lastname2: Schimel (ed.)
firstname3: Martin H.
lastname3: Greenberg (ed.)
booktitle: The Fortune Teller
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Daw Books
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
<p>I liked the imagery, particularly the recurring and faintly threatening tube of red lipstick. The image of the unremarkable woman envying the glam one resonated. We've all been there in one way or the other. But at the end of the story, I'm not sure what I was supposed to have taken away from it. [NH] </p>
<p>"Oracle Lips" explores the idea that, just as the fashion and advertising industries tell us, makeup and accessories make the woman, and does so in the context of an original method of fortune-telling. [JK]</p>
---item---
storytitle: Alice, Alfie, Ted and the Aliens
firstname: Paul
lastname: Di Filippo
booktitle: 
periodical: Interzone
date: 199703
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
<p>I found myself uncomfortable with the way DiFilippo diddles so many genre icons
in this gonzo alternate history, attributing to them (and Alice Sheldon
especially) outrageous histories and cartoonish behaviors. But I wonder whether
the point here is that this is the harvest we reap in a field that churns out
alternate history anthologies by the yard. I had the sense that he was aiming
this story at the Tiptree jury. Nice shot, Paul! [JPK]
</p>
<p>Like some of my fellow jurors, I got the impression that this story was aimed
and fired deliberately at the Tiptree Award. It's abrasive and it's
presumptuous--and it's well-written. I laughed out loud in parts. A bracing
dissenting voice. It's not about gender, it's about our favorite writers who
write about gender; a meta-fictive in-joke that skillfully parodies the writing
styles of those authors. It lampoons the lives of very real people in ways that
I found more cruel than pointed, and for that reason less effective as satire.
[NH]</p>
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Emma
lastname: Donoghue
booktitle: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Harper Collins
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
<p>Like Angela Carter and A.S. Byatt before her, Emma Donoghue puts a distaff spin
on traditional fairy tales. But Donoghue doesn't deconstruct Perrault and the
Brothers Grimm so much as she reconstructs them in a series of interlocking
stories, letting the heroine of one tale grow into the villainess of the next,
who then becomes the benign crone of the next, and so on. Her stories are
ribald and often harsh in their assessments of male/female relations, and
damning of the ways in which women--in fairy tales and real life--too often
give in to what seems to be a preordained fate, rather than struggling for
independence. Donoghue's tales also have a bracingly, and unapologetic,
gynocentrism: in *her book*, it's the witch who gets the girl, not the prince.
And <cite>Kissing the Witch</cite> makes a nice companion piece to Kelly Link's
revisionist "Travels With The Snow Queen." [EH]
</p>
<p><cite>Kissing the Witch</cite> took my normal expectations of fairy tales, un- normal
as they are, and shook them around again. The writing was beautiful. [TG]</p>
---item---
storytitle: The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi
firstname: L. Timmel
lastname: Duchamp
booktitle: 
periodical: Asimov's
date: 199709
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
<p>One of the great pleasures of this novelette presented as excerpts from a diary
is the effortless way in which Duchamp recreates the Italy of 1629. This
historicity helps put over the story of a young woman coming to understand her
supernatural powers in the wake of an unhappy love affair. Duchamp convinces me
that if witches existed, this is what they'd be like. [JPK]</p>
<p>So, how d'you suppose women treated yeast infections in the days before
Canesten? Seems quite reasonable that the infestation could get so extreme that
it would turn a woman raving mad. I had a sardonic giggle over this as one
cause of women's 'shrewishness.' I can't speak for the historic accuracy of the
story. I enjoyed it (in fact, I think I've enjoyed every story of Duchamp's
that I've ever read), though I found the healer too all- knowing and Isabetta's
conversion to wisdom and forgiveness a bit too pat. [NH]</p>
---item---
storytitle: 
firstname: Molly
lastname: Gloss
booktitle: The Dazzle of Day
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Tor
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
<cite>The Dazzle of Day</cite> is a rigorous examination of a monoculture under
mortal stress, as a rickety ship of Quaker colonists arrives at a planet that
would seem to be inhospitable. Although not particularly flashy, this is a deep
book. I was particularly taken by Gloss's bold narrative strategy in opening
and especially in closing. She delivers what seems to me to be exactly the
right ending without telling me anything of what I thought I wanted to know.
[JPK]
</blockquote>

---item---
storytitle:
firstname: M. John
lastname: Harrison
booktitle: Signs of Life
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: St. Martin's Press
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
<p class="work"><span class="author">M. John Harrison</span>, <span class="title"><cite>Signs of Life</cite></span>, St. Martin's Press, 1997.</p>
A spare, beautifully written, utterly haunting novel about the human desire for
transcendence, and its limits. In the ruins of contemporary Europe, a young
woman who longs to fly mutilates herself in a doomed effort to become more
birdlike. A tormented con man endures the knowledge that the single moment of
sexual and spiritual transcendence he experienced in his youth has destroyed
his life. And the man who loves them both can do nothing to save them, or
himself. There's no false sense of redemption here, only the protagonist's
final realization that our struggle for meaning--however futile--may be all we
have, and the only thing worth living (or dying) for. [EH]
---item---
storytitle: Balinese Dancer
firstname: Gwyneth
lastname: Jones
booktitle: 
periodical: Asimov's
date: 199709
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
"Balinese Dancer" is an elliptical look at the end of the world as we know it.
As human sexual differentiation erodes in the background, a well-realized
couple works through their marital tensions in the foreground. A gender
apocalypse is hinted at in this subtle and disturbing story. [JPK]
<br /><br />
The opening line of this story continues to take my breath away, as do some of
the author's insights into human behavior. But ultimately the plot elements
didn't quite gel for me and the news that humanity is beginning to evolve
beyond gender seemed more like a plot device than the topic which the story
wanted to explore. Nevertheless a very readable story. [NH]
</blockquote>
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Ian
lastname: McDonald
booktitle: Sacrifice of Fools
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Victor Gonzallencz
year: 
htmldescription: 
I was sorry to have finished <cite>Sacrifice Of Fools</cite> because it is such a
great read. I like how McDonald has bent to police procedural to his devious
ends. The familiarity of the mystery tropes helps us navigate through the
strangeness of his alien Shians. I found the characters -- human and Shian --
complex and wonderfully unpredictable. I loved the way this book deals with the
clash of cultures, so that its imaginary surface reflects and refracts real
world flash points. And most of all, I like what this book is saying about the
diversity and perversity of the human sexual response, especially in its often
withering portrayal of the male id. [JPK]
<br /><br />
Ian McDonald's <cite>Sacrifice of Fools</cite> is a rough, scary book that looks at
gender from a blue collar futuristic point of view. If genderless aliens were
to visit earth, this is exactly what might happen, right on the streets, right
in your face. It should be read. [TG]
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Vonda N.
lastname: McIntyre
booktitle: The Moon and the Sun
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Pocket Books
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
I read <cite>The Sun and the Moon</cite> with a delicious sense that I had just
stepped off the alternate world platform and caught a train to another time and
place. The two female protagonists are creatures misplaced out of their
elements in ways not of their own choosing. McIntyre explores the meanings of
alien and gender in a way I've not seen it done before. This is a sensual book
rich in detail that kept me intrigued through the end. [TG]
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Shani
lastname: Mootoo
booktitle: Cereus Blooms at Night
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Press Gang Publishers
year: 1996
htmldescription: 
<cite>Cereus Blooms at Night</cite> offers superb characterizations of people we
never see in the genre, each with stories we would have never thought to tell.
Even though not particularly fantastic, <em>Cereus</em> is magical. [JPK]
<br /><br />
My highest priority is this novel by Canadian Shani Mootoo. A Caribbean-based
exploration of queerness, gender and preference written defiantly from within,
given that in some Caribbean countries, being openly queer can invite
societally condoned bashing. This novel is a radical act. It's well-written and
compelling. The invented tropical island of Lantanacamara is an evocative,
faintly unreal setting that is clearly meant to echo aspects of Trinidad. A gay
male nurse with a fondness for women's clothing is the buffoon of his
community, until he's given the care of an old mad woman who may or may not
have committed a horrible crime. A love story in which neither gender nor
sexual preference are absolute. The SF content of <cite>Cereus Blooms at Night</cite>
is nebulous, but it is in every way a book most worth reading. [NH]
---item---
storytitle: The Firebird's Nest
firstname: Salman
lastname: Rushdie
booktitle: 
periodical: The New Yorker
date: 19970623
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
Brilliant writing that pointedly references and critiques the practice of
suttee and a system in which women are chattel. Good to read writing from
within a particular culture, albeit from a privileged place in that culture. I
wasn't keen on a subtext that seemed to pit the "primitive" East against the
"enlightened" West, but that may be just my reading of it. I remain blown away
by the craft and style. [NH]
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Paul
lastname: Witcover
booktitle: Waking Beauty
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: HarperPrism
year: 1997
htmldescription: 
<cite>Waking Beauty</cite> is like a poke in the soul with a sharp stick, which is
one reason why I'll never forget it. In terms of ingenious world-building, I
don't think I've read anything better this year. <cite>Waking Beauty</cite> has a
labyrinthine plot, but it certainly comes together enough to satisfy this
reader. Its obsessions are its own; they made me feel exceedingly icky without
making me feel exploited. As to whether it's misogynist, of course the
Hierarchate is misogynist, in the same way that the state of <cite>The Handmaid's
Tale</cite> is misogynist. But so what? The author's intentions are always between
the lines in distopian novels. [JPK]

<p class="note">Thanks to <a href="http://www.sff.net/people/Vonda/index.htp">Vonda N. McIntyre</a> for researching publishers and publications.</p>

