---item---
storytitle: Boys
firstname: Carol
lastname: Emshwiller
booktitle: 
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
SciFi.com
  <p>Carol Emshwiller's "Boys" is instantly recognizable as feminist dystopian 
    fiction, kin to <cite>The Gate to Women's Country,</cite> (Tepper) <cite>The 
    Wanderground,</cite> (Gearhart) and <cite>Walk to the End of the World,</cite> 
    (Charnas) but it's somewhat unusual in that it's told from a male perspective. 
    The narrator lives up in the mountains with the rest of the men and boys. 
    In the valley below are the villages of the women. The enemy, other men, live 
    in the mountains on the other side of the valley and no one remembers how 
    this state of affairs developed. Once a year the men descend to the valley 
    to copulate with the women and steal the boys who have grown old enough to 
    survive in the mountains. On one such raid, however, things change. The women 
    fight back, badly defeating the men and capturing the narrator. Wounded, he 
    knows he will never survive in the mountains, and must adjust to the idea 
    of living in the women's world, unsure of what changes the future will bring. 
    What makes "Boys" special is Emshwiller's decision to strip the story down 
    to its essentials, relating what might well be a novel in another writer's 
    hands in a brief, parable-like narrative that packs considerable power. - 
    ML</p>
  <p>Read the story on line at <a href="http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/emshwiller3/">SciFi.com</a>.</p>
  <p>Column about the story at <a href="http://www.lcrw.net/fictionplus/duchamppeninsula.htm">Lady 
    Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet</a>.</p>
---item---
storytitle: Birth Days
firstname: Geoff
lastname: Ryman
booktitle: 
periodical: Interzone
date: 200304
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p>In &quot;Birth Days&quot;, Geoff Ryman uses the diary of a gay man living 
    in the near future to play with, and undermine, ideas of biological and gender 
    determinism. The narrator, a gay male biologist in a future where the genes 
    for sexual orientation have been identified and are being calmly eliminated 
    from most gene pools in the developed world, invents a way for men to bear 
    children. If two men can be the biological parents of a child, and one of 
    them carry the child to term in his own body, what does gender mean?</p>
  <p>Ryman foregrounds various attempts to find simple explanations for complicated 
    phenomena: Ron's mother, even knowing better, talks about &quot;the gene&quot; 
    for sexual orientation, and speculates that it might be an alien plot left 
    over from the time of the trilobites. Ron, while sure there's nothing wrong 
    with him, doesn't see any reason that eliminating the genes that made him 
    would be a problem. Then he makes his scientific breakthrough, and turns the 
    biological explanations on their heads. Odd myths--virgin births, Athena born 
    from the head of Zeus--are offered as factual evidence, and a heterosexual 
    nurse suggests that heterosexuals, rather than homosexuals, are an &quot;endangered 
    species.&quot;</p>
  <p>When I first read this story, I wrote &quot;Whatever you're doing, you find 
    the stories to justify&quot; on the back of the last page. Ryman shows us 
    some of that story-telling, in the difficult area where gender and sexual 
    orientation run into biology and ethics.-VR<br>
  </p>
  <p>For a review of this story, see <a href="http://www.tangentonline.com/reviews/magazine.php3?review=896">Tangent 
    Online</a>.</p>

---item---
storytitle: Lady of the Ice Garden
firstname: Kara
lastname: Dalkey
firstname2: Sharyn
lastname2: November
booktitle: Firebirds
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Firebird
year: 2003
htmldescription: 
  <p>Kara Dalkey sets her retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's &quot;Snow Queen&quot; 
    in Japan's militaristic Kamakura period; as she showers us with gorgeous images 
    written in her paradoxically spare, poetic prose, Dalkey also pierces common 
    assumptions about gender with the sharp insights embedded in &quot;The Lady 
    of the Ice Garden.&quot; </p>
  <p>Rather than being kidnapped by an overwhelming and amoral feminine power 
    as was Kay, Andersen's hero, Keiken leaves his home and family voluntarily, 
    driven by a desire to distance himself from all emotion (which he perceives 
    as vulnerability) and drawn to the frigid perfection of the Lady of the Ice 
    Garden, his ideal woman. Following in the footsteps of Andersen's Gerda, Dalkey's 
    heroine Girida searches for her childhood friend, but her quest doesn't end 
    in rescuing him with her tears. She has embarked on an adventure all her own 
    in which she is the subject, the active force, reaping her own rewards. - 
    NS<br>
  </p>
  <p>A very short review at <a href="http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_november_firebirds.html">Green 
    Man Review</a>.</p>

---item---
storytitle: Fudoki
firstname: Kij
lastname: Johnson
booktitle: 
periodical: Tor
date: 
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p><cite>Fudoki</cite> interweaves two stories: the title tale-within-a-tale 
    of an orphaned cat who takes to the road and is transformed into a human, 
    and autobiographical reminiscences by the elderly Princess Harueme, who is 
    writing the tortoiseshell woman's story. In doing so, she reflects on her 
    own life and motivations, and the limitations that both gender and class have 
    imposed on her: she has had luxury, but almost no freedom. The &quot;fudoki&quot; 
    is a cat's story and her place in the world, in an imagined cat-culture that 
    is entirely female-centered. The cat Kagaya-hime is seen as somehow strange 
    by the humans she travels among, even those who don't realize that she isn't 
    human. She in turn regards them as strange, in part because men are so central 
    to family life in medieval Japan. </p>
  <p>Most of the fantastic elements are in the cat's tale: Harueme, as she writes, 
    gives her the tools and knowledge she needs for each part of her adventure.</p>
  <p>The cat's tale begins in the fire that destroys her home and family. Meanwhile, 
    Harueme is gradually burning all her old diaries, and burning each notebook 
    of Kagaya-hime's story when she finishes it. At the end of her life, the princess 
    is fleeing a family and structure that have trapped her, seeming glad at least 
    to have never borne a child. Meanwhile, the cat is walking toward a home and 
    family, though she only realizes this at the end of her journey. The female-centered 
    fudoki is a place where motherhood gives her importance and authority, rather 
    than being seen as a trap. - VR<br>
  </p>
  <p>For a review, see <a href="http://www.allscifi.com/Topics/info_19942.asp?BSID=1323498">All 
    Sci Fi</a>.</p>
---item---
storytitle: Coyote Cowgirl
firstname: Kim
lastname: Antieau
booktitle: 
periodical: Forge
date: 
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p>Jeanne Les Flambeaux is a loser: can't ignore the voices in her head; can't 
    cook, though her mother and father run a famous restaurant; can't pick a lover 
    without having him steal the family jewels. Her pursuit of Cousin Johnny and 
    the Ruby Scepter becomes a fast-paced Heroine's Journey of a sort mythologist 
    Joseph Campbell could never have dreamed up. Seeking her animus as countless 
    heroes have sought their anima, Jeanne's path leads her through a world in 
    which the mundane and supernatural are inextricably linked. Completion, (according 
    to Jung, always the goal in these stories) comes not with the aid of romance, 
    but through introspection and reclamation of repressed history. - NS</p>
  <p>For a review, see <a href="http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2003/0306/Book%20-%20Coyote%20Cowgirl/Review.htm">SF 
    Revu</a></p>
---item---
storytitle: A Fistfull of Sky
firstname: Nina Kiriki
lastname: Hoffman
booktitle: 
periodical: Ace
date: 
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p>Gypsum LaZelle, the protagonist of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's <cite>A Fistful 
    of Sky,</cite> lives in a family of mages and can't understand why, at twenty, 
    she's the only one of her siblings without magic. Feeling inferior, she's 
    grown up lacking confidence, clothing sense, or, for that matter, a steady 
    boyfriend. Then Gypsum falls terribly ill and, recovering, discovers her magic, 
    the ability to curse. Sounds like something you've read before, doesn't it? 
    But this is Nina Kiriki Hoffman, remember, and Gypsum's curses turn out to 
    be like no one else's. First of all there's the fact that she can't not curse; 
    if she doesn't use her power, it builds up in her until curses erupt at random. 
    Then there's the time that she curses herself with ultimate fashion sense 
    and drives everyone crazy with her dead-on but decidedly unwanted clothing 
    critiques. Hoffmans tale, by turns frightening and hilarious, tracks a young 
    woman's bumpy path to magical adulthood, allowing her to try on a variety 
    of gender roles as she attempts to find her place in her family and the world. 
    - ML</p>
  <p>For a review, see <a href="http://www.rambles.net/hoffman_fistful02.html">Rambles</a>.</p>
---item---
storytitle: The Catgirl Manifesto
firstname: Christina
lastname: Flook
firstname2: Jeff
lastname2: Vandermeer (ed.)
booktitle: Album Zutique #1
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Ministry of Whimsy
year: 
htmldescription: 
Pseudonym of Richard Calder
  <p>A political missive from a world not quite our own, detailing the emergence 
    and politicization of a new gender -- the hypersexualized &quot;catgirl,&quot; 
    a sort of walking anime heroine who is irrestistably cute and sexy, capriciously 
    independent, and utterly contemptuous of the men who fall for her. A sort 
    of new-millenium wedding of the Victorian woman-child and her deadly vampiric 
    counterpart, the catgirl satirizes certain ideas about women and girls (not 
    just on the part of men -- a catgirl could easily grace the next cover of 
    &lt;I&gt;Bust&lt;/I&gt;), yet discovers the hidden subversiveness of those 
    very same tropes. Catgirls are infantilized, but they are hardly domesticated 
    -- and they're ready to start a revolution of (not so) little girls. - LS<br>
  </p>
  <p>Short reviews at </p>
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://www.emcit.com/emcit098.shtml">Emerald City</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://lostpages.net/lostpagesSeptember2003Horton.html">Lost 
      Pages</a></li>
  </ul>
---item---
storytitle: Looking Through Lace
firstname: Ruth
lastname: Nestvold
booktitle: 
periodical: Asimov's Science Fiction
date: 200309
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p>You can read the first part of the novella at <a href="http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0310/Looking.shtml">Asimov's</a>.</p>
---item---
storytitle: The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill
firstname: Sandra
lastname: McDonald
booktitle: 
periodical: Realms of Fantasy
date: 200308
publisher: 
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p>&quot;The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill&quot; explores the persistence of gender 
    roles and expectations. Ghosts, by definition, lack bodies; they can barely 
    affect the living, or any other part of the physical world. What they have 
    left is memory and desire.</p>
    <p>MacDonald's ghosts are teens and children, believably so. They have separated 
    themselves by gender, and take the separation entirely for granted. Pauline, 
    the narrator,<br>
    didn't like boys when she was alive, and doesn't think death has improved 
    them. When<br>
    a new boy wants to live with the girls, she rejects him, even though Matthew 
    wants to be<br>
    Michele, and the boys want no part of a ghost who turned up in a blue dress 
    and insists<br>
    that he was supposed to be a girl.</p>
  <p>Pauline gets to know Matthew/Michele slowly, and her developing acceptance 
    of Michele as a girl arises believably as she learns more about Michele's 
    life and death. In the process, she learns more about herself, and speculates 
    about what is keeping her, and the few other dead youths, trapped in the rundown 
    outskirts of the town. -- VR
  </p>
  <p>For a short review, see <a href="http://www.tangentonline.com/reviews/magazine.php3?review=924">Tangent 
    Online</a>.</p>
---item---
storytitle:
firstname: Tricia
lastname: Sullivan
booktitle: Maul
periodical: 
date: 
publisher: Orbit
year: 
htmldescription: 
  <p><cite>Maul</cite> alternates between two story lines. One unfolds in 
    a world where most men have been wiped out in a series of &quot;Y-plagues,&quot; 
    and those that survive are kept penned up like the fragile endangered species 
    they are. They are let out only to compete in large-scale competitons for 
    sperm donor rights by engaging in extreme sports and other acts of hypermasculinity. 
    The second story is set in a suburban shopping &quot;maul&quot; dominated 
    by gangs of armed adolescent girls. Tricia Sullivan exhibits a sharp parodic 
    wit and a healthy irreverence toward gender role expectations both traditional 
    and feminist; her satiric tone in reminiscent of some of the best 70's feminist 
    science fiction. Best of all, she is fearless enough to delve into the biology 
    of sex and gender -- a territory that's been all but ceded to the evolutionary 
    biologists for the past few years. This is a fast-paced, hugely entertaining 
    novel with enough depth to reward the careful reader, especially those interested 
    in the issues the Tiptree Award was founded to encourage exploration of. - 
    LS</p>
  <p>To read an excerpt of the book, see <a href="http://www.orbitbooks.co.uk/orbit/sullivan-extract.asp?TAG=&CID=orbit">the 
    publisher's site</a>.</p>
  <p>For reviews, see 
  <p> 
  <ul>
    <li><a href="http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/maul.htm">Infinity Plus</a></li>
    <li><a href="http://www.computercrowsnest.com/sfnews2/03_dec/review1203_22.shtml">Computer 
      Crow's Nest</a></li>
  </ul>
