Ann Richter's "The Sleep of Plants," on the other hand, was new to me, and I am grateful to the editors for the introduction.
It remains one of the most poignant reflections on exclusion and prejudice and as painful a work of recovery and rebuilding as SFF has ever produced. Butler's "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" is another old friend, and one in which I find something new every time I reread it. Here, placed roughly midway, it reveals the extent of its influence Russ's voice speaks loud and clear amongst those who came after her, or engaged with her as contemporaries. I have read Russ's "When It Changed" many times before and always found it engaging. Some of it is down to the selection of stories.Īs I said above, these are all good stories, and a significant number are great.
Some of this is down to the nature of the project. There is a glimpse here of what could be something even bigger, even more of a contribution. But the other twenty per cent is under my skin, itching. This book is eighty per cent there, and that eighty per cent is splendid. There is for me, at least, a sense of something missing. It is, I hope, a book that will stand the test of time and will lead to further anthologies on similar themes (something the VanderMeers suggest themselves). It is a book I can imagine recommending to friends and setting for students. Reading it is an adventure and a delight. There is not a writer included whose presence I question. I like this book a lot: there is not a bad story in the collection, and very few that feel slight or weak. This is a strong and valuable entry in that conversation about genre and gender, culture and context, in which we are all engaged and to which the editors refer in their introduction. There are also stories that are new to me-and a handful of writers, too-and in each case encountering them is a pleasure and a revelation. Butler, Russ, Lee, Arnason, LeGuin, Sargent, Gunn: there are stories and writers here I have loved for years, stories I have gone back to over and over. This is an impressive selection of stories (and one novel extract) from a wide range of writers, including some of the second half of the twentieth century's most influential work in our genre. This is, by any standards, an ambitious project, but by and large in this volume the VanderMeers have succeeded. They go on to further define and discuss their intention-to reflect and honour the work in particular of women writers of the 1960s and 1970s, whose contributions reshaped and redefined SFF, a period they associate with the rise of the New Wave. Thus Ann and Jeff VanderMeer open the introduction to Sisters of the Revolution. Still others, like Sisters of the Revolution, serve as aĬontribution to an ongoing conversation." (p. Others are treasuries or compendiums,īaggy and vast.
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