L. Timmel DuchampBesprekingen

Borrowed from my dad for a night, who finished it but was frustrated with it. I do want to read this, but apparently not every library is as adventurous as the Denver Public Library. Curses!

I buy Duchamp’s books as soon as they are published as I’ve been a fan for many years. She’s quite honest in pointing out that many of these novels took a number of years to see print – which, in less charitable eyes, would see them classified as “trunk novels”. Which is, when you consider it, an unfair label. For one thing, it assumes the writer has not reworked them, given what they’ve learnt since they were first published. It’s also too easy a label to throw the label at a book by a writer that doesn’t fit the reader’s preconceptions. Anyway, Duchamp describes the history of her novel in an afterword, and it began life many years ago but sat in a drawer for many years. This probably explains the slightly old-fashioned feel to Duchamp’s world-building, which makes for a slightly off-centre reading experience. True, that off-centre perspective is one of the appeals of Duchamp’s writing. It’s… hard to explain. Chercher la Femme – not the best title ever – is a first contact novel. But it’s more about the preconceptions and society of the contactors than it is the contactees. In fact, the latter are complete mysteries, almost ciphers in fact. They occupy a place in the narrative, but they’re more signifiers than an actual worked-out alien race. And it’s what they signify that forms the main premise of the novel. The Pax is a pan-national semi-utopian socialist polity, which has been contacted by a bird-like alien race, who have gifted them three FTL spaceships. One of these spaceships is sent to the eponymous world – and I can’t decide if naming the planet Chercher la Femme is extremely clumsy or quite clever – only for the mission to fail and its crew join the population of the planet and refuse to be contacted. The novel is told from the POV of the “leader” of the follow-up mission. The inhabitants of Chercher la Femme are near-magical, and more or less reflect the crew members’ preconceptions back on themselves. Which makes for a difficult first contact. I’m not convinced it all hangs together. The characterisation is excellent, and some of the world-building is really good… but the aliens don’t feel like they have an actual real existence, which is probably the point, but which makes the whole thing either too reminiscent of Lem’s Solaris or too circular for whatever point Duchamp is try to make to stick. Chercher la Femme is probably the most disappointing novel I’ve read by Duchamp, but I’ll continue to buy and read her books because when she’s good she’s really good.

I’m a big fan of Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle, which is easily one of the best first contact sf series ever written – and certainly contains one of the genre’s best-written villains in Elizabeth Weatherall – not to mention thinking Duchamp’s short story ‘The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.’ is a bona fide genre classic… So any new work by her is a cause for celebration. Except, she’s not always an easy read, and not because her prose is especially hard. There are lots of things in The Waterdancer’s World to like, but I still struggled to read it. It doesn’t help that its narrative is formed from multiple journals, all from different times during the history of the world Frogmore, because some of the narratives were way more engaging than others. There are also excerpts from a “galactic encyclopedia”, which is never a good way to info dump, and in many cases the info wasn’t actually necessary. But I’m a big fan of bending and twisting forms of narrative, so I can’t begrudge Duchamp’s experimentation. Of the various narratives, the journal of Inez Gauthier, the privileged daughter of the head of Frogmore’s occupation forces, is the most interesting; but the eponymous character, who doesn’t actually appear all that often, is the most fascinating person in the novel. There’s a fierce intelligence to Duchamp’s fiction – which is surprisingly rare in science fiction, the only other examples that spring to mind are Gwyneth Jones and Samuel R Delany – but Duchamp’s fiction seems much more, well, researched than those two. In the case of The Waterdancer’s World that has the unfortunate effect of making the sf feel a bit old-fashioned – not in sensibilities, they’re thoroughly twenty-first century; but in the whole look and feel… At times, I was almost visualising sets and costumes from Out of the Unknown, a British sf TV anthology series from the 1960s. Still, it’s all good stuff. I still have Duchamp’s latest to read on the TBR.½

Duchamp is possibly best-known as the owner of Aqueduct Press, an excellent US small press which focuses on feminist genre fiction, but she is also an accomplished science fiction and fantasy writer in her own right. In fact, her ‘The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.’ I would count as one of the ten best science fiction stories ever written and her Marq’ssan Cycle one of the best sf series about first contact. Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is her first collection, and contains a short story, two novelettes and two novellas. ‘Dance at the Edge’ takes place on a world where some people – or so the narrator believes – can see a border into another world, but they lose the facility when they turn adult. In ‘The Gift’, a travel writer returns to a world famous for its culture, falls in love with a famous singer, but then discovers the price he paid for his voice (think The Alteration). ‘The Apprenticeship of Isabetta di Pietro Cavazzi’ is something Duchamp has done before – a well-researched, and convincing, historical story that slowly drifts into genre territory. In this case, the title character is a young woman confined to a convent to keep her away from a young man whose father wants him to marry well. This is very much a story which takes place in the world of women. The shortest peice in the collection is ‘Lord Enoch’s Revels’, which describes a party hosted by the eponymous peer, during some indefinable period, which may or may not be supernatural. The last story in Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is also the longest: ‘The Héloïse Archive’. It is worth the price of entry alone. A framing narrative describes the main text as a series of undiscovered letters between famous historical romance lovers Héloïse and Abelard, but as the letters progress so things begin to diverge from known history. It’s hardly an original idea, although showing the effects of time travellers’ interference in this secondary manner is quite original – the only other example I can think of is Mary Gentle’s Ash: A Secret History. And like that humungous novel, Duchamp’s novella displays an impressive amount of research. The story of Héloïse and Abelard is fascinating in its own right – the real story, that is, as it unfolds here, before gradually swerving off the rails. Every time I read something by Duchamp, I’m surprised she’s not better known. I suspect the fact that much of her output these days is published through Aqueduct Press, her own press – and that’s not a criticism, by any means – which is a proudly feminist genre press, and Duchamp herself is a very feminist writer… and I’m all too sadly aware how many Neanderthals there are in sf fandom who think “feminism” is a dirty word… Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is not an especially strong collection – although that last novella is a killer – but there are works I would demand be read in Duchamp’s oeuvre – both mentioned earlier (and I’m not the only one to think so about ‘The Forbidden Words of Margaret A.’ as it opens Sisters of the Revolution, an excellent anthology of feminist sf). Seek out her work – especially the Marq’ssan Cycle or a more recent collection, Never at Home.

I really wanted to enjoy this and tried twice to finish it, but I had to give up halfway through as I didn't enjoy the plot or characters enough to want to persevere with it. There's some really interesting concepts about revolution in practice but ultimately I found the setting a little too simplistic to really carry off the vision. I also felt the voices and personalities of the three main POV characters weren't at all developed beyond their politics and love interests, and again the former felt a little too simplistic while the latter just didn't interest me.

A shame as I did enjoy the first book in this series - maybe others will have better luck than me but I'm going to move on and get my visionary fiction kicks elsewhere.

I bought this a couple of years ago after being much impressed by Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle – which, incidentally, is one of the best sf series about first contact ever written – but had never got around to reading it for some reason. Which I have now rectified. Partly, I admit, prompted by the superb story by Duchamp which opens the VanderMeers’ feminist sf anthology, Sisters of the Revolution. That story is not in Never at Home, but those that are range from the merely good to the bloody excellent. It’s been a while since I’ve come across a genre collection as strong as this one, and yet looking at the stories I’m not entirely sure why. They’re not bursting with ideas or “eyeball kicks” – that’s not what Duchamp does – but they’re certainly fascinating, and extremely well-written, explorations of very carefully explored ideas. In ‘A Question of Grammar’, for example, a woman taken from her family (who, it is implied, are considered unpersons by the galactic authorities) is bonded chemically to an alien to act as interpreter. I’m tempted to describe the story as “very”Gwyneth Jones”, high praise indeed from me, but I think that’s probably unfair to Duchamp. Either way, this was the best story in the collection and deserves to be much more widely known. ‘The Nones of Quintilis, Somewhere on the Southwest Slope of Monte Albano’ manages that very difficult balancing trick of being genre but not reading like genre. ‘Sadness Ineffable, Desire Ineluctable’ (Duchamp’s strong point clearly doesn’t lie in titling her short fiction) manages to evoke something like Area X half a decade before VanderMeer’s novels, and do so with more mystery and less fungi (both, it must be said, pluses in my book). This is a superior collection, probably the best genre collection I’m likely to read this year (yes, I think it just edges out Other Stories below). Not only do I recommend it, but I think everyone should also read Duchamp’s Marq’ssan Cycle; and, of course, Duchamp’s Aqueduct Press does sterling work and has published some blinding works of fiction since its founding in 2004.½

To prevent humans from doing further harm to their planet or to themselves, the Marq ssan render all silicon-based technology useless. To regain the tech that this future society depends on, the Marq ssan demand that each and every country send three female representatives to negotiate. In the US, former spy, current history teacher Kay is tapped for the "honor". She is prepared for any eventuality except the one she finds: that the Marq ssan are truly aliens, and her only allies.

This was a frustrating book. I was excited by the set-up. What would life be like in a city without telephones, transportation, elevators, computers or tv? Would living in a city become untenable? What would take the place of instantaneous communication--runners? bike messengers? What about food--would people start growing their own on rooftops? And leisure activities--without tv or the internet, and with most of the jobs shut down (thanks to no tech), how would people pass the time?
None of these questions are answered.

I did like the aliens. They are as disquieted and disgusted by human biology as humans find them. The aliens that work most closely with the women find themselves changing; they become more active, less concerned with concensus, and more bold. I was glad to see that the situation was hard on the aliens, as well, instead of the usual portrayal of their god-like benevolence.

Weird

I enjoy reading science-fiction written by women as the perspective is often very different from male dominated sci-fi. So when I heard about Alanya to Alanya and read the synopsis I was intrigued and eager to start reading. I liked the idea of aliens coming to a dystopian future earth to help humankind change and improve their societies. The idea of the aliens demanding to negotiate only with female representatives of each country is intriguing, what could women achieve without all the testosterone-laden power games men play? I was also interested to see how this dystopian future copes with the loss of technology due to an EMP, which is emitted by the aliens. The aliens do this in order to destabilise the world so as to urge humankind to find a new and better way of functioning. Unfortunately the author barely touches on these issues. Instead of a science fiction novel we rather have a badly written novel that uses a science-fiction platform as a voice for post 70’s feminism.
I just couldn’t buy into this dystopian future, where women are powerless and thoroughly dominated by all powerful, evil men. Every male character is thoroughly despicable and the female characters, even well educated, strong women in high positions, are just puppets of the male “executives” with seemingly no will of their own. The protagonist is one dimensional and her evolution from powerless female under the thumb of the ruling executive class to feminist activist was very predictable. This was a disappointing read, doubt I will be reading the rest of the series.

The book was written in '84 and given that date the author deserves priase for her prescience--she had the growth of the autocratic state pretty well nailed down. The concept is innovative (an alien race tanks earth technology to provide an opportunity for rebuild society according to what we see as feminist principles and they see as just the way things ought to be) and the society believable, but I found the characters to be transparently thin. Women good - men bad. Lower class good, upper class bad, middle class iffy.

Excellent concept, I think, but not very well written.

More smart people saying really smart things! I liked this volume a little better than the one before. There were a few more shorter pieces, including several people's answer to what the think the politics being discussed at Wiscon 41 will be.There are several long pieces on the same panel, the 'revolution' in the subtitle of the book. That's not a panel I would've attended. A lot of the discussion was uninteresting to me, and some of it incomprehensible. I don't have the background. So I skipped one of the pieces on this, though I did read the others.At the end is the GoH speech by Kelly Link and Laurie Marks. It's really good. And I really, really wish I had been there to see it live and in person. I'm sure it was a much different experience from reading the script.Overall, a very interesting read. And it's just a shame there were none of these before Wiscon 30. (At least, I don't think there were.)

Lots of good, interesting articles and other things in here. Even a short story. It makes me more than ready to go to Wiscon this year!But it also makes me feel dumb. Lots of very smart people talking about things at a level way over my head. Or past my head, because it's not a subject I've thought a lot about or developed much of an interest in.This is sort of like a slice of Wiscon. If your slice is skewed towards the academic track and and some of the harder panels.But it did make me feel like I'd missed out. I missed out on the 30th Wiscon, where tons of past guests of honor were milling about, participating in programming, and being smart and interesting.This book is a little piece of Wiscon history and fascinating reading (even when it did go over my head).

I'm afraid this won't be a terribly useful review. I read this too long ago now to do it justice. But from what I recall, there were lots of things to think about, and new ways of looking at things. And lots of smart people were writing about smart stuff.Some of it was about how history is shaped by narrative. And several of the contributors were history scholars.And um.. some other stuff.I did get one comment while reading this book about the heart on the cover. I'm still a bit baffled by that heart myself.

Excellent political SF. Plus, if you've ever wondered what feminist processing is like, there are some great scenes that will satisfy your curiosity.

The fourth in the Marq'ssan Cycle of five works which recount the events after the Marq'ssan, an alien race, intervene to prevent the human race becoming a trans-galactic aggressor.

Prior to the Marq'ssan's intervention, the Executive was the transnational ruling elite, a system in which gender behaviour and sexuality are strictly delineated. After the intervention and series of wars, alternative 'political' systems develop around the world. One of these is the Free Zone, a co-operative based around Seattle. The Zone is 'run' by a committee of feminist anarchists (I'm not sure you can say that anarchists run anything, but I can't think of a better word!).

Book 4 follows a member of the Executive world who has turned renegade and escaped to the Free Zone. Except she hasn't converted to the Zone's ideas, she is simply re-grouping to launch a takeover of the Executive. However, the 'leaders' of the Free Zone help her and provide her with access to the Marq'ssan, in return for help in freeing politcal prisoners.

As in the previous three books, Duchamp poses interesting questions. (I've posted a review of the third book, Tsunami which details some of the key points raised in that book). How far should the Free Zoners co-operate with the renegade to further their own aims? I think they're involved in a deeper and more dangerous game than they realise.

This did feel a little bit like a filler before the final instalment, but I still enjoyed it and can't wait to start book 5.

Tsunami is the third book in the Marq'ssan Cycle which recounts the events after the Marq'ssan, an alien race, intervene to prevent the human race becoming a trans-galactic aggressor.

Prior to the Marq'ssan's intervention, the Executive was the transnational ruling elite, a system in which gender behaviour and sexuality are strictly delineated. After the intervention and series of wars, alternative 'political' systems develop around the world. One of these is the Free Zone, a co-operative based around Seattle. The Zone is 'run' by a committee of feminist anarchists (I'm not sure you can say that anarchists run anything, but can't think of a better word!).

The scope of the Marq'ssan Cycle is too broad to detail here. However I do want to highlight the aspects of Tsunami which have caught my attention.

Tsunami was written in 1985, updated in 1996 and published in 2007. Duchamp has made revisions to the text, but I'm not sure how much has been changed. What is clear is that Tsunami raises pertinent questions. For example, how can a country (or co-operative) condemn actions by another which it is also guilty of?

Can a cataclismic change in the accepted norms of society and culture truly lead to a new beginning? After the intervention and the wars, the Executive is trying to continue business as normal. The Free Zone is trying to create a new, unstructured reality. However, there is still a leadership of a kind in the Zone that takes decisions on behalf of the general population. And what if some of the pre-Marq'ssan structures are necessary? How, for example, does the Zone create a sense of justice if it's not willing to have a legal system or prisons? This is a key aspect of Tsunami which Duchamp presents, discusses but does not yet answer. I'll be interested to see what solutions she comes up with.

The gendered basis of the two systems seems on the surface to be very simplistic - Executive/male = bad and violent, Free Zone/female = good and pacifist. Yet Duchamp provides layers within this with networks of female power within the Executive and violence committed by women in the Free Zone. It makes me wonder whether the world would really different if ruled by women. I suspect that the old hierarchies and ideas would be hard to shake off.½

A Case of Mistaken Identity, by L. Timmel Duchamp, is one of a series of "Short Story Paperbacks" published by Pulphouse Publishing. At 46 pages, it is easily digested in a sitting.

The story is about a young academic in a university history department who has her eyes set on a hot date with an older professor. While fantasizing one day, one of her favorite characters in literature, Elizabeth Bennett from Jane Austin's 'Pride and Prejudice,' materializes before her eyes. The narrator - we'll call her Lisa for sake of reference, since she remains nameless throughout the story in keeping with its thrust - is naturally skeptical, possibly feeling something in common with Ebeneezer Scrooge when he encountered Marley's ghost. Probably just a bit of indigestion. Elizabeth tells Lisa that Lisa can see her because Lisa sees her as she is, while John, the target of Lisa's affections, cannot see her at all because his mentality forces him to see what she is not. Indeed, Elizabeth does not appear to Lisa as the character Lisa imagined from 'Pride and Prejudice.' She appears as a staid matron of perhaps forty, and their first conversation centers around the realities of femininity. Later Lisa has the date with her beau, and she sees there were aspects of John's behavior she had missed before. An abortive discussion with him about how he visualizes the future life of Elizabeth Bennett with her Darcy in Jane Austin's book goes awry, and she has a final illuminating conversation with Elizabeth.

The story is written with brilliant wit. The writing is a little complex - one can't skim through it without attention. Yet, this reviewer was held in smiles nearly throughout. Despite the lightness, its subject matter is serious - the disparity between the 'ideal woman' as romanticized by some men and the real person that lives in every woman's body, and its impact on human relations. The story is thought-provoking and intelligent, and with the humor makes a really wonderful short read you may be thinking about for some time after you put the book down. Publishing such a thought-provoking story in this one-story-to-a-book format is the perfect presentation - no rushing on to the next story without giving this one some thought first!

For its delightfully humorous presentation of a serious subject that gets its point across clearly, I give this story a 5-star rating. Though it is long out-of-print, 'A Case of Mistaken Identity' should be available from the larger used-book Web sites.

A clone brought up to believe he has no soul plots to replace his original.

This book is fascinating. and awful. I have no idea how to rate it. The subject matter -- an alien species comes to Earth and attempts to help Earth develop saner governance and relations, through approaching only women, and at a time in earth's future history when feminism really is a dirty word -- is fascinating. That the rest of series appears to be set up to address the NEVER addressed question of building utopia, intrigues me. That the writing is just. so. awful. is inescapable. Finding out that the version I read was written in 1984 and actually re-edited by the author in the 1990s means I can't excuse the phenomenally clunky dialogue and emotional reportage as first book syndrome.

I'm giving it 2.5 stars, but I think it might actually deserve a negative rating, for taking such a fascinating idea and executing it with such flatness and gracelessness that I probably won;t read the rest of the cycle. And because that'll eat at the back of my awareness and ultimately force me to read them anyways.

Her editors should be strung up for letting the book through like this. Twice.½

Tiptree longlist 2005