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Worlds Without End Blog

RYO Review: Halfway Human by Caroline Ives Gilman Posted at 10:45 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

Halfway HumanRYO Reading ChallengeIntended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Explicit
Ace/Genderqueer characters: yes
Rating: R for heavy sexual violence, suicidal characters and disturbing imagery
Writing style: 5/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Valerie has never met a Gammadian bland before, but when Tedla is found half-dead in an alley, Val is called in to make sense of this sexless being. Tedla’s life has not been easy, not least of all because blands are treated as a nonhuman slave class by the males and females of Gammadis.

I had misgivings about this book when I first heard the synopsis. Would this be another story in which a sexless asexual “non-human” would become human through discovering sexuality and gender? Given that so many becoming-human stories have such a discovery or relationship as an important milestone, I was worried this would be the same, and thus invalidate Tedla’s identity. I also balked at the name “bland”, since this seemed like just another instance of thinking that nonsexual means boring. And yes, this is another story in which the sexless characters are referred to as “it”. This serves the double purpose of not sexing the blands but also illustrating their nonhuman status in the eyes of the other Gammadians.

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RYO Review: Orlando by Virginia Woolf Posted at 12:00 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

OrlandoRYO_headerHogarth Press, 1928
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Mild
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes
Rating: PG
Writing style: 3/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Orlando was a nobleman by birth, although all he really wanted was to be a poet. Throughout his years as a man he experiences love, lust, and loss, until one day he wakes up in a female body and must go about his/her life just the same. She quickly learns the ridiculous restrictions of behavior based on sex, but her goal remains… to transcend so much of life while still finding an anchor to hold on to.

Written as a fictitious biography, Orlando was apparently a love letter of sorts to Virginia Woolf‘s lover and friend, Vita. As such it has a logic (or lack thereof) all its own, verging on farce and fantasy. Most aspects of Orlando’s life are ordinary for the time she lives in—the most noticeably unusual thing is that the body she inhabits transcends both sex and age, allowing her to experience three centuries despite only calling herself thirty-something years of age. This can be taken as psychological symbolism or literal (and completely unexplained) magic. The important thing is that I found Orlando’s experience with gender and life’s deepest questions to be relatable even when made difficult through flowery run-on prose.

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RYO Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Posted at 10:30 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

FrankensteinRYO_headerOxford University Press, 1969
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: None
Ace/Genderqueer characters: none
Rating: PG-13 for violence and suicidal characters
Writing style: 3/5
Likable characters: 3/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Victor Frankenstein was an ambitious student of natural science, who stumbled upon the recipe for bringing life to the inanimate. But when his man-like creature awakes for the first time, he is struck with horror at the creature’s ugliness and rejects his creation, only to later discover that this rejection has turned the creature’s spirit as ugly as its face.

I have heard many assert that Mary Shelley‘s Frankenstein was one of the first novels of science fiction as we know it today, and so of course I had to choose it for my new reading challenge this year! I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, apart from the eloquent and poetic writing style. Of course, I knew the basic gist of the story, although I’d never watched a film adaptation or read the book before. Therefore, the beginning was a bit disorienting.

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WoGF Review: Imago by Octavia E. Butler Posted at 5:45 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


ImagoIntended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Significant
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes (construct)
Rating: PG-13 for disturbing concepts and some sexual themes
Writing style: 4/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Jodahs is ooloi—not male or female. Ooloi are common among the Oankali—the race of aliens which have interbred with humans and saved them from their post-apocalyptic world—but there has never been a human-born ooloi before. Jodahs’ power to assemble and disassemble the genetic structure of things could be the greatest danger Earth has ever known; or it could be the hopeful beginning of a new age and a new species.

Before I get too much further, let me give a disclaimer. Yes, I realized when I picked up Imago that it is the third book in a series, and technically I should have read the first and second book before reading Imago. However, it is a testament to Butler‘s skill that I was able to jump right in to this foreign future Earth and understand what was going on without much trouble. Butler’s dialogue, descriptions, and pacing are all well-balanced…concise, with nothing important left out. The only thing I felt myself lacking was a solid description of what the Oankali look like in terms of similarity or difference to humans. I know that they have tentacles: sensory arms with which they feel and see and smell. They have some kind of head distinguishable from their body, seem to be grey or brown in color and probably stand upright, but I’m not sure beyond that what they really look like. It doesn’t matter that much. Far more fascinating is the way Butler writes them as possessing feelings humans can relate to and yet being quite different in their approach to life. The Oankali are deeply emotional and yet rational—lovers of all life and experience and yet they seem to feel terrifyingly entitled to modify and absorb all forms of life into themselves. I kept expecting this to result in a critique of colonialism, but the Oankali are held up as beautiful and wise beings throughout the story, while humans are a dying species with a genetic flaw which ensures their eventual self-destruction unless the Oankali help them.

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WoGF Review: Mindscape by Andrea Hairston Posted at 12:13 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


MindscapeAqueduct Press, 2006
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Explicit
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes
Rating: R for language, violence, and sex
Writing style: 1/5
Likable characters: 3/5
Plot/Concepts: 2/5

When the Barrier came—a cosmic and organic life-form, restricting travel between arbitrary zones on Earth—the world changed forever. A hundred years later, Celestina dies to bring an end to the wars between the zones, and five years after that, the treaty is still not being lived as it should be. Instead, many of the zones reject the treaty, already too set in their individual agendas and cultures. Soldiers, actors, directors, ambassadors and Vermittler (humans who can commune with the Barrier) are thrown into a conflict with and against one another that will decide the future of Earth.

At 445 pages, Mindscape is a fairly hefty read. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked it up, as the synopsis I’d read was fairly vague. I soon learned that this was for good reason. I’m not sure if Hairston was trying to pull the reader into a particular “mindscape” via her writing style, or if the muddled feel of it was accidental, but I was nearly a hundred pages in before I had any sort of clue what was going on. In the first scene, the reader is dumped right into the thick of an important political event, with foreign names and words being thrown around helter-skelter with very little indication of which ones are important or what they really mean. Then comes the realization that there is no single main character; the reader is bounced back and forth between first and third-person perspectives and multiple points of view. The only explanation of anything comes in dialogue or flashbacks, which could be real, or could be visions or legends—it’s impossible to tell for sure. I can appreciate the effort taken to teach by immersion, but in this case I would have preferred an info-dump over feeling so lost for the entirety of the book.

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WoGF Review: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest Posted at 7:37 AM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


BoneshakerIntended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: None
Ace/Genderqueer characters: None
Rating: PG-13 for violence, gore, and language
Writing style: 1/5
Likable characters: 2/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5

Leviticus “Levi” Blue was a genius who invented the Boneshaker, a massive drill intended for use in mining through glacial ice. Before it could ever be used, it tore beneath Seattle’s streets and released a gas called the Blight which turns all who breathe it into zombies. Fifteen years later, Briar Wilkes, Levi’s widow, works hard to support herself and her son Ezekiel, but when Zeke’s questions about his father and grandfather go unanswered, he passes into the walled-off, Blight-tainted part of town to find answers for himself. Briar leaves everything behind to rescue her foolhardy son, hoping it’s not too late to tell him the truth.

I was so excited to start this book. Seattle is my favorite city, and as I’m also fond of steampunk, I figured I was bound to like Boneshaker even if I’m not crazy about zombies. Reading the praises stamped on the cover and before the title page also built up my hopes. Unfortunately, before I’d gotten more than a few chapters in, my eyes began to glaze over with boredom and I found myself having to read paragraphs over again.

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WoGF Review: To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis Posted at 1:31 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


To Say Nothing of the DogIntended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: None
Ace/Genderqueer characters: ?
Rating: PG
Writing style: 4/5
Likable characters: 5/5
Plot/Concepts: 3/5

In Ned Henry’s day, historians are very much involved in time travel, but unfortunately their main source of funding happens to be a tyrannical woman who is obsessed with renovating Coventry Cathedral. Lady Schrapnell will stop at nothing to find the bishop’s bird stump, a particularly ugly metal urn, and Ned has been coerced into making more time-jumps than is healthy.

So what is the cure for time-lag? A long break from changing time periods, hopefully far away from where Lady Schrapnell can order him around. Summer of 1888 in Victorian England, for example. But Ned isn’t about to get much rest, because it seems an incongruity has happened due to a certain fellow historian saving a drowning cat. Now Ned and Verity (the cat-rescuer) must try to correct all the impossible details of the timeline—if they don’t, marriages may never have happened, children may not have been born and grown up to fight in wars which may not have been won after all.

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WoGF Review: The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon Posted at 4:00 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


The Speed of DarkOrbit Books, 2002
Intended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Mild
Ace/Genderqueer characters: ?
Rating: PG-13 for brief discussion of sexual organs, brief language and violence
Writing style: 5/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Lou Arrendale was born too early to have his autism taken away. He did receive other interventions and now lives a fairly independent life. When his new boss tries to force him and his fellow autistic coworkers to try a new treatment which could make them “normal”, Lou must decide whether his current self is worth fighting for—does he want to join the ranks of those “normal” people who cannot see the patterns he does, but also do not struggle to speak under stress? To what extent can people’s minds be changed before they are no longer themselves?

The science fiction aspects of The Speed of Dark are very subtle. Lou lives in a world almost identical to ours—a world which could become a reality within the next decade or so, depending on what medical breakthroughs unfold. The primary difference is that many diseases and disorders began to be cured at birth a few years after Lou was born, so that he and his fellows are the last generation of autistic adults. Treatments are also available to extend people’s lifespans, although they are still expensive, which suggests that the technology hasn’t been around long enough to become commonplace.

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WoGF Review: A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski Posted at 12:56 PM by Rae McCausland

ParallelWorlds

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeRae McCausland (ParallelWorlds) was raised on speculative fiction and dedicated most of her teenage years to the dream of writing fantasy novels. During her college years, her interests shifted toward science fiction thanks to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov’s robot stories. She writes reviews for Parallel Worlds Magazine as a way of building connections between the perspectives of fellow sci-fi nerds and people of marginalized gender and sexual identities.


A Door Into OceanIntended Audience: Adult
Sexual content: Significant
Ace/Genderqueer characters: Yes (Human and Alien)
Rating: PG-13/R for violence, torture, brief sexuality and rape
Writing style: 3/5
Likable characters: 4/5
Plot/Concepts: 4/5

Travelers from the ocean moon of Shora, Sharers Merwen and Usha must judge whether the Valans who have invaded their home are human in any sense they can know. Spinel the stonecutter’s son follows them back, a “malefreak” among an all-female species. In the midst of the rising threat of colonization and extermination, the question remains–can a Valan share sisterhood with the people of Shora, and thus be healed from fear?

I was drawn to this book mainly for its feminist and genderqueer elements. The Sharers—being an all-female race which does not reproduce sexually—cannot really be restricted by the label of “woman” and therefore gender becomes relatively meaningless in their society. At first I was a little annoyed that Spinel, a man, seemed to be such a main character, but I quickly learned that there was no single main character, and I also grew to like Spinel for the way he so easily abandons any sense of masculine superiority. He comes to see himself as a sister to the Sharers, and they accept him as such despite his physical differences. He has moments of feeling like an outsider in both of his families, but that is to be expected with anyone who crosses between worlds.

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