Moon Songs

Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019) published her first short story in 1955, and became a regular contributor to science fiction and fantasy magazines as well as literary journals. Her books include the World Fantasy Award-winning collection The Start of the End of It All, the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel The Mount, and two volumes of Collected Stories. Her short stories won a Pushcart Prize and two Nebula Awards, and in 2005 she received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.

“A greatest hits collection of unclassifiable speculative fiction This compellingly assembled retrospective gives longtime Emshwiller fans a chance to savor her unique sensibility again, while lucky newcomers enjoy the thrill of discovery. Wickedly astute and surreally funny.”—Kirkus Review (Starred)“Most writers, whether of science fiction or realist fiction, don’t aspire to the kind of pure freedom Emshwiller exhibits in her work. For many readers, this challenging work won’t be the kind of thing they want to read every day. But when you do want something that is playing its own game, something difficult and slippery yet playful and fun, what a joy it is to have her work at hand.”—Washington Post“Carol Emshwiller’s stories are wonder-filled, necessary, and beautifully crafted.” —Samuel R. Delany"An exemplary primer on the work of an extraordinary writer Moon Songs is representative of both the breadth of Emshwiller’s career and its peaks, and the selections have been sequenced into a book that works, with illuminating juxtapositions of stories written decades apart. It also becomes the best easily available text for these stories It is a scrupulous book, and it is recommended."—Niall Harrison, LOCUS"If someone were to compile one of those futile lists of the top hundred writers in the world right Now! I’d have to hack into the results and replace the name of one of the politely-angry young men in the top ten with Carol Emshwiller’s.— Gavin J. Grant“Emshwiller’s readers know her to be a major fabulist, a marvelous magical realist, one of the strongest, most complex, most consistently feminist voices in fiction.” — Ursula K. Le Guin“Carol Emshwiller’s imagination is fierce and funny, never mean. She creates people, situations, and combinations of words that make me read her sentences and paragraphs again and again for the sheer pleasure of reading.” —Grace Paley