Carol Emshwiller – författare

First Firebirds. Then Firebirds Rising. Now there is Firebirds Soaring, the third anthology of original stories by some of today?s finest writers of fantasy and science fiction. These authors, including Nancy Farmer (The Sea of Trolls), Ellen Klages (The Green Glass Sea), Margo Lanagan (Black Juice), and Jane Yolen (The Devil?s Arithmetic), have brought new worlds and Old Magic to life in nineteen remarkable pieces of short fiction. Mike Dringenberg, co-creator of Sandman with Neil Gaiman, contributes decorative vignettes. Firebirds Soaring?like Firebirds and Firebirds Rising?sets the standard for short fiction for teenagers and adult fans of the genre.

Bobby Lassiter has some important secrets—but it’s not as if anyone’s paying attention. It’s the middle of the Depression, and while Bobby’s mother and older sister knit all day to make money, Bobby explores the California desert around their home. That’s how Bobby finds Boots. He’s under their one half-dead tree, halfdead himself. Right away he’s a secret, too—a secret to be fed and clothed and taken care of, and even more of a secret because of what he can do. Sometimes Boots is a man. Sometimes he’s (really, truly) a horse. He and Bobby both know something about magic—and those who read this book will, too.“A wonderful story about a man who is a horse, and a boy who is a girl—about fake magic and real love—about deaths that are part of living and the pain that pays for joy. I love it.”—Ursula K. Le Guin

Fiercely imaginative stories from an esteemed and prolific writer.

As is traditional in the world of zines, we apologize for the lateness of the current issue to appear. This, er, tradition goes back to Bob, the first caveman. Damn his late eyes. Also, we introduce a new columnist, Nicole Kimberling, who will write about food. This time, she starts us off with that most delightful of comestibles: brownies.

* Philip K. Dick Award Winner * Best of the Year: Locus, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Magazine * Nominated for the Impac Award Charley is an athlete. He wants to grow up to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. Charley lives in a stable. He isn't a runner, he's a mount. He belongs to a Hoot: The Hoots are alien invaders. Charley hasn't seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out in the mountains somewhere, with the other Free Humans. The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he's going to have to learn how to be a human being. "I've been a fan of Carol Emshwiller's since the wonderful Carmen Dog. The Mount is a terrific novel, at once an adventure story and a meditation on the psychology of freedom and slavery. It's literally haunting (days after finishing it, I still think about all the terrible poetry of the Hoot/Sam relationship) and hypnotic. I'm honored to have gotten an early look at it." -Glen David Gold "Carol Emshwiller's The Mount is a wicked book.Like Harlan Ellison's darkest visions, Emshwiller writes in a voice that reminds us of the golden season when speculative fiction was daring and unsettling. Dystopian, weird, comedic as if the Marquis de Sade had joined Monty Python, and ultimately scary, The Mount takes us deep into another reality. Our world suddenly seems wrought with terrible ironies and a severe kind of beauty. When we are the mounts, who-or what-is riding us? -Luis Alberto Urrea "We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful funny novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She always writes them that way." -Kim Stanley Robinson "This novel is like a tesseract, I started it and thought, ah, I see what she's doing. But then the dimensions unfolded and somehow it ended up being about so much more." -Maureen F. McHugh "The Mount is so extraordinary as to be unpraiseable by a mortal such as I. I had to keep putting it down because it was so disturbing then picking it up because it was so amazing. A postmodernist would call it The Eros of Hegemony, but I'm no postmodernist.Nearly every sentence is simultaneously hilarious, prophetic, and disturbing. This person needs to be really, really famous." -Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights Bookstore "Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of the complex relationships between masters and slaves, pets and owners, the served and the serving, this poetic, funny and above all humane novel deserves to be read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our material-minded times." -Publishers Weekly "Adult/High School - This veteran science-fiction writer is known for original plots and characters, and her latest novel does not disappoint, offering an extraordinary, utterly alien, and thoroughly convincing culture set in the not-too-distant future. Emshwiller brings readers immediately into the action, gradually revealing the takeover of Earth by the Hoots, otherworldly beings with superior intelligence and technology. Humans have become the Hoots' "mounts," and, in the case of the superior Seattle bloodline, valuable racing stock. Most mounts are well off, as the Hoots constantly remind them, and treated kindly by affectionate owners who use punishment poles as rarely as possible.No one agrees more than principal narrator Charley, a privileged young Seattle whose rider-in-training will someday rule the world. The adolescent mount's dream is of bringing honor to his beloved Little Master by becoming a great champion like Beauty, his sire, whose portrait decorates many Hoot walls. When Charley learns that his father now leads the renegade bands called Wilds, he and Little Master flee. This complex and compelling blend of tantalizing themes offers numerous possibilities for speculation and discussion, whether among friends or in the classroom." -School Library Journal "Emshwiller's prose is beautiful" -Laura Miller, Salon "The Mount is a brilliant book. But be warned: It takes root in the mind and unleashes aftershocks at inopportune moments." -The Women's Review of Books "Carol Emshwiller has been writing fantasy, speculative and science fiction for many years; she has a dedicated cult following and has been an influence on a number of today's top writers...it is very easy to fall into the rhythm of Emshwiller's poetic and smooth sentences."-Review of Contemporary Fiction "Emshwiller's themes-the allure of submission, the temptations of complicity, the perverse nature of compassion-are not usual fare in novels of resistance and revolt, and her strikingly imaginative novel continues to surpass our expectations to the very last page." -The Philadelphia Inquirer "Both fantastical and unnerving in its familiarity. And like her work in romance and westerns, its genre-twisting plot resists easy classification." -The Village Voice "Emshwiller uses a deceptively simple narrative voice that gives The Mount the style of a young-adult novel. But there's much going on beneath the surface of this narrative, including oblique flashes of humor and artfully articulated moments of psychological insight. The Mount emerges as one of the season's unexpected small pleasures." -San Francisco Chronicle "A memorable alien-invasion scenario, a wild adventure, and a reflection on the dynamics of freedom and slavery." -Booklist "A brilliant piece of work." -Bookslut "...a beautifully written allegorical tale full of hope that even the most unenlightened souls can shrug off the bonds of internalized oppression and finally see the light."-BookPage "A fable/fantasy/cautionary tale along the lines of, say, Animal Farm. It's the story of Charlie, a preadolescent human who's being used as a horse by shoulder-riding alien invaders known as Hoots. Charlie wants nothing more than to become a great Mount, a loyal slave and servant, until his father, a renegade Mount who has fled from the Hoots and now lives in the mountains, comes to take him away. Like so much of Emshwiller's work, The Mount asks difficult questions-in this case, What is freedom? The issue is particularly appropriate at a time when "freedom" in America is increasingly defined as "security"-freedom from uncertainty, freedom from fear, freedom from want. All of which is, in the end, not really freedom at all."-Time Out New York "In a recent interview with Science Fiction Weekly, Ursula Le Guin called Emshwiller "the most unappreciated great writer we've got." The Mount proves Le Guin right...If Emshwiller is not already on your top bookshelf, The Mount will put her there."-Rambles Carol Emshwiller's stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation, Trampoline, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and many other anthologies and magazines. Carol is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been awarded an NEA grant, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant, a New York State

¿Qué tanto se parece nuestro presente al futuro que imaginaron las escritoras del siglo pasado? ¿Persiste el entusiasmo o la cautela ante el uso de la tecnología? ¿Nuestros problemas han cambiado, o será que nuestros sueños, temores y heridas permanecen? Bajo el título de Retrofuturismos, la segunda entrega de la colección ¡El futuro es mujer! reúne cuentos escritos entre 1931 y 1966 por Sonya Dorman, Leslie F. Stone, Elizabeth Mann Borgese, Margaret St. Clair, Leigh Brackett, Carol Emshwiller, Rosel George Brown, Leslie Perri, Katherine MacLean y Andrew North, que permiten explorar las tensiones entre el futuro y el pasado a través de historias al más puro estilo pulp, cuyo centro son las aventuras en el espacio. La primera civilización alienígena que ganó una guerra contra los humanos; una especie de extraterrestres que llega a la Tierra para compartir su conocimiento pero se enfrenta a un pueblo de humanos violentos y racistas; una perra de caza en medio de un dilema existencial en un planeta helado; viajeros espaciales que se contagian de enfermedades extrañas; una civilización sin género que se disfraza para convivir con los humanos; madres que deben mantener la armonía entre sus hijos cuando un niño de otro planeta se integra a su carpool; mujeres temerarias que no dudan en realizar actos heroicos en el espacio. Estos relatos demuestran que la escritura de ciencia ficción es un gran ejercicio de empatía. Las escritoras de esta colección imaginaron nuevos mundos a partir de la comprensión y la solidaridad hacia otros seres, quizás a partir de saberse ellas mismas representantes de cierta otredad en su época. Los cuentos aquí contenidos reafirman que mover el centro convencional de las historias que contamos no solo refresca nuestras narrativas, sino que nos invita a mover nuestro propio centro y vislumbrar así nuevas discusiones y formas de vivir en comunidad.

"A major fabulist, a marvelous magical realist.” — Ursula K. LeGuinCarol  Emshwiller’s pioneering stories have been praised by and influenced a wide variety writers including Ursula K. Le Guin, Grace Paley, Samuel R. Delany, Harlan Ellison, Karen Joy Fowler, China Miéville, Connie Willis, and numerous others. Moon Songs is the first one-volume selection from Emshwiller’s entire career, with stories from 1958 to 2012. Another admirer, Kelly Link, wrote the collection's foreword. It is unsurprising that Emshwiller, a winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, two Nebula Awards, a Philip K. Dick Award, and a Pushcart Prize, is so respected by her fellow writers and avid fans. What is surprising is that her work has not enjoyed more widespread success and notoriety. There are so many who still have not experienced the joy of her engrossingly odd narrators, hyper-original imagery, and unguessable plot twists in stories such as "Moon Songs," "Creature", "Mrs. Jones," "I Live with You and You Don’t Know It,"and "The Bird Painter in Time of War." Moon Songs selects a representative sample of stories from every era of Emshwiller's work, providing readers new and old with a guidebook to a unique vision and feminist voice. Wry and ironic, hilarious and heartbreaking, poignant and poetic, these tales stand as testament to the vivid imagination of an original and uncompromising writer.

Stories ranging from surreal adventure to hilarious satire. "A bitter, funny reply to that national magazine that declares that feminism itself is 'dated.'"--Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times

What if the world ended on your birthday-and no one came? What if your grandmother was a superhero? Recommended to readers of Judy Budnitz, Geoff Ryman, Aimee Bender, and Grace Paley this fourth collection by the wonderful Carol Emshwiller includes the Nebula winning story "Creature." "These short stories have a mysterious glow."-JANE "Carol Emshwiller's stories are wonder-filled, necessary, and beautifully crafted." -Samuel R. Delany "I read one of the stories in Carol Emshwiller's new collection, Report to the Men's Club, in progress several years ago and have thought about it ever since. I could even quote you lines! And now, having read the rest of the elegant, complex, insightful stories, I know she's done the same thing to me again eighteen times over! Emshwiller knows more about men and mortality and love and loss and writing and life than anybody on the planet! Dazzling, dangerous, devastating writer! Unforgettable (and I mean that literally!) collection! Wow! Wow! Wow!" -Connie Willis "Carol Emshwiller (Carmen Dog, etc.) lends her elegant wit to Report to the Men's Club, a collection of 19 fantastic short fictions treating the war between the sexes.Such tales as "Grandma," "Foster Mother" and "Prejudice and Pride" are brim-full of wry insights into male-female relationships. Testimonials from Samuel R. Delaney, Maureen McHugh, Terry Bisson and Connie Willis, among other big names, should send this one into extra printings." -Publishers Weekly "A daring, eccentric, and welcome observer of darkly human ways emerges from these 19 motley tales. Often writing in an ironical first-person voice, storywriter and novelist Emshwiller (Leaping Man Hill, 1999, etc.) assumes the persona of the outsider or renegade who flees the community as if to test boundaries and possibilities. In "After All," the narrator is a grandmother who decides to set out on a "makeshift journey" in her bathrobe and slippers simply because it is time. The setting is vague: she flaps through the town and then into the hills, pursued, she is sure, by her children, and, in the end, she is merely happy not "to miss all the funny things that might have happened later had the world lasted beyond me."Both in "Foster Mother" and "Creature," the mature, quirky narrators take on the care of an abandoned, otherworldly foundling and attempt to test their survival together in the wilds. In other stories, a character's affection for a scarred pariah forces her out of her home and through a stormy transformation-as in the sensationally creepy "Mrs. Jones." Of the two middle-aged spinster sisters, Cora and Janice, Janice is the fattish conspicuous one who decides to tame and civilize at her own peril the large batlike creature she finds wounded in the sisters' apple orchard. Janice does get her husband, and through skillful details and use of irony, the story becomes a chilling, tender portrait of the sisters' dependence and fragility. At her best, Emshwiller writes with a kind of sneaky precision by drawing in the reader with her sympathetic first person, then pulling out all recognizable indicators; elsewhere, as the long-winded "Venus Rising" (based on work by Elaine Morgan),the pieces read like way-far-out allegories. A startling, strong fourth collection by this author-look for her upcoming The Mount."-Kirkus Reviews "This strange collection of stories is populated by creatures of all sorts, human and alien. The collection-closing title piece takes the form of a speech given to a men's club by someone who has just been initiated into membership, despite the accident of birth that made her biologically female. The other stories range topically from the faith of a scribe in "Modillion" to love at first sight in "Nose." What makes them satisfying is the personalities of their characters. Even the shortest pieces present characters who possess all the force of real persons who might be standing beside us. For the most part, Emshwiller keeps the stories simple, engaging us with their characterization rather than fast, copious action. We stay engaged because they render enough emotion to sustain our creaturely interest." -Booklist "A real joy to read. This is a collection to delight and intrigue readers and writers of all persuasions. Go out and buy it now." -New York Review of Science Fiction "Elliptical, funny and stylish, they are for the most part profoundly unsettling. In "Mrs.Jones," a spinster tries to one-up her sister in an ongoing codependent battle by trapping and seducing the angel (demon? alien?) that is living in their orchard. In "Creature," a man cohabitates with a massive female monster-one of a race that has been engineered to kill him. In "One Part of the Self Is Always Tall and Dark," a woman, happily convinced that she is going crazy, dreams of long sentences composed of nothing but three-letter words: "She was far out and tip top too." -Time Out New York "This is a wonderful collection of short fiction, marked by tremendous variety, a wonderful, funny, knowing, and sympathetic voice, and a truly off-center imagination...Carol Emshwiller is a real treasure. She seems underappreciated to me, but this late burst of productivity may help remedy that situation. Both The Mount and Report to the Men's Club are first rate books." -SF Site "Emshwiller sentences are are transparent and elegant at the same time. Her vocabulary, though rich and flexible, is never arcane."-The Women's Review of Books Carol Emshwiller's stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation, Trampoline, McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and many other anthologies and magazines. Carol is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been awarded an NEA grant, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant, a New York State Foundation for the Arts grant, the ACCENT/ASCENT fiction prize, and the World Fantasy, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Gallun, and Icon awards. Carol Emshwiller is the author of many collections of short fiction including Report to the Men's Club, I Live with You, The Start of the End of it All (World Fantasy Award winner), Verging on the Pertinent, and Joy in Our Cause, and the novels Carmen Dog, Ledoyt, Mister Boots, The Secret City, and Leaping Man Hill. She lives in New York City in winter and spends the summers in a shack in the Sierras in California.