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The Monthly Aqueduct

News about all things Aqueductian

Welcome to our summer news roundup, which includes our late-spring and early-summer book releases, a new Cascadia Subduction Zone issue, plenty of interesting reads from some of our authors, a call for submissions to a very special poetry project, and more. Enjoy.

The Breath of the Sun,
by Rachel Fellman

Cover image of THE BREATH OF THE SUN$19.00 (paperback)
$7.95 (e-book)
Buy now

We're pleased to announce the release of The Breath of the Sun, a debut novel, by Rachel Fellman, in both print and e-book editions.

Lamat Paed understands paradoxes. She's a great mountain climber who's never summited, the author of a tell-all that didn't really tell anything. For years she guided pilgrims up the foothills of the Sublime Mount, leading them as high as God would let them go. And then she partnered the apostate Southern priest Mother Disaine on the most daring, most blasphemous expedition in history—an attempt to reach the summit of the sacred mountain, the top of God's head. Disaine returned in triumph, claiming to be the first person since the prophet to have summited and lived. But Lamat went into hiding.

Now, late in life and exiled from the mountain, Lamat finally tells her story to her partner, Otile. It's the story of why she really wrote her first book all those years ago, how she came to be cast out from the mountain-dwelling Holoh people, and how she fled to the anonymity of the city to hide from her fame. Most of all, it's the story of her bond with Mother Disaine—the blasphemer, charlatan, and visionary who stole Lamat's life to serve her own purposes—and what really happened on their last, greatest expedition.

"Not since The Left Hand of Darkness has any book conveyed to me the profundity of the winter journey and the intensity of relationships forged in it. But where Le Guin was always evasive about religion in her sublime mountain landscapes, Fellman is direct about it. She creates an immanence in her mountain, The Body of God, that her characters respond to with an authentic and credible religious passion, one that gets mixed up with all other passions in their lives."
—Sarah Tolmie, author of The Stone Boatmen and Two Travelers
 
"Fellman's riveting debut melds prophecy, postcolonial politics, and mountaineering in a nuanced secondary-world fantasy. Scarred from a calamitous expedition she'd rather bury, Lamat Paed, indigenous mountain guide and climbing memoirist, is finally telling the true story of her last, traumatic climb: leading the charismatic and manipulative Mother Disaine, member of a religious order of academians, to climb the mountain that Lamat's Holoh people consider the body of God. Interlacing the expedition with Lamat's marriage-destroying first climb, prophecies, and manuscript footnotes from Lamat's lover, Otile, Fellman ably executes an ambitious structure and delivers an atmospheric, poetic, and occasionally wry and brutal story that moves with the gentle but unstoppable momentum of an iceberg. This is a compassionate and finely observed debut from an author to watch." (Starred review.)
 —Publishers Weekly, July 30, 2018

You can read a sample from the book or purchase it now.

Chercher La Femme,
by L. Timmel Duchamp

Cover image of CHERCHER LA FEMME$20.00 (paperback)
$7.95 (e-book)
Buy now

We're pleased to announce the publication of Chercher La Femme, a new novel by Aqueduct Press director L. Timmel Duchamp. It is available for purchase in print and e-book formats through Aqueduct's website now.

"Everything about the humanoids inhabiting the planet La Femme is beautiful and desirable. Even their names are a pleasure to the tongue, a pleasure that can be experienced only in meat space."  —Paul 22423

They named the planet "La Femme" and called it a paradise and refused to leave it. Now Julia 9561 is heading up the mission to retrieve the errant crew and establish meaningful Contact with the inhabitants. Are the inhabitants really all female, as the first crew claimed? Why don't the men want to return to Earth? What happened to the women on the crew? And why did Paul 22423 warn the First Council to send only male crew members?

"Speculative fiction at its purest."
 —Vonda N. McIntyre, author of Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun

"Aqueduct editor Duchamp's concentrated and demanding examination of what's accepted as 'self' is cleverly and convincingly presented as a simple piece of science fiction. Diplomat Julia, a member of a socialistic human society known as the Pax, is the head of a mission to a far-off world, La Femme. The mission's primary purpose is recovery of the first ship sent to make contact with La Femme's inhabitants, though further diplomatic advancement is planned as well. Julia is distracted from the mission objectives by her deep analysis of her life thus far and the utopian ideal she lives by, particularly when she deals with her splintered crew. What she and her crew find upon arrival is enough to shake them all. Duchamp (Stretto) makes abundant challenges to gender norms and raises questions of what constitutes alienness, and the novel's humanistic approach and unwavering commitment to Julia's frank introspection go beautifully with a precisely detailed world. This thoughtful tale bears rereading and contemplation." 
  —Publishers Weekly, June 2018

You can read a sample or purchase it on our website.

If Not Skin,
by Toby MacNutt

Cover image of IF NOT SKIN$10.00 (paperback)
$5.95 (e-book)
Buy now

 

Toby MacNutt's If Not Skin: Collected Transformations, is available now in
both e-book and print formats, as Vol. 61 in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series.

The pieces in If Not Skin are united by themes of embodiment—all that a body can be, all that can be a body, by magic, science, and experience. Not all bodies grant ease, but neither are all arduous bodies necessarily shaded with horror. Move through pain, pleasure, gender, freedom, age, and memory with every shapeshift, taking them in through richly textured, sense-heavy poetry and prose.

You can purchase the book on our website, or read a sample right now.

Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints,
by Alex Dally MacFarlane

Cover image of FEED ME THE BONES OF OUR SAINTS$10.00 (paperback)
$5.95 (e-book)
Buy now

Feed Me the Bones of Our Saints, a collection of short fiction by Alex Dally MacFarlane, is the sixtieth volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series.

A civilization of only women and foxes fights against its extermination. A series of maps point to the place of our sun in alien skies. A story of vengeance is told and then lost, held only in the wind's teeth and rain-ruined tapestries. A god creates a narrative map of a nation. 

Foxes run through these stories, in various guises. They make memories, turn history into truth or toss it aside—but they're as susceptible as we are to being forgotten.

You can read a sample from the book or purchase it now from our website.

Ring of Swords,
by Eleanor Arnason

Cover image of RING OF SWORDS$20.00 (paperback)
$7.95 (e-book)
Buy now

We're very pleased to release a new edition of Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Swords as a volume in Aqueduct's Heirloom Book series in both print and e-book formats, with a new introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin. Long out of print and short-listed for the Tiptree Award, many people, including Le Guin and Jo Walton, have wished for a new edition.

In her introduction to this new edition of Eleanor Arnason's Ring of Swords, Le Guin wrote, "Ring of Swords is an intellectually fascinating science-fiction story told in the novel tradition, peopled by ordinary people content with their ordinary life, appalled to find themselves swept up into a social crisis, forced into acts and choices of historical consequence. Its ancestry includes not only The War of the Worlds but also A Tale of Two Cities and War and Peace.

"Having recently brought their own competitive, feud-ridden society into a fragile balance of peace, the Hwarhath have been facing an unexpected problem: the lack of enemies. Given the apparently innate male propensity for finding pretexts to fight, and the fact that their men were all trained as warriors, the women running things at home make sure the men stay out in space protecting the home planet. The drawback is that there seems to be nobody to protect it from. So, when in the vastness of space they finally stumble into another intelligent species, they rejoice. Enemies! At last!"

"The usual assumption," Le Guin notes, "is that if you threaten a war early in a novel, you'd better hurry up and get the bombs bursting in air. And they usually do. Novels that portray war as totally destructive and futile still focus on it--war is what they're about, war is central to them, just as it was central to the old epics that glorified heroes and battles. But a war not fought? What kind of subject is that?" Le Guin asks. Her answer? "It's a beautiful subject for a novel, and Ring of Swords is a beautiful novel."

Read a sample of Ring of Swords or purchase it now on our site.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone,
Vol. 8, 3

Cover image of the new CASCADIA SUBDUCTION ZONE$5 (print)
$3 (PDF)

The summer issue of The Cascadia Subduction Zone is out. In it you will find flash fiction ("Roots" by Sara Codair and "The Canonization of Junipero Serra" by Nancy Jane Moore), poetry (by Gwynne Garfinkle and Alexandra Seidel), and a memorial to Kate Wilhelm and Gardner Dozois. And of course it has reviews: Karen Burnham's column "Dust Lanes," Amy Thomson's appreciation of Suzette Haden Elgin's linguistic science fiction for our "Grandmother Magma" column, and reviews by Kathleen Alcalá and others of four new novels. Finally, the issue's featured artist is Jeanne Gomoll, who gives us a taste of her on-going "Space Babe" series.

The CSZ is available for purchase at http://thecsz.com/. Electronic copies are $3, print copies $5. As usual, you can also subscribe: electronic subscriptions $10 - print subscriptions $16.

We would also like to remind you that along with every new issue, we release a previous one for free. Access all the free content on our subscribe page.

Vol. 8, 3 (July 2018)

In Memoriam 
Kate Wilhelm and Gardner Dozois
 
Poems 
jungle red
   by Gwynne Garfinkle
The Shadow of the Peak
    by Alexandra Seidel
 
Flash Fiction
Roots 
    by Sara Codair
The Canonization of Junipero Serra 
    by Nancy Jane Moore
 
Grandmother Magma 
Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue and Láadan
   reviewed by Amy Thomson
 
Dust Lanes 
Stories in Capricious #9, edited by A.C. Buchanan 
   by Karen Burnham
 
Book Reviews 
The Mere Wife, by Maria Dahvana Headley 
   reviewed by Kathleen Alcalá 
Medusa Uploaded, by by Emily Devenport
   reviewed by Phoebe Salzman-Cohen
A Study in Honor, by Claire O'Dell
  reviewed by Cynthia Ward
The Invisible Valley, by Su Wei
   reviewed by Arley Sorg
 
Featured Artist 
Jeanne Gomoll

Le Guin tribute poetry anthology:
call for submissions

Portrait of Ursula Le Guin smiling at the camera with a wool sweater on.Poet and editor Rose Lemberg is seeking submissions for an anthology of poetry in tribute to the life and works of Ursula K. Le Guin. The anthology is tentatively titled "Climbing Lightly through Forests," and it is due for publication by our press sometime in 2019.

Six years have passed since the release of The Moment of Change, our anthology of feminist speculative poetry, also edited by Rose Lemberg. We are delighted for them to to have embarked on this new project with Aqueduct Press:

"Ursula K. Le Guin was perhaps most known for her SFF fiction, but she was a prolific poet, with a dozen poetry collections in print (her last poetry book is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press this Fall).

Cover image of THE MOMENT OF CHANGEUnlike her big-idea SF, her poetry was often more personal in scope, engaging closely with land and landscape of the Pacific Northwest; much of her poetry is not speculative at all. Le Guin was a complex, prolific creator whose work influenced and touched so many of us.

For this anthology, I am seeking poetry that engages with Ursula K. Le Guin’s life and work broadly construed – including her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I will be looking for a variety of voices, themes, treatments, and approaches. Both critical and celebratory approaches are welcome, as is anything in-between."

You will find all the details (including deadline and payment) on Rose Lemberg's blog post.

(Photo of Ursula K. Le Guin by Eileen Gunn.)

Josh Lukin
at the Modern Language
Association Convention

Please enjoy Josh Lukin's series of blog posts on the panels he attended at this year's Modern Language Association convention. Topics range from "Queer Faith, Queer Love" to "Posthumanist Disability," to "Blackness and Disability" and more. They can all be found on the Aqueduct Press blog.
WisCon Chronicles
editors confirmed

 
After a one-year hiatus, we are pleased to announce that Emma Humphries and JoSelle Vanderhooft will be guest-editing a new volume of The WisCon Chronicles, which will be available at WisCon 43, 2019. Recent editors of the Chronicles include Mary Anne Mohanraj, Jaymee Goh, Margaret McBride, and Rebecca Holden.
Rachel Fellman on archives,
"queer time", and feminist SF

 
Rachel Fellman, our most recent addition to the Aqueduct family with her debut novel The Breath of the Sun, has written an excellent short piece titled "'Life-Now': James Tiptree, Joanna Russ, and the Queer Meaning of Archives." Read it now in In The Library With The Lead Pipe open-access journal.
 
"Queerness is the place where society’s tectonic plates meet and grind together. And chosen family is the place where this geology becomes genealogy."

Profile photo portrait of James Tiptree, Jr.
Forthcoming titles
 
Cover image of INVOCABULARY by Gemma FilesCover image of THE ADVENTURE OF THE DUX BELLORUM by Cynthia WardCover image of PEOPLE CHANGE by Gwynne Garfinkle
Copyright © 2018 Aqueduct Press, All rights reserved.


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