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Author Features

Me and Alice

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opens in a new windowPlace holder of - 25Written by opens in a new windowEllen Datlow

There have been many books written about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its companion volume Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found by Lewis Carroll: exploring their meaning—psychological, political, mathematical—and about their author, Charles L. Dodgson (1832-1898), a mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon, and photographer—and his relationship with the model for his heroine, Alice Liddell.

I’ve loved Carroll’s two classics since I was young. I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed, but I’ve been a collector of illustrated versions for many years, especially appreciating the enchanting illustrations of books by fine artists such as Mervyn Peake, Arthur Rackham, Barry Moser, Ralph Steadman, Lisbeth Zwerger, Salvador Dali, Rodney Matthews, Anne Bachelier, Maggie Taylor, and so many others, some relatively unknown.

But I must admit that my vision of “Alice” herself has been subverted by the 1985 movie opens in a new windowDreamchild, in which the adult Alice Liddell, who is visiting New York, flashes back to her childhood, where we see the dark-haired little girl (seen in photographs), who inspired the tales and is very different from the long-haired blonde image created in John Tenniel’s ubiquitous illustrations. In that movie, which is very much about the relationship between Dodgson and Liddell and how his creation of her fictional counterpart might have influenced her life as an adult, there are darkly magical partially-animated interstitial sections with amazingly creepy Wonderland inhabitants imagined by Jim Hensen. In fact, it might be the creatures in Carroll’s works that are even more likeable than Alice herself that bring readers back over and over again to the land beyond the looking glass.

Everyone is familiar with the 1951 animated musical Walt Disney version of Alice in Wonderland, which took him about twenty years to get off the ground, and made an indelible mark on child’s psyches with its colorful renderings of the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, White Rabbit, March Hare, the Hookah-smoking caterpillar, and one of my personal favorites Dinah, the kitten.

In 1971, Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer made a short animated film based on the Jabberwocky, and in 1987 made the full length feature, the darkly surreal opens in a new windowAlice, which in its original language was called Something from Alice. Its tone was entirely different from the Disney.

In opens in a new window2010 and opens in a new window2016 Director Tim Burton interpreted the two volumes in his own inimitable way, and love them or hate them, they did create a whole new set of images that one can savor. opens in a new windowThen She Fell, a marvelous immersive performance piece created by the theater company Third Rail Projects continues to play in New York City since 2012 demonstrates how strongly Carroll’s work continues to be loved.

So with all this in mind, I was so very happy to be able to gather round other “Alice” lovers and put together an anthology dedicated to the girl whose adventures have inspired and continued to inspire us—and to her creator.

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Tor Finalists for the World Fantasy Awards

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A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS and THE LAND ACROSS are finalists in the Novel category, and QUEEN VICTORIA’S BOOK OF SPELLS and DANGEROUS WOMEN are a finalists in the Anthology category.

Two Tor authors are being awarded the Life Achievement Award: Ellen Datlow and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Irene Gallo is a finalist for the Special Award–Professional for art direction for Tor.com.

Tor.com also has two finalists in the Novella category and one in the Short Story category.

Here is the complete list of Tor’s finalists:

This year’s judges are Andy Duncan, Kij Johnson, Oliver Johnson, John Klima, and Liz Williams. Winners will be announced at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention held in Washington, D.C. in November.

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Video

Book Trailer: The Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

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The Time Traveler’s Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the largest and most definitive collection of time travel stories ever assembled. Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century’s worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.

This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu’s “Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers”).

In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth’s history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end. The Time Traveler’s Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.

Contributors:
Geoffrey Landis, Richard Matheson, Robert Silverberg, Alice Sola Kim, Eric Schaller, C.J. Cherryh, Michael Swanwick, Steve Bein, Ursula K. Le Guin, Cordwainer Smith, H.G. Wells, Michael Moorcock, Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, John Chu, Harry Turtledove, David Langford, Connie Willis, George R. R. Martin, Kage Baker, Steven Utley, Ellen Klages, Garry Kilworth, Rosaleen Love, Elizabeth Bear, George-Oliver Châteaureynaud, Max Beerbohn, Edward Page Mitchell, Theodore Sturgeon, Kim Newman, Douglas Adams, Joe Lansdale, Peter Crowther, Karin Tidbeck, Barrington J. Bayley, Greg Egan, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Gene Wolfe, Langdon Jones, David I. Masson, Vandana Sing, Tony Pi, Dean Francis Alfar, Norman Spinrad, Eric Frank Russell, Ray Bradbury, Genevieve Valentine, Jason Heller, Stan Love, Tanith Lee, Karen Haber, Isaac Asimov, Bob Leman, Tamsyn Muir, Carrie Vaughn, Richard Bowes, Nalo Hopkinson, Adam Roberts, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Rjurik Davidson, E.F. Benson, Molly Brown, Pamela Sargent, William Gibson, and Charles Stross.

The Time Traveler’s Almanac, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, publishes on March 18th.

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Author Features

Deadlier Than the Male

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Dangerous Women edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Written by Melinda Snodgrass

When I was first invited into the anthology entitled Dangerous Women it was then known by a different title — Femme Fatales. Which has a particular and rather negative connotation. Various dictionaries describe such a person as a seductive woman who will ultimately bring disaster to any man who gets involved with her or a woman who lures men into dangerous or compromising situations. It’s a very noir attitude summed up by generations of male detectives stating — “From the minute she walked in I could tell the dame was trouble.” And I confess I wrote that story though the woman in question is a revolutionary and a freedom fighter so she damages the man in pursuit of a good cause.

Later the title was changed to Dangerous Women which broadened the definition of what constituted a dangerous woman. In addition to the manipulative sexual connivers were added female warriors both real and imagined.

Ultimately I felt all of these approaches begged the question of what actually makes a woman “dangerous” and is that merely another way to say empowered? What allowed women to break free of the roles that had been assigned to us?

I think it was technology. Access to technology can offer women choices they might otherwise not have possessed. There is a reason some places ban women from driving, or try to keep girls from going to school. You give a woman mobility and knowledge and society changes, and that is very dangerous to the status quo.

Give her a gun and things change more. There’s an old adage that states. “God didn’t make men and women equal. Colonel Colt did.” The invention of the firearm put men and women on a far more equal footing when it came to self-defense and even in combat. Now with fighter jets and drone warfare battlefield ability is no longer limited by upper body strength or the length of your arm.

I keep coming back to education, and its importance for women’s rights. There’s an invention that makes it possible. That can place education, particularly higher education, within reach of women. It’s the Pill which I think fundamentally changed society, and why there is, even today, push back against its wide spread use. Women can study and enter the work force, build a career when they have safe and reliable contraception and can plan and time childbirth.

We can all point to women whose actions branded them as dangerous to their particular time and society. Whose bravery inspires us all — the suffragists fighting for our right to vote, Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white man and move to the back of the bus, Malala fighting for the right of girls to go to school, but maybe the one that deserves our greatest thanks is Margaret Sanger who worked in the early part of the twentieth century for contraceptive rights, and in fact underwrote the first research that would ultimately lead to the invention of the birth control pill.

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From the Tor/Forge December newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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Author Features

Introducing Dangerous Women

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Dangerous Women edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

Written by Gardner Dozois

Welcome to the world of Dangerous Women! Here, in full, is the introduction to this brand new anthology, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Genre fiction has always been divided over the question of just how dangerous women are.

In the real world, of course, the question has long been settled. Even if the Amazons are mythological (and almost certainly wouldn’t have cut their right breasts off to make it easier to draw a bow if they weren’t), their legend was inspired by memory of the ferocious warrior women of the Scythians, who were very much not mythological. Gladiatrix, women gladiators, fought other women—and sometimes men—to the death in the arenas of Ancient Rome. There were female pirates like Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and even female samurai. Women served as frontline combat troops, feared for their ferocity, in the Russian army during World War II, and serve so in Israel today. Until 2013, women in the U.S. forces were technically restricted to “noncombat” roles, but many brave women gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway, since bullets and land mines have never cared whether you’re a noncombatant or not. Women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots for the United States during World War II were also limited to noncombat roles (where many of them were nevertheless killed in the performance of their duties), but Russian women took to the skies as fighter pilots, and sometimes became aces. A Russian female sniper during World War II was credited with more than fifty kills. Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe led one of the most fearsome revolts ever against Roman authority, one that was almost successful in driving the Roman invaders from Britain, and a young French peasant girl inspired and led the troops against the enemy so successfully that she became famous forever afterwards as Joan of Arc.

On the dark side, there have been female “highwaymen” like Mary Frith and Lady Katherine Ferrers and Pearl Hart (the last person to ever rob a stagecoach); notorious poisoners like Agrippina and Catherine de Medici, modern female outlaws like Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker, even female serial killers like Aileen Wuornos. Elizabeth Báthory was said to have bathed in the blood of virgins, and even though that has been called into question, there is no doubt that she tortured and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of children during her life. Queen Mary I of England had hundreds of Protestants burnt at the stake; Queen Elizabeth of England later responded by executing large numbers of Catholics. Mad Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar had so many people put to death that she wiped out one-third of the entire population of Madagascar during her reign; she would even have you executed if you appeared in her dreams.

Popular fiction, though, has always had a schizophrenic view of the dangerousness of women. In the science fiction of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, women, if they appeared at all, were largely regulated to the role of the scientist’s beautiful daughter, who might scream during the fight scenes but otherwise had little to do except hang adoringly on the arm of the hero afterwards. Legions of women swooned helplessly while waiting to be rescued by the intrepid jut-jawed hero from everything from dragons to the bug-eyed monsters who were always carrying them off for improbable purposes either dietary or romantic on the covers of pulp SF magazines. Hopelessly struggling women were tied to railroad tracks, with nothing to do but squeak in protest and hope that the Good Guy arrived in time to save them.

And yet, at the same time, warrior women like Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Dejah Thoris and Thuvia, Maid of Mars, were every bit as good with the blade and every bit as deadly in battle as John Carter and their other male comrades, female adventuresses like C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry swashbuckled their way through the pages of Weird Tales magazine (and blazed a trail for later female swashbucklers like Joanna Russ’s Alyx); James H. Schmitz sent Agents of Vega like Granny Wannatel and fearless teenagers like Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee out to battle the sinister menaces and monsters of the spaceways; and Robert A. Heinlein’s dangerous women were capable of being the captain of a spaceship or killing enemies in hand-to-hand combat. Arthur Conan Doyle’s sly, shady Irene Adler was one of the only people ever to outwit his Sherlock Holmes, and probably one of the inspirations for the legions of tricky, dangerous, seductive, and treacherous “femmes fatale” who featured in the works of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain and later went on to appear in dozens of films noir, and who still turn up in the movies and on television to this day. Later television heroines such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena, Warrior Princess, firmly established women as being formidable and deadly enough to battle hordes of fearsome supernatural menaces, and helped to inspire the whole subgenre of paranormal romance, which is sometimes unofficially known as the “kick-ass heroine” genre.

Like our anthology Warriors, Dangerous Women was conceived of as a cross-genre anthology, one that would mingle every kind of fiction, so we asked writers from every genre—science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical, horror, paranormal romance, men and women alike — to tackle the theme of “dangerous women,” and that call was answered by some of the best writers in the business, including both new writers and giants of their fields like Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, Sharon Kay Penman, Joe Abercrombie, Carrie Vaughn, Joe R. Lansdale, Lawrence Block, Cecelia Holland, Brandon Sanderson, Sherilynn Kenyon, S. M. Stirling, Nancy Kress, and George R. R. Martin.

Here you’ll find no hapless victims who stand by whimpering in dread while the male hero fights the monster or clashes swords with the villain, and if you want to tie these women to the railroad tracks, you’ll find you have a real fight on your hands. Instead, you will find sword-wielding women warriors; intrepid women fighter pi lots and far-ranging spacewomen; deadly female serial killers; formidable female superheroes; sly and seductive femmes fatale; female wizards; hard-living bad girls; female bandits and rebels; embattled survivors in postapocalyptic futures; female private investigators; stern female hanging judges; haughty queens who rule nations and whose jealousies and ambitions send thousands to grisly deaths; daring dragonriders; and many more.

Enjoy!

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