Sunday 11 August 2019

Guest Blog: Anthologising – Not Just Spinning A Line, by Damaris Browne



I’m getting excited. On 15th August the SF anthology Distaff is released – which makes it sound like a long-term prisoner finally getting out of jail, but I’m pretty sure that’s just coincidence. (Though do insert here your own puns about both being penned, and the price of the anthology making it a complete steal.) Then on 23rd August there’s the formal launch. And that makes it sound like an ocean-going liner which needs to be sped on its way with a magnum of champagne, though since the launch is taking place at Titancon in Belfast, it’s perhaps more likely to be floated on a sea of Bushmills and Guinness.

Why the excitement? It’s not simply because my story The Colour of Silence is included, though if you want to read about a ship being launched – albeit without champagne or Guinness – there it is. It’s because the anthology is something of a rarity. An all-new (no reprints) all-SF (no fantasy) all-female (yep, no stories from men) anthology, and – which surely makes it unique – wholly devised, organised, written, edited and produced by women. From concept to cover, through beta-reading, formatting, and beyond to the launch eats and promotional give-aways, it’s women all the way.

Which is where the title comes in. For a distaff is the rod on which raw fibres are wound prior to spinning, a task which was invariably carried out by women, and women were often buried with their distaffs in the same way a man might be buried with the tools of his trade or his sword. As a result “distaff” also came to signify women’s work and their sphere of influence. And if in the past it also carried the weight of male condescension and a whiff of insult – when the church was drumming up support for the Third Crusade, those men who didn’t take up the cross were given distaffs and wool, the implication being they might as well be women and sit at home spinning – well, SF hasn’t exactly been free of that scorn for women, their worth and their writing, so we’re taking back control of that narrative, too.


With our Distaff, we’re spinning tales rather than wool or flax. And those tales cover the full cloth of Science Fiction, for we might be women but we haven’t written just for women – the stories are for everyone who likes a good yarn. (See what I did there?)

Past mistakes, present concerns, future prospects – these are the threads which wind through the anthology, making one whole from nine very different tales. Stories set on Earth, on spaceships, on orbitals and on alien planets. And if you want alien creatures we have friendly aliens, curious aliens, rocky aliens and mutant-humans more alien than all the others.

In this nine-ply skein there are twists of all kinds, with aspects of comedy, horror, romance, tragedy and everything in between. We have Nordic police and Nordic myth, environmental messages and examinations of grief, icy inventors, lovelorn ships, planet-saving AIs, rainbow ponies, staring chickens, plagues and immortality, guilt and nowhere-near-enough guilt, clever children and dead children, art and actors, a degraded Earth and an Earth being reborn.

Above all we’ve spun stories full of hope, determination, resilience and love. What more could any SF lover – male, female, both, neither, Earthling or otherwise – want?

Come on. Pick up a Distaff and take a spin with us!

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Damaris

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