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?
Links:
Damaris
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