FLYING CUPS AND SAUCERS: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction - Hardcover

Notkin, Debbie And The Secret Feminist Cabal, Eds.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0962906697 ISBN 13: 9780962906695

Publisher: Edgewood Press, 1998

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Flying Cups & Saucers collects 13 winners and finalists for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, named for science fiction's ultimate gender pioneer, the woman writer everyone thought was a man. Accordingly, the Tiptree Award (est. 1991) honors the best science fiction and fantasy to explore and expand gender roles. As you might expect, these stories are feminist; non-heterosexist; focused on sex and desire; and sometimes androgynous (a few stories feature three sexes, and one even stars Freud's nightmare, the woman with a penis). But this list hardly begins to describe the contents.

Kelley Eskridge's terrific and gender-bending And Salome Danced is the perfect opening story: it not only examines oft-ignored aspects of desire, it operates on several levels to explore how what we expect to see defines and limits our perceptions. Science fiction's founding mother Ursula K. Le Guin contributes two brilliant stories: Forgiveness Day explores the intricacy of gender roles in a society where they are further complicated by slavery and war, while The Matter of Seggri is set on a world with near-absolute segregation of the sexes. L. Timmel Duchamp incisively delineates how men react to a woman who doesn't fit the feminine role. James Patrick Kelly's seemingly traditional idea-SF story Chemistry just might be the most radical in the book, for it explores the purely chemical nature of love. The other contributors--Eleanor Arnason, Ian McDonald, Carol Emshwiller, Graham Joyce, Peter F. Hamilton, R. Garcia y Robertson, Lisa Tuttle, Delia Sherman, and Ian R. MacLeod--also contribute strong, insightful, well written, challenging, and often threatening fiction. --Cynthia Ward

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He ran a hand down her arm, stroking the fur. "I think I'd like to have sex right now."

"Here? In the sunlight?"

"We aren't getting anywhere having sex in the dark."

Her bleeding had stopped the day before, so it was possible, though it seemed wrong. She tried to remember some rule that forbade sex outdoors or while the sun was up. Nothing came to mind, and she had done such things with her lover. But that had been at festivals, and with a woman. Surely sex for procreation ought to be done in a less carefree manner.

- Eleanor Arnason, from "The Lovers"

I cannot describe the ceremony of Severance. I really cannot describe it. Men on Seggri, in those days, had this advantage; they knew what death is. They had all died once before their body's death. They had turned and looked back at their whole life, every place and face they had loved, and turned away from it as the gate closed. - Ursula K. LeGuin, from "The Matter of Seggri"

"So what if we pay you our forty bucks," Lily said, "and go upstairs and find there's no human beings left? I don't want to fall for an insurance salesman."

"Oh, that's no problem, believe me. We offer a money-back guarantee, but only a few people ask. See, when those elevator doors open onto the welcome garden you're ... I don't know ... ripe. I can't explain it exactly, but attraction enhancement makes me realize how cute men look, how sweet they can be. At least while they're here. I kind of wish I wasn't working tonight myself." - James Patrick Kelly, from "Chemistry"

Edition details

• Publisher: Edgewood Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0962906697
• ISBN 13: 9780962906695
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 392