{"id":7662,"date":"2013-01-30T19:53:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-31T00:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?page_id=7662"},"modified":"2013-02-26T17:41:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-26T22:41:54","slug":"the-other-half","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/?page_id=7662","title":{"rendered":"The Other Half of the Sky: Contents"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"other<\/a><\/p>\n

Cover art and design: Eleni Tsami<\/a><\/p>\n

Publisher: Candlemark & Gleam<\/a>
\nLaunch date: April 23, 2013<\/p>\n

Concept<\/strong><\/p>\n

Women may hold up more than half the sky on earth, but it has been different in heaven: science fiction still is very much a preserve of male protagonists, mostly performing by-the-numbers quests. In The Other Half of the Sky<\/em>, editor Athena Andreadis offers readers heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they\u2019re fully human: starship captains, planet rulers, explorers, scientists, artists, engineers, craftspeople, pirates, rogues\u2026 As one of the women in Tiptree\u2019s \u201cHouston, Houston, Do You Read?\u201d says: \u201cWe sing a lot. Adventure songs, work songs, mothering songs, mood songs, trouble songs, joke songs, love songs \u2013 everything.\u201d Everything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Athena Andreadis, Introduction: Dreaming the Dark
\nMelissa Scott, \u201cFinders\u201d
\nAlexander Jablokov, \u201cBad Day on Boscobel\u201d
\nNisi Shawl, \u201cIn Colors Everywhere\u201d
\nSue Lange, \u201cMission of Greed\u201d
\nVandana Singh, \u201cSailing the Antarsa\u201d
\nJoan Slonczewski, \u201cLandfall\u201d
\nTerry Boren, \u201cThis Alakie and the Death of Dima\u201d
\nAliette de Bodard, \u201cThe Waiting Stars\u201d
\nKen Liu, \u201cThe Shape of Thought\u201d
\nAlex Dally MacFarlane, \u201cUnder Falna\u2019s Mask\u201d
\nMartha Wells, \u201cMimesis\u201d
\nKelly Jennings, \u201cVelocity\u2019s Ghost\u201d
\nC. W. Johnson, \u201cExit, Interrupted\u201d
\nCat Rambo, \u201cDagger and Mask\u201d
\nChristine Lucas, \u201cOuroboros\u201d
\nJack McDevitt, \u201cCathedral\u201d<\/p>\n

First Paragraphs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Athena Andreadis, Introduction: Dreaming the Dark<\/p>\n

Being a voracious bookworm, I came to science fiction very young. My first well-remembered book was the unexpurgated Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea<\/em>. By cultural background and temperament, I didn\u2019t like the Leaden \u2026 er, Golden SF Era. I preferred the Silver Age and the New Wave, with their explicit charters to push boundaries and write worlds and characters with more depth and flavor than cardboard. And since my mythology and history haunt my dreams and steps, it\u2019s also not surprising that one SF mode I like is space opera.<\/p>\n

Melissa Scott, “Finders”<\/strong><\/p>\n

A thousand years ago the cities fell, fire and debris blasting out the Burntover Plain. Most of the field was played out now, the handful of towns that had sprung up along the less damaged southern edge grown into three thriving and even elegant cities, dependent on trade for their technology now rather than salvage. Cassilde Sam had been born on the eastern fringe of the easternmost city, in Glasstown below the Empty Bridge, and even after two decades of hunting better salvage in the skies beyond this and a dozen other worlds, the Burntover still drew her.<\/p>\n

Alexander Jablokov, “<\/strong>Bad Day on Boscobel“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Dunya stopped just outside Phineus\u2019s unit to calm herself down. Otherwise she would burst in and start screaming at him. That was no way to start a check-in meeting with one of her refugees.<\/p>\n

That gave her a chance to realize that she looked like hell. She\u2019d already had one fight that morning, with her daughter Bodil, and afterwards she had rushed out, unsnapped and unbrushed. It was hard enough to manage someone like Phineus, all Martian and precise, without giving him more ammunition about how lax things were here, among the asteroids.<\/p>\n

Nisi Shawl, “<\/strong>In Colors Everywhere“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Trill walked home through the Rainshadow Mountains with Adia, her former mentor. Not alone.<\/p>\n

The sky had been high all day. Now, with evening, it came low, wetting them and their surroundings with mist. Silver beaded the fuzz beneath their feet.<\/p>\n

Adia was tough, though an elder. She walked steadily, without complaint. She ought to have been tired even before they started; she and Trill had spent the week teaching a cohort of tens-to-thirteens how to weave buildings.<\/p>\n

Sue Lange, “<\/strong>Mission of Greed“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

In the third week after gagarin123 landed on an unnamed planet sweeping through a solar system claimed by ValeroCorp, First Mechanic Bertie Lai\u2019s chance for fame slowly swirled down the shitter.<\/p>\n

And just yesterday things had been moving along swimmingly. Ren\u00e9 Genie, the mission biologist, had not yet found sentient life; the geologist, Aadil Alzeshi, had discovered beautiful 1.4. Specifically, he\u2019d hit some pitchblende with enough uranium in it for ValeroCorp to recoup the cost of this mission.<\/p>\n

Vandana Singh, “<\/strong>Sailing the Antarsa“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

There are breezes, like the ocean breeze, which can set your pulse racing, dear kin, and your spirit seems to fly ahead of you as your little boat rides each swell. But this breeze! This breeze wafts through you and me, through planets and suns, like we are nothing. How to catch it, know it, befriend it? This sea, the Antarsa, is like no other sea. It washes the whole universe, as far as we can tell, and the ordinary matter such as we are made of is transparent to it. So how is it that I can ride the Antarsa current, as I am doing now, steering my little spacecraft so far from Dhara and its moon?<\/p>\n

Joan Slonczewski, “<\/strong>Landfall“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Most college sophomores spent their summer running toyworlds while catching sun at air-conditioned disappearing beaches. Jenny Ramos Kennedy spent hers at the Havana Institute for Revolutionary Botany, which students called the Bot\u00e1nica<\/em>. At the Bot\u00e1nica<\/em>, Jenny worked with ultraphytes, Earth\u2019s cyanide-emitting extraterrestrial invaders. Could she discover how to engineer ultraphyte chromosomes–to control them genetically, before they poisoned the planet?<\/p>\n

Terry Boren, “<\/strong>This Alakie and the Death of Dima“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

When Dine Paloan asked this woman, Alakie, to leave before destruction arrived, she refused at first. She had trained to be Paloan\u2019s pilot, but this Alakie had never thought she would be leaving without Dine. So instead of accepting the Dinela\u2019s wishes, this Alakie helped to send Paloan\u2019s other tokens back to Cassin, and she stayed.<\/p>\n

Aliette de Bodard, “<\/strong>The Waiting Stars“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The derelict ship ward was in an isolated section of Outsider space, one of the numerous spots left blank on interstellar maps, no more or no less tantalising than its neighbouring quadrants. To most people, it would be just that: a boring part of a long journey to be avoided–skipped over by Mind-ships as they cut through deep space, passed around at low speeds by Outsider ships while their passengers slept in their hibernation cradles.<\/p>\n

Ken Liu, “<\/strong>The Shape of Thought“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Cat\u2019s Cradle turns into Painted Handkerchief turns into Dish of Noodles turns into Manger turns into Fishing Net. These are but the first of the Two Hundred Variations developed by bored human children on the Long Journey.<\/p>\n

I was once one of them.<\/p>\n

Young Ket hums as zie holds up zir hands, the string wound tight around the fingers. Zie glances at me and I wave back. Zie has the same long graceful neck and bulbous body as zir parent, Tunloji. Watching zem is like watching a younger version of my lover.<\/p>\n

Alex Dally MacFarlane, “<\/strong>Under Falna\u2019s Mask“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Mar-teri broke her confinement to burn alsar for her dead sisters. Under thin moonlight she stepped out of the unmarried adults\u2019 caravan for the first time in two months–stones crunching under her feet, chives brushing against her bare ankles–carrying the bunch of alsar she was supposed to burn in her caravan. As if honouring them from afar could be enough.<\/p>\n

The opening lines of Falna\u2019s song slipped into Mar-teri\u2019s head. Such a fierce song, when the woman wearing Falna\u2019s mask channelled generations of anger–how Mar-teri had longed to wear that mask!<\/p>\n

Martha Wells, “<\/strong>Mimesis“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jade spotted Sand as he circled down from the forest canopy, a grasseater clutched in his talons. She said, “Finally.” It would be nice to eat before dark, so they could clear the offal away from the camp without attracting the night scavengers.<\/p>\n

It was Balm who said, “I don’t see Fair.”<\/p>\n

Jade frowned, scanning the canopy again. They were standing in the deep grass of the platform they had chosen to camp on, and it was late afternoon in the suspended forest and getting difficult to hunt by sight.<\/p>\n

Kelly Jennings, “<\/strong>Velocity\u2019s Ghost“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

I hate planets. Filthy, heavy, smelly, and this one was leaking.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s rain,\u201d Rida said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a leak, it\u2019s part of their exchange.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s snow.\u201d Tai lurked just up corridor, close enough that I could hear him both hard and via the uplink. \u201cRain is the wet one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is wet,\u201d Rida objected.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we focus?\u201d I demanded. \u201cRida?\u201d<\/p>\n

Braced on the rim of the rock pool by the bistro hatch, Rida flashed me a capture of his desk screen, with the vid of our target unshifted. \u201cShe\u2019s still talking, boss.\u201d<\/p>\n

C. W. Johnson, “<\/strong>Exit, Interrupted“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Door wasn’t so much heavy as reluctant to move<\/em>, as if they were carrying it, one at each end, through molasses. “Why is it like this?” Saiyul asked as she leaned into the resistant thing.<\/p>\n

Ashil shrugged the best he could with his hands full. “How should I know?”<\/p>\n

A bead of perspiration slid down Saiyul’s face, right into the scar on her cheek. It had healed, mostly, but it itched where her oxygen mask rubbed against it.<\/p>\n

Cat Rambo, Dagger and Mask<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If you had asked Eduw if he loved Grania, he would have been indignant. Naturally he did. He loved all his targets.<\/p>\n

Not at first, of course. He was put off. That scar that marred her face, it hurt to look at. It wasn\u2019t an uncommon condition, despite what the meddies said. Some people rejected plas-flesh. It didn\u2019t take, didn\u2019t renew lost skin, didn\u2019t rebuild damaged features. For some it even seemed to make things worse.<\/p>\n

Christine Lucas, “<\/strong>Ouroboros“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

The dead philosopher came out of his cavern only when both the moons of Mars were below the horizon. Or so the legend claimed.<\/p>\n

Under a clear sky over the Martian wilderness, Kallie focused her hearing and sought the faintest sound that might confirm his existence. Nothing. The nanobots lining her auditory nerves redoubled their efforts. Still nothing. Yet. She turned her attention towards the base at northeast, under the shadow of Olympus Mons. No alarms, no sirens, no one on her trail. They hadn\u2019t noticed her absence. Yet. But they would, and they\u2019d unleash the Enforcer.<\/p>\n

Jack McDevitt, “<\/strong>Cathedral“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

Matt Sunderland gazed at the Earth, which was just edging out from behind the Moon. From the L2 platform, Luna, of course, dominated the sky, a vast gray globe half in sunlight, half in shadow, six times larger than it would have appeared from his Long Island home. Usually, it completely blocked the gauzy blue and white Earth. On the bulkhead to his left, the Mars or Bust <\/em>flag still hung, its corners fastened by magnets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cover art and design: Eleni Tsami Publisher: Candlemark & Gleam Launch date: April 23, 2013 Concept Women may hold up more than half the sky on earth, but it has been different in heaven: science fiction still is very much a preserve of male protagonists, mostly performing by-the-numbers quests. In The Other Half of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7662","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starshipnivan.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}