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14+ Works 91 Membros 12 Reviews

Obras de Jessica Reisman

Associated Works

Horrors! 365 Scary Stories (Anthology) (1998) — Contribuinte — 124 cópias
Warrior Women (2015) — Contribuinte — 91 cópias
Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (2012) — Contribuinte — 67 cópias
Rayguns Over Texas (2013) 22 cópias
Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People (2020) — Contribuinte — 16 cópias
Postscripts Magazine, Issue 26/27: Unfit For Eden (2012) — Contribuinte — 4 cópias
Apparitions (2009) — Contribuinte — 3 cópias
Terra Nullius (2018) — Contribuinte — 3 cópias

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Resenhas

Developing and exploring completely alien worlds has been a mainstay of science fiction literature since Camille Flammarion's Lumen was published in 1887. With her first novel, The Z Radiant, Austinite Jessica Reisman continues the tradition.

Accessible only via a wormhole, Nentesh is located in an isolated section of space. Every 20 years, apparently angelic visitors from the other end of the wormhole arrive with technological advancements from the rest of the universe. During the Ingress Festival, the Nenteshi celebration for this generational event, some of the Nenteshi leave with the visitors, while some of the people from the outsystem remain.

Swan, settler from the outsystem; her lover, Ula, a refugee from the Nentesh nomadic desert people; Aren, abandoned on Nentesh during the last Ingress; and Ninuel, a disenfranchised member of an influential Nentesh family, each must come to terms with their identities and the changing circumstances of their worlds before and during the festival. Reisman expands the boundaries of traditional science fiction tropes with explorations into gender issues, sexuality, and the mysterious existence-morphing drug "Z."

Within the Austin science-fiction community, Reisman is known as a writer of powerful, thought-provoking stories. In The Z Radiant, mixed within her expressive prose, there are some odd word choices and occasionally distracting dialogue, but the author easily justifies her reputation with this intelligent, absorbing debut.

(This review originally appeared in The Austin Chronicle, May 28, 2004.)
Link: http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid:212913
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Marcado
rickklaw | Oct 13, 2017 |
This is a group of new science fiction and fantasy tales about challenging the status quo. It doesn't have to be political; the status quo can be social, religious or even personal.

In an interplanetary confederation that uses slavery (it's called "contract labor"), a young boy, son of the slave owner, becomes friends with a female slave of the same age. After learning exactly what contract labor is all about, he starts to plan the revolution that will bring down the system, once and for all.

A Jewish woman's grandmother was a pro-union activist in the Great Depression era. The woman's average teenage daughter suddenly decides to drop out of college and become a political activist. That wouldn't be so awful, except that the daughter suddenly starts speaking in Russian-accented Yiddish (just like grandma), a language to which she has had no exposure. Maybe the grandmother is not yet ready to "cross over."

A pair of brothers in the foster care system each have their own android Guardian. On a car trip, they stop at a seedy-looking house for some very illegal upgrades to the Guardians, without the Guardians catching on.

The only way to keep a powerful dragon from destroying a trio of kingdoms is to send heirs to those kingdoms to the dragon, as sacrifices. But one of the three takes the words Know Your Enemy more seriously than do the others.

As in most anthologies, some stories are better than others, but, overall, this group of stories is well worth the time. There is a good variety of times and places, and the writing is really good.
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Marcado
plappen | outras 10 resenhas | Apr 29, 2017 |
Esta resenha foi escrita no âmbito dos Primeiros Resenhistas do LibraryThing.
When I first started reading this book I wasn't sure where it was going or if I'd like it. Turns out that the collection of short stories varies widely. I'm not sure I would recommend buying it, but I think there's probably short story in here for everyone.
 
Marcado
laurion | outras 10 resenhas | Nov 6, 2012 |
Esta resenha foi escrita no âmbito dos Primeiros Resenhistas do LibraryThing.
This is definitely an anthology theme to get behind: the authors collected here cover a wide range of sub-genres, and the editor has done a great job of avoiding stories with too similar 'shapes' - an unfortunate flaw in many themed anthologies.

A Thousand Wings of Luck by Jessica Reisman starts the collection with beautifully detailed world building, that could have sustained a novel, and a genuine feeling of uncertainty about the decisions the main character would make, and the effect they would have.

Seed by Shanna Germain does a similarly meticulous job of world building, managing the difficult task of packing in a alien society's world view, and the critique there of into a short wordcount, with lots of interesting angles on gender, sex, and food to consider.

Received Without Content by Timothy T. Murphy and Parent Hack by Kay T. Holt are both near-future tales of teenage rebellion - both excellent, but otherwise so different in flavour and shape.

Scrapheap Angel by RJ Astruc & Deirdre M. Murphy and The Hero Industry by Jean Johnson might be said to form a similar pair around adult job roles - how much changes, when so much stays the same.

Phantom Overload by Daniel José Older and The Red Dybbuk by Barbara Krasnoff both mix a strong sense of location and identity with the paranormal end of the genre mix. Again - two strong stories with some surface similarities, but utterly different reading experiences.

To Sleep With Pachamama by Caleb Jordan Schulz takes us to a post-earth end-of-the-line to finish out the anthology - a very fitting grace note of hope and possibility.

Not every story spoke to me, and the overall collection is maybe less subversive than the title might suggest, but there are a lot of very strong stories here - certainly more to recommend than to not.
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Marcado
AlexDraven | outras 10 resenhas | Feb 19, 2012 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
14
Also by
9
Membros
91
Popularidade
#204,136
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Resenhas
12
ISBNs
7

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