The Ebook Tango with Judith Moffett - Denouement

Finally, Tiny Tango by Judith Moffett was published as a Kindle ebook on Amazon. I had the idea for an ebook (Step 1), we obtained a cover design based on an original Janet Aulisio black and white illustration (Step 2), and after much cursing at the Machine (Step 3) we had a published ebook.

So why "Tiny Tango"?

"Tiny Tango" the novella was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award; and as I mentioned in the first part of this series, had the James Tiptree Jr. Award been presented in 1990 (the first award was presented in 1991 so "TT" missed it by one year) I am certain that "Tiny Tango" would have made the short list, and quite possibly won the award for that year.

I first read "TT" in the February 1989 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. It was one of those stories that, when you came upon a certain scene, you could be heard saying out loud -- to yourself, to no one in particular -- "You gotta be kidding me!" I don't mean that in the sarcastic sense, or the "ha ha" sense, I mean it in the sense of scratching your head, realizing no one had written of this, and in this way, before. As I also previously mentioned, Matthew Cheney, in a Mumpsimus blog post in 2009, included "Tiny Tango" in his list of twenty-one "Mindblowing!" stories; Matthew went on to say:

"Tiny Tango" is a story I read when it first appeared in Asimov's, and it completely blew me away and broke my heart. I was young and just learning what science fiction could do, and it was one of the key stories in showing me the breadth of emotional and conceptual possibilities.

And here's what Judy wrote about the story, which appears on the next to the last page in the published ebook:

"Tiny Tango" forms Chapter 3 of The Ragged World, the first volume in Judith Moffett's Holy Ground Trilogy; the other two volumes are Time, Like an Ever-Rolling Stream, and The Bird Shaman. The trilogy deals with the arrival on earth of two symbiotic alien races, the Hefn and the Gafr, whose technology enables them to take control of the planet in an effort to save it from environmental disaster. The alien takeover is important at this story's end, but the tale of Nancy Sandford and her struggle to survive HIV stands by itself, enriched but not enabled by the larger context formed by the trilogy. Writing in 1987, Moffett's educated guesses about the course of the AIDS epidemic, its treatments and social consequences, fall wide of the mark. But it hardly matters. What we have here is not a predictive study of medical and technical know-how, but the timeless tale of a particular individual's refusal to accept defeat, the means she finds and invents to cope with a desperate plight. "Tiny Tango" was a finalist in the novella category for the Nebula Award in 1989, and for the Hugo Award in 1990. Volumes I and II of the Holy Ground Trilogy were named New York Times Notable Books for 1991 and 1992, respectively. "Tiny Tango" is also included in Ian Sales's list: "100 Great Science Fiction Stories by Women."

How can you not want to read this story?

Note to book reviewers: If you have a book review blog and/or you review regularly on Goodreads and/or you review for the Kindle community, and you would like to review Tiny Tango, please send an email to: marty.halpern@gmail.com.

Include in the email a link to your book review blog, community, and/or your Goodreads book review page, and I'll be in touch. Keep in mind that you will be reviewing a Kindle mobi ebook.

Note to potential readers of The Holy Ground Trilogy: For those who may consider purchasing this trilogy, please be aware that signed (and inscribed, if you wish) copies of The Bird Shaman may be purchased directly from author Judith Moffett. Here's the link: you'll find the order form in the right frame of the web page.

More on the Death of Science Fiction

In 1960, Earl Kemp sent out a questionnaire to the top authors, editors, and artists in the genre. He wanted to know their thoughts on the death of science fiction; Kemp was, at the time, specifically referring to the death of SF magazines, since all the pulps had ceased publication. He compiled the results of this survey, and produced just enough bound copies for everyone who participated. The publication, Who Killed Science Fiction? won the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine in 1961. Kemp updated the survey in the '80s and again in the 2000s, and published the entire project online as The Compleat and Unexpurgated Who Killed Science Fiction? A print version of this book is now available from The Merry Blacksmith Press.

I wrote in detail about this project in an earlier blog post entitled "Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?" -- and, thanks to the tweeted link by Bruce Sterling (@bruces), which was retweeted by a number of his followers, this blog post remains (at least to date) my most read post on More Red Ink. Thanks, Bruce!

I'm bringing this up again because discussions on the death of science fiction are as perennial as the weather. And if it's not "science fiction" as a genre, then the death discussion is about the short story (I was on a panel on this very topic at BayCon in 2008), or the death of the anthology (I was on a panel entitled "Will the Anthology Market Come Back" at Westercon just this past July 4th holiday weekend). Which brings me to the latest discussion by John H. Stevens on SF Signal entitled "'The Death of Science Fiction' as Mythogenic Rejuvenation" -- Part One and Part Two. [Note: Part Two links back to Part One, but not vice versa.]

John makes some interesting comments, including these:

"The Death of Science Fiction" is one of those notions that stimulates a response because of its challenge not just to genre durability, but to deeper notions of what "science fiction" means....

If, as some people maintain, [the Death of Science Fiction] is such a tired idea to trot out, then why do people keep doing so and why is there so much response to these declarations? This is where the idea of mythogenic rejuvenation comes in. Talking about SF is often as important to many producers of the literature and its adherents as the production and reception of the literature itself. The far-flung fandom community is bonded not by just what they read, but by what they say about what they read....

The most interesting aspect of this to me is the fact that no one ever hits the mark with their projections and concerns. The Death of Science Fiction never comes about (or, hasn't yet anyway)....

The cool thing about this article is that John links to a multitude of prior "death of SF" articles, blog posts, and, to use his word, "fora" -- so you could conceivably spend hours (and hours) reading words on this subject, and by noteworthy people, too, while at the same time awaiting my forthcoming anthology, Alien Contact, from Night Shade Books, as well as the first publication of just-announced new online 'zine The Revelator, to be edited by Matthew Cheney and Eric Schaller. Yes, well, so much for the death of science fiction (and magazines, and anthologies, and ad nauseam).

But, believe it or not, my whole point in this entire blog post was to get to this: John opens his SF Signal article with three choice quotes, and this one, from author Neal Asher, exemplifies my attitude toward this whole "death of SF' schtick:

[The death of SF] surfaces with the almost metronic regularity of a dead fish at the tide line (stirred up, no-doubt, by some "new wave"). SF isn't dying, it hasn’t been ill, and frequent terminal diagnoses often see the undertaker clutching a handful of nails and a hammer and scratching his head over an empty coffin. However, discussions about this demise have been resurrecting themselves in only slightly altered form since I first read "about" SF rather than SF itself. I'm betting there was some plonker declaring the death of SF the moment Sputnik beeped or just after Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. Really, the whole pointless staggering debate needs a nice fat stake driven through its heart.

—Neal Asher

You can read the quote in context on Neal's blog The Skinner; the post is entitled -- what else? -- "The Death of Science Fiction (Again)."

Aliens Have Entered Mainstream's Orbit

After joining Warren Lapine's Fantastic Books imprint as an acquisitions editor¹, a bit less than a year ago, the first book I acquired for reprint was Judith Moffett's novel Pennterra. This was her first novel and had been out of print since 1993. In an email to Warren on February 27, 2009, in which I introduced Judy (virtually speaking, that is) to him, I described her as follows:

...Judith Moffett is not your typical sf author! She is an award-winning poet with a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a couple of Fulbrights under her belt and grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is also a world-class translator of Swedish poetry, and presented at the 1998 Nobel Symposium on Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose held in Stockholm.

Now I know that when Judy reads this, she'll be all "Aw, shucks," and the like, but how many science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream -- hell, even mainstream fiction -- authors do you know with this kind of street cred? Just check out all her awards and recognitions on Wikipedia and then come back here and leave me a comment if you're not totally knocked out!

What influenced my decision to blog about Ms. Moffett and her fiction was a recent online review of Pennterra. The review is by Sam Kelly on a blog entitled Cold Iron and Rowan-Wood. But first, a bit about the novel itself: A group of Quakers colonize a planet -- Pennterra -- already inhabited by the alien hrossa. In order to live in peace and harmony with both the planet and the natives, the colonists are restricted to a single valley, and they must limit their population and forsake all heavy machinery in their building and farming. Not exactly what they had in mind when they left a devastated Earth for a new home amongst the stars. Without the use of machinery, the colonists' days are completely filled with exhausting, backbreaking work, and consequently they have had little time to study the hrossa -- until now. A small group of scientists are sent to live with, and study, the natives, and this is detailed in a large section of the novel through the use of field notes and personal journals; the hrossa have a very interesting set of sexual mores, which has a direct impact on the scientists themselves (sorry, no spoilers here). There is a particularly fine "first contact/coming-of-age" story arc involving the son of one the scientists. The main conflict arises in the novel when another colony ship arrives on the planet and these folks are not so inclined to limit and forsake.

Now, what makes Sam Kelly's review of Pennterra interesting is that he makes little mention of the aliens, but he does comment on the Quaker religion portrayed in the book: "Moffett does a good job of showing us how they find the nature of the planet out...making no distinctions between biological research, botanical studies, practical anthropology, and conversation between friends. At the same time, we see the characteristic painful Quaker honesty about themselves and their reactions to their work. The pacing of discovery is good, without playing I-know-something-you-don’t-know tricks on either reader or characters; it might have been good to have seen the author coming down less heavily on the Quaker side, but then I may well be seeing more of that than is there as a Quaker myself." [Note: I believe the reviewer is sensing more of the Quakerness of the story than a typical reader (myself) would.]

All of this, of course, is to encourage you to read Pennterra. Judy and I spent approximately two weeks copyediting the page proofs, discussing each and every correction during very lengthy (two to three hours) telephone conversations. The Fantastic Books edition of Pennterra is indeed the most accurate text of the novel and thus the author's preferred text. However, copies of earlier editions are available through secondary markets, or you can purchase the Fantastic Books edition directly from the FB website, or via Amazon or other booksellers. (And yes, I'm shilling books here; what can I say...)