Starting an interstellar penal colony could be an extremely practical idea, right? It could even provide a sponsoring corporation a good Return on Investment--though of course their initial investment would be massive. Making Amends is a novel-in-stories that tells how a corporate government tries to put this idea into action. Beginning with the selection of the first mission's volunteer crew and culminating with the idea's lovely and unforeseen consequences, Making Amends immerses readers in strange new worlds, worlds precious to discover, tricky to explore, and beautiful to behold.

--Nisi Shawl

Lamat Paed understands paradoxes. She's a great mountain climber who's never summited, the author of a tell-all that didn't really tell anything. For years she guided pilgrims up the foothills of the Sublime Mount, leading them as high as God would let them go. And then she partnered the apostate Southern priest Mother Disaine on the most daring, most blasphemous expedition in history -- an attempt to reach the summit of the sacred mountain, the top of God's head. Disaine returned in triumph, claiming to be the first person since the prophet to have summited and lived. But Lamat went into hiding. Now, late in life and exiled from the mountain, Lamat finally tells her story to her partner, Otile. It's the story of why she really wrote her first book all those years ago, how she came to be cast out from the mountain-dwelling Holoh people, and how she fled to the anonymity of the city to hide from her fame. Most of all, it's the story of her bond with Mother Disaine -- the blasphemer, charlatan, and visionary who stole Lamat's life to serve her own purposes -- and what really happened on their last, greatest expedition.

Murky mirrors, deceptive will-o'-the-wisps, dryads who know not what they are, wings born from the sting of punishment, keys that bind bodies, the charm of springs that glow with a false fire, girls sharp with thorns, wishes granted and burdened by the weight of death, people who are anything but human and humans who are not quite people.... Everything has a place in the Deep Forest, a perhaps infinite realm inhabited by all that lives within us without our consent, and where there is nothing more terrifying than a forever and ever.

--Sofía Rhei

Our Fruiting Bodies collects stories of old growth and fresh decay, of stubborn rebirth and the faint but nonimaginary paths connecting life and nonlife. From the sharp, sweet confessional of their Peter Pan-inspired Awfully Big Adventure, through the melting ambitextualities of Just Us--from the early, dizzy-eyed quest at the heart of Looking for Lilith through the newly unfurling tendrils that pierce the grounds of I Being Young and Foolish, Nisi Shawl's search for the power of fiction's truth puts pure, precious gifts right here, right in your hands, ripe and ready for reading.

The WisCon Chronicles is a collage of essays, interviews, panel notes and transcripts, and short fiction documenting and celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of WisCon, the annual feminist science fiction literary festival held on Memorial Day Weekend in Madison, Wisconsin. The world's largest feminist science fiction convention, which many of the sf genre's luminaries attend, WisCon has become so popular that the ceiling limiting attendance to 1000 participants tops out months in advance. More than half those attending are women; and since the convention is openly feminist, women's issues dominate the programming. People attend to meet up with friends from other parts of the country (or the world) whom they?ve come to know online; they attend because the programming goes far beyond the ?feminism 101? that is the most they can hope for from most other science fiction conventions. But above all they come to experience the kind of community they can't get elsewhere.

The words been out for some time now that were living in post-feminist times. And yet the worlds largest feminist science fiction convention, held annually in Madison, Wisconsin, which many of the genres luminaries attend, has become so popular that the ceiling limiting attendance to 1000 participants often tops out months in advance. People attend to meet up with friends from other parts of the country (or the world) whom theyve come to know online; they attend because the programming goes far beyond the feminism 101 that is the most they can hope for from most other science fiction conventions. But above all they come to experience the kind of community they cant get elsewhere. Some participants even characterize it as four days of feminist utopiaa reference to the communities created in the most famous feminist novels of the 1970s.This volume explores some of the issues of interest at WisCon 2008: the politics of the intelligibility of stories, internet drama, and feminist fandom. It offers a selection of thoughtful essays and analysis, dialogues, comments, arguments, meditations, and appeals to reason, collected from participantswriters, bloggers, activists, and fans, some of them WisCon veterans and some attending for the first timeincluding L. Timmel Duchamp, K. Tempest Bradford, Nancy Jane Moore, Alexis Lothian, Sue Lange, Victoria Janssen, and many others.

The essays contained in Queering SF provide an introduction to some of the shades of queer in SF writing. SF is not a monolith. Queer SF is not, either. Writers of queer SF approach it in a variety of ways, with a variety of end goals. The essays here aim to introduce readers to a wide range of writers and texts, some familiar, some unfamiliar.

These essays demonstrate some of the ways in which queer SF pushes at the very generic norms of SF. The idea of SF, the characteristics of SF, the content of SF have all been shaped (a) in a particular place and time, and (b) in one's own reading experience. Many of these writers want to challenge what SF looks like and does. Finally, Queering SF points to some of these newly imagined futures, to a way to spend some time in differently imagined societies and families, and to think about the ways in which we would like to see that in our own reality.

Tsunami, the gripping third volume of the five-novel Marq?ssan Cycle, opens in early 2086, immediately after the signing of the Madrid Accords at the conclusion of the Global War. Many countries, including the US, have been devastated by war, and some of them turn to the Free Zones and the Marq?ssan for assistance in rebuilding their infrastructure. In the US, the Executive, which has turned its attention to reconsolidating its power, meets with growing resistance to executive rule; and in the Pacific Northwest Free Zone, the Co-op faces an internal crisis when ugly, long-buried secrets are dragged into the light of day. Meanwhile, the lives of three very different women?executive Elizabeth Weatherall, anarchist Martha Greenglass, and human rights lawyer Celia Espin?become entangled as each strives to bring about the change she so passionately desires.