Wiscon. I better explain that to our readers. For those who don't know, WisCon is the annual alternative counter-cultural feminist science fiction speculative fiction convention. Okay, next question. What part of it seemed to intrigue the readers most?
Harry Markov was fascinated by the Intra-city politics. A number of the feminist SF readers and reviewers not surprisingly liked the gender politics, though largely because the novel is unblushingly heterosexual. But a couple of people also liked the reverse hierarchy that made the main male character have to appear at times like a slave toy-boy, grin. Most reviewers and readers liked the characters, though “intrigued” might not be quite the right word there. And they seemed to find the pull of the actual story -- the what-happened-next, and what-happened-in-the-end elements -- pretty good.
Were you aware of all the themes you were exploring in your novel? Or did some of them surprise you?
Not so many after publication. Most of them I’d already been able to work out when the two very good readers to whom the book is dedicated, Helen Merrick and Justine Larbalestier, talked about it earlier. A lot of themes, of course, I wasn’t aware of while actually writing it.
Helen Merrick? Is that the author of Women of Other Worlds: Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism?
Yes. And Justine Larbalestier is a science fiction historian.
Dang, Woman! You travel in very esteemed very academic circles! So, what themes are your fans clamoring for you to explore further?
(laughing) Well, one of the blog and probably feminist reviewers wanted more from the viewpoint of the men. Amberlight is told in intimate 3rd present tense by the main female character, the House-Head Tellurith. She'll get this in triplicate if she does read Riversend, the sequel. It’s told in 1st person from three viewpoints, Tellurith and the two men she, in her usual autocratic fashion, decides to marry -- at least, she’s already married to one -- when they leave Amberlight. So Two-thirds of Riversend is actually told from male points of view.
But I don’t know that many asked for other themes to be explored. There has been a small tendency to ask, "What happened next?" Always the most gratifying question for a writer. Not much about ongoing themes, though in fact, gender politics, and an attempt at gender equity, which was only foreshadowed in Amberlight, is almost the central focus of Riversend.
Okay, the blurb is interesting. What’s Riversend about?
I guess Riversend IS about, What Came Next? What happens when the life you knew, and the world where you lived it, which has been accreted and in fact ossified for centuries, literally gets blown up under your feet? When you lose what seemed the centre of that world, even closer to you than family and kin and culture? What you’ll do then, and where and how do you start?
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