Champagne and Socks

Gwyneth Jones has this to say on the Twelve Planets volumes so far, which she posted about on her personal blog:

I’ve been reading The Twelve Planets’ latest selections, and enjoying them very much, starting with Deborah Biancotti: police procedural with a sinister undertow of the weird, progressing through Tansy Rayner Roberts (Romanpunk), Lucy Sussex (Thief of Lives), and Sue Isle (Nightsiders). These collections, just four stories in a slim paperback, are an excellent idea, a tasting menu of Australasian female genre writers. Romanpunk has an intriguing twist on the noble vampire and mortal girlfriend* story (see, these vampires are really Lamia, they’re Roman in origin, and very well connected, but they find the C21 street has its uses). Ever wondered why pretty-boy Caligula was such an unmitigated horror in private life? Or why Nero was finally forced to kill his mother? Refreshingly, unlike Buffy, the mortal girlfriend is not allergic to education and actually has a life… Lucy Sussex I can safely say needs no introduction: I loved her beautiful story about modern and ancient Babylon, “Alchemy”. Sue Isle has created a daunting, yet not hopeless day after tomorrow Western Australia; linked stories all set in the same moment, the moment, for various characters, when you realise that climate change has won, and civilisation is not coming back. So you stop mourning, and you move on… Made me wish there was a novel.

Someone said, recently, the Finnish sf community gives me hope for the future of the genre… These Australians give me hope for the future of female, and even feminist, writers in sf.

I couldn’t hope for better feedback.