Jessica Reisman

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… (more)

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.… (more)