On Molly Gloss and "The Grinnell Method"

Over at io9, I have a piece about Molly Gloss and her story "The Grinnell Method," published at Strange Horizons in September.  As I write there, Gloss is a writer whose style and preoccupations should make her a perfect fit for fans of, among other authors, Karen Joy Fowler, and "The Grinnell Method" in particular reminds me a great deal of Fowler's "What I Didn't See."  Which is to say that it's an excellent story, and that I hope to see it getting more attention as we move into award season.  Click over to io9 to see why.

Comments

Alison said…
Thanks Abigail. It is a treat to discover a new writer that I am sure I will like: I suppose it's 'Incidental, Accidental, Rare'.
January 02, 2013 12:31 PM
Alison said…
Thanks Abigail. It is a treat to discover a new writer that I am sure I will like: I suppose it's 'Incidental, Accidental, Rare'.
January 02, 2013 12:31 PM
Unknown said…
Thanks. Reading this story had been a continuing suprise. I want to read more from this author. What do yo recommend?
March 01, 2013 10:41 AM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
Hi Nimrod,

I mention several of Gloss's novels in the article. Of those, the one that is probably most like "The Grinnell Method" is Wild Life, about a pioneer woman who goes looking for a lost child and possibly finds Bigfoot. I also enjoyed The Hearts of Horses, about a young female horse-trainer in the early 20th century (which is not SFnal at all), and The Dazzle of the Day, about life on a generation starship crewed by Quakers.

Of course, what I'd really love to be able to recommend is a collection of Gloss's short fiction, but for that, we need an enterprising publisher to pick up the gauntlet...
March 01, 2013 12:08 PM
Tito said…
I love how dense the story was. The tone was perfect, and does not betray where the story is heading. With writers such as Fowler, McHugh and Gloss, fiction, and not just science fiction, has finally come of age. We have need for a Literature that takes into consideration everything: Nature, animal life, the environment included, and now we have it. This was an extraordinary read.
January 16, 2015 2:07 PM

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Somehow, It Got Worse

The last month has been a busy one in Hugo and Worldcon fandom. After the shock of the much-belated 2023 nominating stats, and their revelation of serious irregularities in the compilation of the award's ballot, there was a great ferment of conversation and action. Mainstream publications have caught wind of the scandal and publicized it far and wide . Turnover in the few permanent committees that oversee the Hugo trademark and intellectual property has been high . The poor folks at the upcoming Glasgow Worldcon have been scrambling to respond to the evolving situation and to distance themselves from the previous committee—including, most recently, making a laconic announcement that they would refuse any of Chengdu's passalong funds, the budgetary surplus that is traditionally bequeathed from one Worldcon to the next. And stats nerds—of which this community is, unsurprisingly, blessed with a surfeit—have been furiously crunching the nominations numbers and EPH calculations...
Read more

The 2023 Hugo Awards: Now With an Asterisk

It's been a while since we've had one of these dramas. On Saturday, the nominating stats for the 2023 Hugo awards, which were announced in Chengdu, China in October 2023, were released to the public . There was a great deal of anticipation for these numbers, in no small part because of their much-delayed release. Though the WSFS constitution permits Hugo administrators to wait as long as 90 days before releasing the voting and nominating stats, most Hugo teams have them ready to go within minutes of the ceremony's conclusion. Chengdu, in contrast, waited the full allotted period, and even went a little bit over (the voting stats were released separately in December). Once the stats were released, it quickly became clear why the Chengdu Hugo team were hesitant to make them public. There are any number of irregularities and questionable choices in this document that suggest everything from erratic voter behavior, to incompetent collation and calculation of the nomination rank...
Read more

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

The first thing that must be said about this movie is that it should not work. It's a prequel to one of the most mind-blowing, groundbreaking, and just plain revolutionary action movies of the 21st century—and prequels are a bad idea in most cases, but all the more so when the character they revolve around has already given you their entire backstory in their original introduction, which is also the final, culminating act of their character arc. (To put it another way, if you had asked me, nine years ago, which character I thought offered more fertile ground for prequel storytelling, Imperator Furiosa or Han Solo, I would have picked Han without a moment's hesitation, and I don't even like Han that much.) And it's a follow-up to a movie whose chief virtue lies in its conciseness—in being a single, drawn-out, pulse-pounding, increasingly deranged car chase. Which means you can either try to repeat that accomplishment, which will inevitably feel a bit old hat; or you can ...
Read more