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When I started on Bending, I really didn't quite know what to expect; most of my affection for science fiction comes not from books but from movies and television, so I really didn't know how much of it I would enjoy. I soon discovered that my wariness was unfounded, for not only did I enjoy the science fiction, but the designation "science fiction" didn't really cover what I was reading -- I found a lot of what I considered "fantasy" as well. I also discovered that Griffith and Pagel made some truly excellent story selections.
Bending features stories which, so Pagel told us himself, cover the full spectrum of science fiction -- everything from futuristic private eye stories to time travel escapades to stories of alien worlds to explorations of cyber consciousness and gender identity. Clearly, this was not a book simply thrown together or with the lowest common denominator in mind. Instead, it's a book in which writers of all sexual orientations explore situations that explore one of science fiction's enduring themes, "the Alien, the Not-Self, the Other," with the "other" a lesbian or gay man (interpreted, so the book's introduction admits, "liberally.")
There were a lot of stories in Bending that I loved and several which actually reminded me strongly of Storm's stories. For example, "The City in Morning" by Carrie Richardson reads like a chapter from a lost Storm Constantine novel. "On Vacation" is a subtly hilarious tale of aliens living on earth a la Men In Black. Far and away my favorite story, which I must have reread a dozen time the day I first read it, was the beautiful, elegant and sweetly heart-rending "Silent Passion" by Kathleen O'Malley. Set in A.C. Crispin's StarBridge universe, to which O'Malley has contributed two books), the story is one I summed up to a friend as featuring "giant gay, signing, alien crane-creatures" and their interaction with gay human couple, whose relationship turns a new corner when the narrator is finally able to move beyond the pain of human intolerance. It's a beautiful, life - and love-affirming story which I doubt I will ever forget and which I plan to lead me on to O'Malley's two StarBridge novels, which, so Pagel tells me, feature these same amazing crane-aliens.
Knowing there are two more Bending anthologies (fantasy and horror), I am sure I have many more great tales ahead of me.
Start with the brilliant "Sex, Guns, and Baptists" by Keith Hartman, a wicked story of a world gone fundamentalist and a gay detective hired by a jealous wife to find out her husband's sexual orientation. Continue on in the same vein to Bassingthwaite's "Who Plays with Sin", a cyberpunk yarn as good as if not better than anything Gibson has ever written. Plunge into Klages' "Time Gypsy" and discover that the mindset of the fifties is just as alien as that of the previous stories. Examine the adage of "looks don't matter" in Wendy Rathbone's masterful "The Beautiful People." Nancy Kress contributes a thought-provoking tale of survival - at the cost of total isolation, in her "State of Nature." The cost that the artificial intelligence in Shariann Lewitt's (her "Rebel Sutra" is at the top of my reading list as I write this) "A Real Girl" must pay for her humanity is mind-boggling. The viewpoint character in Bamberg's "Love's Last Farewell" has already paid the ultimate price - he is the last gay man on Earth. Tiedemann's "Surfaces" dissects the popular tendency to partition humans into characteristics - and assign blame and praise to them instead of the person underneath. Steele's "The Flying Triangle" and Sperry's "On Vacation" take a more relaxed approach and depict a more accepting - or at least redeemable - humanity.
Out of the twenty-one stories in this volume, more than half deliver much more than promised, and none are really disappointing. In a few cases the authors choke on a message that is too large and fail to communicate it well, but these are rare. Overall, the original subject matter lends a new degree of richness, of credence, of power to the well-worn genre. Each character is so much more an expression of the author's mind, better fleshed-out and rounded because of the innovative undertones. An excellent, eye-opening anthology.
Boy was I justified.
The cover of this book suggests that it's "gay fiction." It is, but more importantly it isn't. What it is is a series of remarkable stories that deal with queer themes, from the points of view of straights, queers, and all those real people who lie somewhere inbetween or beyond these labels. Regardless of the themes, you aren't going to be reading a better SF anthology this year. If you're at all interested in having your notions of gender and sexuality expanded, then READ THIS BOOK (and if SF isn't about the expansion of notions, then what is it?).
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