From: Mary (mpardo@nc.rr.com)

well damn, you DO draw! these line critters are very nice!

I'm guessing I draw about as well (though much less frequently) as most people sing in the shower. I enjoy it, but I hesitate to do it in public.

From: anonymous

I purchased Ammonite from the Dealers room at WisCon 28 and read it cover to cover on the plane home (from LA to Sydney - it had been a while since I'd travelled long distances by air and I discovered on the flight over that sleep wasn't a possibility. Luckily, I didn't need to worry on the way back - I was hooked and had nothing but time to read yours and another novel that I picked up back to back).

I've just re-read it - twice actually - once to submit a paper for WisCon 30 (which I'm unable to attend - the despair is almost unbearable) and secondly to prepare to incorporate it into the fictional examples for my thesis which explores alternative notions of the heroic in fem sf (I've used Charnas' Holdfast Chronicles so far). By accident, although it's become a sort of structure, I'm looking at Tiptree Award winning, listed novels. (I'm also going to include Kelley's 'And Salome Danced' in a chapter with some other short/long listed Tiptree stories. A brilliant story but I've yet to do the detailed work for that).

Again, memories surface of the cramped, semi dark, noisy sounds of the plane and not being on the plane at all but on another planet - nerves tingling as I experienced Jeep and travelled the with Marghe, Thenike, Danner etc. I'm still tingling. I return to the space of my desk, room, time zone after being immersed in Ammonite and I'm disoriented, no idea what time it is, half eaten food on the table, cold coffee, wondering where I am, what I should be doing???! Then I remember, oh, that's right, I'm meant to be writing up my notes on Ammonite!

I'm a literature student using feminist and philosophical theories to suggest that the traditional (20th century action) hero is a restrictive and fixed social role. The alternative I'm exploring relies on theories of 'becoming' (in time, against traditional philosophy's being and not being - states of timelessness) and the collision of traditional dualisms - mind-body, masc-fem, culture-nature, ie. the heroic is a trifold process which relies on a character(s), the environment, and the attributes which emerge in their interaction. These three things produce an event. I'm using French philosophers Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Australian feminists Elizabeth Grosz, Moira Gatens & Genevieve Lloyd and their use of 17th century philosopher Spinoza who was a contemporary of Descartes with a particularly unique monist philosophy. All very abstract - but that's another collision - the abstract and the material. Enter stage left - Ammonite.

I'm using Ammonite to explore the possibilities of 'becoming' bodies - or as I call them, 'living-thinking-multiplicities' and what they can do. Change is a big part of it. The only thing we can truly rely on. Change relies on time. So does difference and differences are found everywhere. The philosophy I'm using provides a positive ontology which connects differences horizontally, not hierarchically. Then there's multiplicity - that which we all are - more than one, not limited to two ways of being human. I found your 'Writing from the Body' essay most interesting, connective and useful. What a fabulous idea of exploring gender attributes without the assumptions of sex! Ammonite is a wonderful place for me to challenge and collide dualisms that continue to divide, construct and constrain 'people' in today's world.

I've been cruising around your website today and I've just read what I found to be a disturbing response to a waiting-to-be-archived 'Ask Nicola' that went like this:

If I'm reading you correctly, you like my books because the characters are true to themselves and they're not perfect--or if they are more or less perfect, they have the grace to get themselves killed off before they become too tedious. The biggest exception to this, of course, is Thenike in Ammonite. Maybe I should write a sequel, just to remedy that. (It was in the yet to be archived section of your website).

"Change or die" is the catchphrase Kelley and I came up with in the pub to market Ammonite. (For Slow River it was, "Who are you when you have nothing left?" I didn't get around to thinking of handy phrases for The Blue Place or Stay but I'm considering "What makes us human?" for the entire Aud sequence, especially Always.) I'm fascinated by that third axis, time, and change. I've never been big on the either/or binary nonsense. People are complicated. Your heroic tri-fold process is (if I squint and tilt my head, and wilfully conflate philosophy and literature, which sounds similar to the game you're playing--only because I'm not an academic I don't have to back anything up with references [g]) a version of what, to me, makes story: that which emerges when you rub together a person and her situation--her environment, her past, her her trials and tribulations [cough]. I'm finding this theory of becoming most intriguing--it's what I'm doing explicitly with Aud (and implicitly with Lore and Marghe and my other protagonists). The whole philosophy of mind debate, particularly the "mind-body problem" (dualism, monoism, and all their shadings and variations) drives me bonkers. To me it's simple: we are our bodies. Colour me functionalist, I suppose.

Yes, soestre could be lovers and have more soestre who could have more, ad infinitum. Wow. I hadn't thought of that. I can see a small community of people so tightly-knit that--wow. Huh. And imagine how good they'd get at deepsearching and so on if that's what the community does, mainly. Umph. It wouldn't be incest, exactly, but I can imagine all sorts of weirdnesses. I'll have to think about that. Very interesting. Thank you.

As for Thenike or Hilt, if one of them has soestre (one or more) somewhere then she wouldn't look like her mother and therefore not like her blood sister (even though they're not soestre to each other). Which one might that be? I admit I can't remember my intention. It's been a very long time since I spent time on Jeep. This notion of soestre having soestre, though. I think I'll ponder that while I drink beer tonight.

I can, however, reassure you on one point. That archived quote about writing a sequel to "remedy" Thenike meant that if I wrote a sequel I would take the opportunity to make her a little less perfect, add some rough edges. You thought I meant kill her off? I've killed one super-fab character (Julia) in my time, and don't have the slightest intention to do so again. What I would want to do is see how all these women now fit together--or didn't. What would happen when Company came back? Would Company come back? What would happen if the women of Jeep waited and waited and waited and nothing happened? How would they respond if Company did come back and they all wanted the high-tech, material benefits of the space-faring culture? Who wouldn't, when you think about it: running water, decent knives, tampons, spectacles or contact lenses, painkillers...

From: Amy

Have been keeping up with your work (and your thoughts here on your site) since reading Ammonite when it first came out.

Haven't been by in a while, but came today to see if you had thoughts on the occasion of Octavia Butler's passing. Reading about her sudden death took my breath away. I believe "Parable of the Sower" has to be one of the greatest science fiction stories ever written. I loved that Butler took on so many of the most pressing issues of our times and wove them into her beautiful stories. Powerful, beautiful... I'm heartbroken that she's gone.

I'm interested in your thoughts on Butler...

Octavia Butler was a singular talent. Some of her work utterly changed the way I see the world. Some of it wasn't entirely to my taste. I do miss knowing that there will be more from her. For more of my thoughts, read a previous Ask Nicola

From: Karen

I am currently doing an undergraduate Honors Thesis on women in science fiction. One of the reasons that I chose this topic is because I have noticed that more and more of the female characters that are written by women are either lesbian or reject men and remain single. Why do you think this trend (if it is in fact a trend and I haven’t just happened to pick up a lot of this type of science fiction by chance) is occurring in the science fiction genre?

You probably need to talk to Anonymous, above, but as neither of you included your email addresses on the AN form, I suppose that's not going to happen. (You might consider joining my Yahoo list and chatting that way.) It sounds as though you're talking about the character of the classic hero and his/her role in fiction. In my opinion, most hero(in)es are still largely based on an ancient model: lonely, proud, fierce, beholden to no one. It's a model based on the old-fashioned notion about a single man before he makes his fortune and settles down. This kind of hero can have lots of sex but he can't marry, because that means he'd be less than a hero, because he would no longer be free to roam. (Yes, this is a circular argument--most stuff about sex and gender is.) Women most certainly can't marry boys, because then they have to stay at home having babies instead of flying that starship or swinging that sword. (And if hubby stays at home, you spend most of the story trying to figure out why, and how that works, instead of killing monsters or saving the world or whatever.) Women can be single, and act like men (that happened a lot in earlier feminist fiction). They can, sometimes, have girlfriends because in even our supposedly enlightened times women who are partnered are often seen as (a) essentially still free, i.e. their partnership is not "real" because they're both girls, or (b) superhumanly wise and good and determined to not impinge upon the other's autonomy, i.e. one won't get jealous if the other wins all the glory; one won't get scared and fretful every time the other goes and fights a dragon; one won't lost her temper and fling the dinner back in the recyler when the starship gets lost in another dimension and her captain sweetie is late for dinner, again.

So, no, I don't think you're mistaken about the overall increase in the number of single gel/lesbian heroines at all. Having said that, I do believe writers are beginning to catch up. I see more real women behaving the way women do, and still being heroes. There are more models, now, in this country: women cops and firefighters and doctors and mayors and senators who have both children and steely-eyed determination (often, too, a steely haircut, sigh). Buckle up; I think the ride is just getting interesting.