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Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction
by
Grace L. Dillon ,
Gerald Vizenor , Archie Weller , William Sanders , Zainab Amadahy (Goodreads Author) , Misha , Eden Robinson , Leslie Marmon Silko
,
more…
In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction Grace Dillon collects some of the finest examples of the craft with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors. The collection includes seminal authors such as Gerald Vizenor, historically important contributions often categorized as "magical realism" by au
...more
Paperback, 262 pages
Published
March 1st 2012
by University of Arizona Press
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AWW YEAH. This will be read after finals.
A quick gripe:
Really, REALLY side-eyeing Charles De Lint's "review" on the back.
"Though I'm not usually a fan of anthologies compiled by race, sex, etc., this book is so good that I'm happy to have these stories collected together however it came about. Don't read this because they're stories by Native American writers. Read them because they're damn good stories by damn good writers."
Did he actually read it? Does he know that "Indigenous" doesn't just m ...more
A quick gripe:
Really, REALLY side-eyeing Charles De Lint's "review" on the back.
"Though I'm not usually a fan of anthologies compiled by race, sex, etc., this book is so good that I'm happy to have these stories collected together however it came about. Don't read this because they're stories by Native American writers. Read them because they're damn good stories by damn good writers."
Did he actually read it? Does he know that "Indigenous" doesn't just m ...more
This is a fascinating academic text. Dillion does a beautiful job creating a survey of Native American speculative fiction, weaving insightful commentary throughout.
Unfortunately, this book's greatest weakness is as an anthology. Very few of the included works are standalone short stories. The overwhelming majority are excerpts from longer works. And although Dillon did a good job of selecting excerpts that make sense out of context, the book feels like a series of pointers to novels that we sh ...more
Unfortunately, this book's greatest weakness is as an anthology. Very few of the included works are standalone short stories. The overwhelming majority are excerpts from longer works. And although Dillon did a good job of selecting excerpts that make sense out of context, the book feels like a series of pointers to novels that we sh ...more
http://www.full-stop.net/2012/08/30/r...
Review by Lindsey Catherine Cornum
For the geeky Indian tired of reading and watching science fiction about white heroes conquering red planets, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction is what the recent release of The New Yorker Science Fiction Issue was for other nerdy types—the validation of something that has for too long been ignored. In this case, not just the perennially-overlooked Indigenous voices but the weird Indigenous voi ...more
Review by Lindsey Catherine Cornum
For the geeky Indian tired of reading and watching science fiction about white heroes conquering red planets, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction is what the recent release of The New Yorker Science Fiction Issue was for other nerdy types—the validation of something that has for too long been ignored. In this case, not just the perennially-overlooked Indigenous voices but the weird Indigenous voi ...more
2.5
:\ Was really hoping to like this a lot more!!! It is so, so, so off-puttingly disjointedly academic in a weird way; I kept having to reread passages in the intro and intros because I just could not make head nor tail of what was being said. It felt messy, like someone's thesis that could have stood a SIGHT more editing. And, as many other people have stated, don't be fooled: this is not actually a short story anthology; MOST of the entries are excerpts from longer novels, and most of those s ...more
:\ Was really hoping to like this a lot more!!! It is so, so, so off-puttingly disjointedly academic in a weird way; I kept having to reread passages in the intro and intros because I just could not make head nor tail of what was being said. It felt messy, like someone's thesis that could have stood a SIGHT more editing. And, as many other people have stated, don't be fooled: this is not actually a short story anthology; MOST of the entries are excerpts from longer novels, and most of those s ...more
This is a very varied book, with a lot of different narrative styles represented in the different stories. The first section focuses on an approach called "slipstream", where lots of different times and places interweave. I have to say it's an approach I didn't really get, but expect that were one fluent in such a tradition they would be interesting. Of the rest of the collection, the ones I particularly enjoyed are as follows.
Flight: this is about a young native person dealing with the trauma o ...more
Flight: this is about a young native person dealing with the trauma o ...more
bought this in Minneapolis at Birchbark Books, a wonderful store owned by Louise Erdrich (Anishinaabe/Ojibwe/Chippewa) with a huge section on Native American and Indigenous authors and subjects. a terrific sampler in native SF - as an anthology many of the pieces are intriguing excerpts and some too snippeted to catch ahold of me.
but honestly what was most engaging was just thinking about these authors writing these stories - I'm quite familiar with anti-oppression, postcolonial, and intersectio ...more
but honestly what was most engaging was just thinking about these authors writing these stories - I'm quite familiar with anti-oppression, postcolonial, and intersectio ...more
My reading of Walking the Clouds was a bit piecemeal, reading most of the essays and some of the accompanying stories. It is not, as I initially thought, an anthology of short stories. Mostly Dillon has selected extracts from longer works that illustrate the points being made in the introductory essays. The focus seems to be more North American, but there are a good scattering of selections from indigenous populations around the world. I haven’t approached it in a comprehensive enough way to wri
...more
A good introduction to a genre and range of authors that I don't know much about: people who write science and speculative fiction with an Indigenous perspective. As with all anthologies, some stories and extracts grabbed me more than others, but there are definitely authors and books here that I will want to read more of in the future.
Many gems here and with all the excerpts this book just enlarged my reading queue.
3.5 to 4. I wanted to like this more than I did. I was introduced to some great writers, but the excerpt intros were so academic and jargon-filled as to be off putting. I did not expect this to be a textbook, yet that is the style in which it is written.
I'd like this anthology more if it contained more short stories rather than mostly novel excerpts. It's easier to get into a novel if you begin reading at the very beginning. Just as I was convinced that I simply don't like novel excerpts, I read the excerpt from Leslie Marmon Silko's novel _Almanac of the Dead_ and was so impressed that I reserved the novel with the public library. I definitely want to read the rest of it. Otherwise, I found the short stories engrossing.
Really enjoyable. After an initial ugh, I actually got into the fact that a lot of the selections are not short stories, but novel excerpts. Some of them, like Andrea Hairston's, are books I've had sitting on my shelf to read forevs. Each selection has a fairly academic intro, which I had to really slow down to read. Worth it, though. I got so much more out of it than had I just had the stories and been left to make connections with mah own clunky brain.
Eh. I had a hard time getting into this because it wasn't actually just an anthology of stories. Rather it was an academic book that used the stories to illustrate the theory. It was "science fiction studies" and "indigenous studies" illustrated by the selections. Not really what I was looking for, I ended up skimming a lot. I'm glad it's out there, and perhaps I will pick it up at another time and be more into it.
Have been savoring this anthology of Indigenous science fiction or a long time. It has exposed me to a lot of great writers, but Stephen Graham Jones' story about the Lone Ranger actually being an android that Tonto controls is by far my favorite. Subversive and hysterical.
This turned out to be a text book containing mostly excerpts form longer works. The stories I did read were not really SF. I'm disappointed because something with this sub-title could be good, but this isn't what I was looking for.
This book made me really excited about the possibilities for sci fi.
An anthology of native stories.
3.5 stars.
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