The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2022, pt. 14: Sheila Finch

 

 2022 Pleasures 

by Sheila Finch

 

 

 

I’m an addicted  reader; I carry books everywhere. I can’t go to sleep at night until I’ve read something. And since I write science fiction, you can guess I love to read that genre too. But not when I’m writing! That’s the time I avoid anything that might creep unnoticed into my own work. So what do I read if not SF? Mysteries, detective novels, police procedurals. Plot and characters are important to me, but so is excellent writing. Here are some of my favorite authors and the series they write in no particular order:

 

James Lee Burke – anything at all that he writes! I think he’s America’s best writer today.

 

Daniel Silva – marvelous thrillers about an Israeli spy chief, Gabriel Allon.

 

Patricia Cornwell – gripping stories about medical examiner Kay Scarpetta.

 

Ruth Rendell – her Chief Inspector Wexford series is absorbing, but there are stand-alones that’re just as satisfying.

 

Michael Connelly – Nobody does contemporary LA noir as well as he does. Chilling!

 

Louise Penny – An almost magical, forest setting for her series and a hard-hitting crime to be solved.

 

Louise Erdrich – Love and death and myth with heart-breaking characters growing up between cultures.

 

And if you’re in the mood for a lighter touch in a mystery series:

Alexander McCall Smith – Mma Ramotswe and her “No. I Ladies’ Detective Agency” in Botswana.

 

[If you prefer to see your detectives on screen, these two British series are well worth searching out: “Shetland,” starring Douglas Henshall , and “Unforgotten,” starring Nicola Walker.]

 

 

Sheila Finch is the author of eight science fiction novels; the first published, Infinity’s Web, won the Compton Crook Award, and a Young Adult novel, Tiger in the Sky, earned the San Diego Book Award. Numerous short stories have appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Asimov’s, Fantasy Book, and many anthologies. A collection of the “lingster” stories about the young men and women trained as translators and interpreters to aliens appeared as The Guild of Xenolinguists; one of them, “Reading The Bones,” won a Nebula. She has also published non-fiction about writing and science fiction. Aqueduct released her collection of short fiction, Forkpoints, earlier this year.

 

 

Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken by Sheila Finch

 

 I'm pleased to announce Aqueduct Press's release of Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken by Sheila Finch in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now from Aqueduct Press at www.aqueductpress.com.  

One of our imperatives as humans is to communicate–with others, with animals, and eventually with aliens. Here, in Forkpoints, you will find stories of unlikely people–scientists and street people, athletes and musicians, the very old and the arrogant teen–meeting and connecting with others not like them at all. Another major interest of Finch’s is what Robert Frost called “the road not taken,” that haunting sense we all have from time to time that maybe there were other paths we should have explored, other doorways we should have passed through, forkpoints where our choices changed our lives forever. Science Fiction shows us many fantastic inventions that may come in the future, other worlds, other beings. But, even then, people will still be people, loving, making families, worrying about trifles, dealing with crises, making life-changing decisions as best they can.

Advance Praise

“Good reading for our hard times. These are stories of opportunities unseen, glimpsed, suddenly brought into focus—maybe to slip away, or be refused, or maybe just delayed. There’s a gentleness to them, a melancholy, that sets off the glints of new possibilities and hope. The last story gives us a child’s-eye view of the Blitz so clear and detailed—readers who loved Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight should have a look here.”
 —Suzy McKee Charnas, author of The Holdfast Chronicles and The Vampire Tapestry

“Sheila Finch is one of the treasures of modern science fiction. She’s literate, imaginative, and deeply insightful. Her contributions to the field include not only specific, awesomely good works, but her careful attention to how language shapes story structure and flow. Her short fiction works are like polished gemstones, with each facet reflecting and informing the central theme. Here is a collection of such jewels, each speaking to the profound transformative power of human understanding. We are more than our circumstances, these stories say, we have the ability to shift our perspective, to look and feel more deeply, and thereby to shift entire realities. From an elderly music teacher who could also have been an iconic physicist to an extraordinary communication across species to a time-traveler visiting his own ancestor during the World War II London bombings, each tale reaches deep into the mind of the reader, inviting us with Finch’s characteristically gentle wisdom to see the universe and ourselves in a revolutionary light.”
 —Deborah Ross, author of Collaborators and The Seven-Petaled Shield fantasy series

Reviews

Nebula Award winner Finch (Reading the Bones) delivers an impressive, career-spanning collection celebrating the power a single decision holds to change the shape of the world. Some of the 12 stories focus in on those pivotal moments; the gripping “Not This Tide” leaps between the inexplicable supernatural experiences of a girl and her father in WWII England, and the year 2035, in which the now-elderly woman is a renowned world peace activist. Others place the fateful decision in the background and chart the consequences, like the wistful “The Old Man and C,” which imagines a world where Albert Einstein followed his talent for violin instead of physics. Fans of Finch’s Xenolinguist stories will enjoy encountering the author at her lyrical best in “Sequoia Dreams,” about alien visitors who have a profound ecological message to convey, and “Czerny at Midnight,” in which a marine biologist’s autistic son communicates with an octopus through music. Though pieces like “Forkpoints” and “Where Two or Three” are weakened by plentiful hints that there are better stories happening in the background, this collection as a whole is delightfully cohesive and thought-provoking. It’s a showcase of a legend at her finest.  
  —Publishers Weekly, April 2022

Sheila Finch's Myths, Metaphors, and Science Fiction

I'm pleased to announce the release of the 39th volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series, Myths, Metaphors, and Science Fiction: Ancient Roots of the Literature of the Future, by Nebula-award winning Sheila Finch.It's available now through Aqueduct's website in both print and e-book editions, and will be soon be available in all the usual places.  Here's a bit from the introduction:

"The great myths seek to explain us to ourselves--our exploits, passions, triumphs, and failures. They can be found all over the world, often displaying remarkable similarity.

"Nobody--scientist, seer or science fiction writer-- can reliably predict what will happen two days from now, let alone two millennia. Science fiction is really about us as humans--living, loving, fighting, raising families-- but set in another place and time so that the message may get through without being censored by the self-protective function of our egos."


“This welcome discussion of the connections between future fiction and stories about human inception emphasizes how mythic roots contribute to the emotional power of narrative. Finch investigates the inexplicable awe and wonder that emanates from close encounters between myth and science fiction. This juxtaposition emphatically indicates that science fiction is the predominant mythic metaphor of our time.” –Marleen S. Barr, author of Feminist Fabulation and Oy! Pioneer

James Gunn, author of The Listeners and Transcendental, writes: “The gifted writer Bob Sheckley once told me that when he was hard up for a story idea he opened his book of fairy tales. Now the gifted and insightful Sheila Finch tells us why.”