The title story, “Fire.” written especially for this volume, is a harrowing postapocalyptic adventure in a world threatened by global conflagration. Based on Hand’s real-life experience as a participant in a governmental climate change think tank, it follows a ragtag cadre of scientists and artists racing to save both civilization and themselves from fast-moving global fires.
“The Woman Men Didn’t See” is an expansion of Hand’s acclaimed critical assessment of author Alice Sheldon, who wrote award-winning SF as “James Tiptree, Jr.” in order to conceal identity from both the SF community and her CIA overlords. Another nonfiction piece, “Beyond Belief,” recounts her difficult passage from alienated teen to serious artist.
Also included are “Kronia,” a poignant time-travel romance, and “The Saffron Gatherers,” two of Hand’s favorite and less familiar stories. Plus: a bibliography and our candid and illuminating Outspoken Interview with one of today’s most inventive authors.
What People Are Saying
“Hand is an expert at building mood and atmosphere in ways that you don’t realize until you feel it around you.”
—SF Signal
“A superior stylist.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Real enchantment . . . Elizabeth Hand’s work possesses it in every word.”
—Francesca Lia Block, author of Love in the Time of Global Warming
“Elizabeth Hand’s prose is a wiry, intelligent force that ranges from blunt athleticism to fluid luminosity.”
—Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love
“A predilection for probing the translucent borderline between magic and reality . . . a beautifully nuanced, often disquieting style.”
—Booklist
About the Author
Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college a couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and New York. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. She was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology and received her BA. She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon, Glimmering, Mortal Love, Illyria, and Radiant Days, as well as three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chosen as notable books by both the New York Times and the Washington Post. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she lives with her family on the coast of Maine.