Nancy Jane Moore

Stories are all well and good, but like any tale they need to get up in your face, make you feel and think, reader’s comfort be damned.
_Conscientious Inconsistencies_ pushed me to do my own reader work. I couldn't terraform her stories to conform my comfortable world; nice broad, nice hat, nice rifle, nice wall, nice knife.
Nancy Jane Moore’s stories lit up new links & fired up new meanings. Time will tell, but _Conscientious Inconsistencies_ has the strength to help readers make all show more manner of mind paths bypassing common sense, even shorting it out here & there. show less

This is definitely the best book I've received from the Early Reviewer program. Walking Contradiction is a fantastic compendium of short stories written by Moore. I love best the dedication, because I think it explains so much about the psyche of the book:

"For every woman who ever read an adventure story and wanted to be the hero, not the hero's girlfriend."

But there's even more to this great anthology - not only is it woman positive, but sex positive, identity positive, and people of color show more positive. I LOVE that diversity went much deeper than just, "Let's add women in." There were several main characters of color and a new gender designated "ambigender" (though, it should have been designated a sex, as gender and sex are separate), which was most interesting for me as I am non-binary and LOVED seeing a character who was neither one nor the other sex. I would LOVE to have that body. There was also a woman who presented androgynous AND had a different genital structure than what is typically considered female. She, however, unabashedly identified as female, and that was respected. Also, trans people and the proper pronouns (as in: the ones they wish to use) were touched on briefly and as a side. I was happy to see that, but wish there could have been more. How little it was discussed felt like trans erasure more than if the discussion hadn't happened.

I love that the main characters weren't moral absolutes. They were pirates, soldiers, freedom fighters, investigators, etc. They were given complicated decisions to make in the face of difficult situations and the response wasn't some simple, trope-filled, "Well, I'm a girl, so I have two choices: fall in love (and do as I'm told by my male lover) or make an ultimately emotional decision that is stupid and idealistic." I liked that some of the decisions were stupidly idealistic and some were downright cold. A lot of them were of a dubious morality and the only decision to be made was a logical, if unsatisfying decision. Basically, these characters were SO *human* and I LOVED how human they were. It's something we don't see enough of. Love did not make them weak, sex did not make them whores, and the decisions were self-motivated, not love-interest motivated.

I have three things I wished I could see more of/differently. As mentioned, I wish there had been more trans characters and/or stories. The ambigendered characters were still cisgendered, there was just a new gender in town. It felt like a very timid way to deal with non-binary people - make a culture that doesn't have a binary. I also would have liked to see less heteronormative relationships. The ambigendered dated the ambigendered (except for the occasional self-loathing trip to a club for males/females who fetishised them), the women dated men (even the woman who has ambiguous genitalia dates a man), or there were no romantic/sexual relationships in the story. There was one woman who spent her entire story focusing (or trying not to focus) on a fight she had with her boyfriend, which wouldn't have been SO bad if the story didn't end with, "As long as we're together, this terrible world is okay." That twigged me out just a bit.

Really and truly, though, I enjoyed this book. The stories were engaging, the world building was amazing, and I saw characters more like myself than I have EVER seen in SF/F. Nancy Jane Moore has DEFINITELY made it onto my radar.

A (people/sex/race positive science fiction, diverse character body; heteronormative, some trans erasure) show less

This was quick but very strong. The stories had a nicely varied tone. The first was a light hearted swashbuckling story that simply gave us kickass women kicking ass. Thereafter it became darker and more surreal. The surreality added levity at times, and the strength of the protagonists always kept things from veering towards the depressing. There were really no weak entries. I would advise skipping the introduction, or saving it until the end. It had some nice insights about the author, show more derived from interviews, but in analysing the meaning of the material before I'd seen it, it kind of left me with the impression that I was in for a somewhat polemical read when in fact the stories were a lot more fun than that. show less

It's time for another embarrassingly late book review, this time for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Nancy Jane Moore's _Walking Contradiction_ is an entertaining collection of science fiction stories -- well outside the normal purview of my LibraryThing collection, but well worth reading. The common thread between these eight stories is the question of what it means to be human; in most cases here, that question centers on what role gender plays in identity. That question is front and center show more in the title story and "Nohow Permanent," as both stories' narrators are "ambi" (or, as the latter narrator puts it, "mostly" female). "Walking Contradiction" itself is skillfully told, full of intrigue and estranged regret; if it's over-exposited at times, that's made forgivable by the narrator's film-noir profession and tone. Here and elsewhere, there are moments when Moore starts to sound like Robert Heinlein, whether in references to the "troubled" years or in sentences like "All the people -- and not people, and not quite people -- made Vlad nervous" (113), reminiscent of gender-bending stories like Heinlein's "All You Zombies." The stories "Borders," "Gambit," and "In Demeter's Gardens" are a little less memorable, all featuring female protagonists in (relatively) near-future military scenarios, but told capably. "Blindsided by Venus in the House of Mars" is a tragic love story that weaves a nice twist into interstellar travel; if it challenges gender assumptions, it's only because of assumptions the reader may bring to the text. "Or We Will All Hang Separately" completes the collection, with a post-apocalyptic tone that still manages to remain more hopeful than some of the other stories included here. Altogether, Moore's talent shines frequently in this book. I'll be sure to keep an eye out for more of her work. show less