Octavia Cade
Author of The Stone Wētā
About the Author
Works by Octavia Cade
Food and Horror: Essays on Ravenous Souls, Toothsome Monsters, and Vicious Cravings (2017) 3 copies, 1 review
Longfin's Daughters [Short Story] 2 copies
Eating Science With Ghosts 2 copies
Ernestine 1 copy
The War on Space and Time 1 copy
Pollen And Salt 1 copy
Inside The Body Of Relatives 1 copy
How to Live with Polar Bears 1 copy
Associated Works
Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 49 • June 2014 (Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue) (2014) — Contributor — 174 copies, 11 reviews
Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology (2020) — Contributor — 38 copies, 7 reviews
Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World (2021) — Contributor — 22 copies, 3 reviews
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I (2019) — Contributor — 21 copies, 1 review
Monsters in the Garden: An Anthology of Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy (2021) — Contributor — 12 copies
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy: Volume 2 (2020) — Contributor — 11 copies
Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume 3 (2021) — Contributor — 10 copies
Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 40, No. 10 & 11 [October/November 2016] (2016) — Contributor — 10 copies
Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 41, No. 1 & 2 [January/February 2017] (2017) — Contributor — 7 copies
This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories about Bugs (2023) — Contributor — 6 copies, 1 review
Asimov's Science Fiction: Vol. 43, No. 11 & 12 [November/December 2019] (2019) — Contributor — 5 copies
A Vindication of Monsters: Essays on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (2023) — Contributor — 3 copies
Strange Horizons: February 2019 — Contributor — 3 copies
Clarkesworld: Issue 191 (August 2022) — Author — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 20th century
- Gender
- female
- Education
- (PhD | Science communication)
Clarion West Writers Workshop - Organizations
- New Zealand Society of Authors
Horror Writers Association - Nationality
- New Zealand
- Associated Place (for map)
- New Zealand
Members
Reviews
The Publisher Says: “We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country. That distance will not save us.”
With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organizations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.
When the cold war of show more data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.
Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonize Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.
How far would you go to save the world?
My Review: When the Revolution comes, it will be women leading it. Secular Saint Stacey Abrams will likely be honking the biggest horn and causing the biggest ruckus. But that's not because it's her M.O. It's because her cover's blown. There is no point in trying to sneak when every-damn-body knows your shoe size and when you cheat on your diet.
So here is a story I read last month about the Revolution led by women and made up of scientists who'll be damned to hell if they're going to make nice for no gain when the planet is dying:
This near-future Earth has gone well past tipping point. The vileness that is Capitalism is still spinning its lies and soothing its consumers to keep them buying while...to be honest I haven't the foggiest clue what they're thinking they can do that we can't, how they will survive the *actual* End of Days, but there it is. The lie-maker machinery behind the popular songs is still humming "Big Yellow Taxi" and cheerfully killing people who know it's all a lie and can't be arsed to do anything about it.
The women in this resistance movement are identified in a clever, amusing way; I won't say, you should find out for yourself. Actually the biggest advantage to this technique is the flexibility it gives Author Cade in prefiguring the events of the chapters and sections. What she does with it is that sly, side-eye fun-making that you and at least one of your friends have, that one whose eye you cannot afford to meet when you're together but not in a safe place to fall out laughing at embarrassing moments. The story is one that today, the sixth of January, 2021, was so perfect in subject, in tenor, and resonance, that I had to re-read it. These women, these scientists, are all in flux and transition (!) and trying to protect the only home we have from the misguided and stupid who are deliberately trying to destroy it.
The challenges of doing that by concealing accurate data, the enemy of fascists and authoritarians everywhere. Do y'all remember my review of The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu? That culture of concealment for survival is mentioned here, alongside its increasingly popular young grandniece:
There is no hope for rebuilding from looming catastrophes—and there is a dilly of a disaster we see even before the collapse we're too soon to witness completing itself—without accurate, complete data hidden somewhere, cared for by someone with the skills to use it when it's finally safe to do so. Think of the world we might have had the religious nuts not burned the Library at Alexandria! So there's a precendent for Author Cade telling us this story, and a reason for you to spend the money to read it at this moment in US and UK history. Today's multiple klans of barbarians are doing their damnedest to finish burning the norms and conventions that have protected and enriched the greatest number of people. Author Cade tells us, and the evidence right now points to her prescience, that they won't stop even at murder to finish the destruction of whatever institutions, whatever systems and learning and techniques, prevent them from staying in complete control.
We've fought wars ostensibly to prevent that from happening, against an enemy whose words and iconography we saw used in the Capitol of the United States of America. One woman, identity as yet not revealed, has died from a gunshot wound received during the violence. It is eerie, then, to realize this is not so shockingly unthinkable. Author Cade thought it. She framed it, though, differently from the US news media, as what it is:
With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organizations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.
When the cold war of show more data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.
Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonize Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.
How far would you go to save the world?
My Review: When the Revolution comes, it will be women leading it. Secular Saint Stacey Abrams will likely be honking the biggest horn and causing the biggest ruckus. But that's not because it's her M.O. It's because her cover's blown. There is no point in trying to sneak when every-damn-body knows your shoe size and when you cheat on your diet.
So here is a story I read last month about the Revolution led by women and made up of scientists who'll be damned to hell if they're going to make nice for no gain when the planet is dying:
Resistance was revolution, sometimes, blood and dramatic acts, but more often it was survival. More often it was preservation, and the data she carried with her was for preservation more than revolution.
This near-future Earth has gone well past tipping point. The vileness that is Capitalism is still spinning its lies and soothing its consumers to keep them buying while...to be honest I haven't the foggiest clue what they're thinking they can do that we can't, how they will survive the *actual* End of Days, but there it is. The lie-maker machinery behind the popular songs is still humming "Big Yellow Taxi" and cheerfully killing people who know it's all a lie and can't be arsed to do anything about it.
It was hard to be an astronaut and not be an environmentalist.
–and–
She’d seen the photos—Earthrise and The Blue Marble—known the watershed impact they’d had on the conservation movement.
The women in this resistance movement are identified in a clever, amusing way; I won't say, you should find out for yourself. Actually the biggest advantage to this technique is the flexibility it gives Author Cade in prefiguring the events of the chapters and sections. What she does with it is that sly, side-eye fun-making that you and at least one of your friends have, that one whose eye you cannot afford to meet when you're together but not in a safe place to fall out laughing at embarrassing moments. The story is one that today, the sixth of January, 2021, was so perfect in subject, in tenor, and resonance, that I had to re-read it. These women, these scientists, are all in flux and transition (!) and trying to protect the only home we have from the misguided and stupid who are deliberately trying to destroy it.
The challenges of doing that by concealing accurate data, the enemy of fascists and authoritarians everywhere. Do y'all remember my review of The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu? That culture of concealment for survival is mentioned here, alongside its increasingly popular young grandniece:
All those manuscripts, and Timbuktu a place of historic learning, of literacy and knowledge passing on. What it passed on now could be the lessons and skills of resistance, the ways of smuggling out and networking.
–and–
There was a tendency with so much digital to make all copies electronic, and rely on the internet for keeping multiple copies visible and tamper-proof. But any system could be hacked, any data deleted. The information she intended to facilitate had to be kept discretely, separate from any possible influence.
There is no hope for rebuilding from looming catastrophes—and there is a dilly of a disaster we see even before the collapse we're too soon to witness completing itself—without accurate, complete data hidden somewhere, cared for by someone with the skills to use it when it's finally safe to do so. Think of the world we might have had the religious nuts not burned the Library at Alexandria! So there's a precendent for Author Cade telling us this story, and a reason for you to spend the money to read it at this moment in US and UK history. Today's multiple klans of barbarians are doing their damnedest to finish burning the norms and conventions that have protected and enriched the greatest number of people. Author Cade tells us, and the evidence right now points to her prescience, that they won't stop even at murder to finish the destruction of whatever institutions, whatever systems and learning and techniques, prevent them from staying in complete control.
We've fought wars ostensibly to prevent that from happening, against an enemy whose words and iconography we saw used in the Capitol of the United States of America. One woman, identity as yet not revealed, has died from a gunshot wound received during the violence. It is eerie, then, to realize this is not so shockingly unthinkable. Author Cade thought it. She framed it, though, differently from the US news media, as what it is:
One person was such a small-scale loss, comparatively. (One person was enormous.)show less
There is such fantastic power in Cade's writing, and this brief collection screams with passion and with stories worth whole worlds.
Stelliform Press has become a favorite of mine ever since I discovered them, and so I expected great things from this collection. Yet, I was still blown away. Cade's writing marries speculative thrills and high-concept stories with a passion for science, the environment, and the natural world. While the stories range through genres, with a few being closer to show more horror and many being closer to near-future sci-fi or even potentially near-future realism, they come together in a collage of insight and nuance that screams with emotional intelligence and a desperate hope for the world. Cade's natural story-telling ability is alone worth seeking out, but the ideas and characters here are so unique and real, the book is perhaps the most powerful collection I've read, and I adored it.
Some of my favorite stories in the bunch: "You are My Sunshine" (the title story), "Tidemarks", "Inside the Body of Relatives", "The Streams are Paved with Fish Traps", "Tranquility", and "You're Not the Only One".
But in truth, I'm sure I'll re-read the whole collection.
Absolutely recommended. show less
Stelliform Press has become a favorite of mine ever since I discovered them, and so I expected great things from this collection. Yet, I was still blown away. Cade's writing marries speculative thrills and high-concept stories with a passion for science, the environment, and the natural world. While the stories range through genres, with a few being closer to show more horror and many being closer to near-future sci-fi or even potentially near-future realism, they come together in a collage of insight and nuance that screams with emotional intelligence and a desperate hope for the world. Cade's natural story-telling ability is alone worth seeking out, but the ideas and characters here are so unique and real, the book is perhaps the most powerful collection I've read, and I adored it.
Some of my favorite stories in the bunch: "You are My Sunshine" (the title story), "Tidemarks", "Inside the Body of Relatives", "The Streams are Paved with Fish Traps", "Tranquility", and "You're Not the Only One".
But in truth, I'm sure I'll re-read the whole collection.
Absolutely recommended. show less
The weight of this slim novella sends a riptide of vision into the reader within the first few pages, and Cade's powerful prose and storytelling never let up from there. As the story unfolds, becoming all too real a something that I could envision for our struggling world, what begins as horror and sorrow moves forward into a terrain of wonderfully careful suspense and revelation which, in the end, comes full circle to the emotions Cade pushed on the reader to begin with. Despite wanting to show more look away, I read the second half of this novella in one sitting, and the weight of it will stay with me for some time.
Absolutely recommended. show less
Absolutely recommended. show less
This is such a beautiful, clever book. Such an intricate story, painted more with what isn't rather than is said. Almost none of the characters are referred to by name; certainly none of the viewpoint characters are. All are characterised by an organism relevant to their research and/or their location, and parallels are drawn between their behaviour and the organism.
I love that both climate research and biological research get mentioned here.
Cade has also managed to weave in some pointed show more commentary about misogyny and racism, and who gets missed in the intersection between the two. show less
I love that both climate research and biological research get mentioned here.
Cade has also managed to weave in some pointed show more commentary about misogyny and racism, and who gets missed in the intersection between the two. show less
Lists
Awards
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 28
- Also by
- 40
- Members
- 175
- Popularity
- #122,546
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 21
- ISBNs
- 20