This collection follows Alyx, an ancient Greek woman whose life as a thief, assassin, and barbarian provides raw material for a string of exciting adventures. While there is an underlying SF rationale, the plotting is firmly sword-and-sorcery as Alyx brute-forces her way through most situations with a well-placed dagger and her keen intelligence.
Written ‘67-‘70, the tales predate Russ’ later significant work, but even so, Russ’ strong character development is already evident. While second-wave feminist themes are inherent in Alyx’s outsider life story, there’s also a leitmotif of Alyx navigating complex relationships with the young female protégées she encounters.
Her prose is very natural, dialogue-heavy, replete with frequent interruptions and things left unsaid. At times, it’s hard to visualise and track; a jumbled stream of consciousness, time speeds up and slows down, the narrative jumping ahead without even a paragraph break. She prioritises sensation over clarity, demanding you lean back and let it wash over you.
Interestingly, the stories’ progression from pulp S&S to New Wave interiority parallels the genre’s own evolution at the time. Alyx mirrors the shunning of the genre’s technophilic roots in her refusal to submit to the technology she encounters and the hubris it encourages, instead prioritising her lived, embodied experience. It’s clear from this collection how Russ is rapidly maturing as an author ready to produce her signature works.
For all that, the sword-and-sorcery delivery dominates the collection, and while I can admire what Russ is doing, it’s unfortunately not a style that engages me.
Bluestocking (1967)
Alyx is hired to help a rich young woman escape an arranged marriage. Heading out to sea in a stolen fishing boat, their relationship develops from animosity to friendship as they survive some tough ordeals together.
I thought she was afeard til she stroked my beard (1976)
We catch up with Alyx as she abandons an abusive marriage to run away with smugglers and shack up with their leader, from whom she learns how to fight and steal.
The Barbarian
Alyx falls in with a techno-wizard who is proclaiming himself the god of the world. When she refuses his order to kill a child, she finds herself having to take him on.
Picnic on Paradise
In this novella-length story, an older, hardier Alyx has been pulled into the future by the Trans-Temp authority and put to work escorting some effete tourists across a modern war zone. It starts confusingly, as the backstory comes later, but soon settles into a survival horror as the group try to survive a long trek over a mountainous winter war zone to get to safety. You can see the later Russ start to emerge with this story - Alyx’s initially hostile relationship to the group slowly morphs as she takes young Iris under her wing and falls for one of the party. As the deaths start to mount, there’s real heartbreak and intensity in the prose.
The Second Inquisition
We move to a 1925 wartime family who are hosting a visitor from the future who seems to be a descendant of Alyx hiding out from the Trans-Temp Authority. Our narrator is a 16-year-old girl who, it’s implied, grows up to be an important figure in the Authority’s future, but today is having to deal with the everyday challenges of an awful father and a downtrodden mother.
While there’s a fair amount of science fictional action as the visitor is found by the Authority, at heart it’s a character portrayal of a teenage girl in a small town in the 1920s trying to find herself. Intriguingly, we’re left with an ambiguous final line that hints at the possibility that Alyx herself is less a character than a myth being continually reconstructed and retold.
