INTRODUCTION
JO WALTON
TWO KINDS OF people are likely to pick up this collection. The first kind know about Susan Palwick, and will have picked it up with cries of joy. Their only relationship with this introduction will be to race through it as fast as possible to get to the stories, especially the new ones. Some of them will be new even to the most enthusiastic Palwick fan, because a few of them have only appeared in obscure places and three of them are brand new for this volume. With this kind of reader, I share a conspiratorial smile. Yes, she is that good, isn’t she? We share the knowledge that Palwick is an unobtrusive writer who nevertheless is writing stories of great significance and weight, worth grabbing as soon as we see them. We recognize that her work is important and want more of it. If you recognize yourself in this, you can safely skip the rest of this introduction and get on to the stories.
So I’m writing this for the second group of potential people who might pick up this book, people who aren’t familiar with Palwick, but who are curious. There are a lot of books out there, a lot of writers and a lot of readers. Palwick hasn’t yet made the big time. Why should you read this one?
All art is about the truths of the human heart, but science fiction and fantasy are more interesting because they can compare the truths of the alien heart, the monstrous heart, the ghost’s heart, the cyborg heart. . . . So many possible hearts can have so many possible truths, can illuminate the human heart from many different directions. Palwick has been quietly writing this kind of science fiction and fantasy for decades, dropping one stunning short story or novel after another into the pool without any fuss. Some of them have cast ripples, and some, for one reason or another, have not cast as many as they should have. She is definitely not as well known as a writer this good ought to be at this point in her career, because attention is inexplicable and fickle and I just don’t understand how it works, and being great, and having me jumping up and down saying “Look, look, she’s so great, look over here!” clearly isn’t enough to attract it.
And yet she has been consistently producing gems like the ones contained in this collection—not very fast, but steadily. These are stories doing what our genre does, about as well as it can be done. These are stories that ask “what if” questions of the human heart, stories about compassion and caring and neighborliness, about life and death and aliens and dogs and emergency rooms, about uploaded consciousness and literal ghosts in literal machines, and what that means. Palwick always makes me think, and makes me care, and makes me keep on reading. The easy comparison would be to Connie Willis or Neil Gaiman, but there’s a depth and a groundedness to Palwick’s work that makes her even better. These are important exciting stories that are fun to read, even when they’re harrowing. I’m tempted to pick out favorites, but they’re all so good!
Go read them. They can speak for themselves. You can thank me later.