Foreword
413 Words
Foreword
Aliette de Bodard
The first story by Benjanun Sriduangkaew I read was "Woman of the Sun, Woman of the Moon", a bold and atmospheric re-imagining of the Chinese legend of Houyi, the Divine Archer, and Chang'e, the Goddess of the Moon, with both main characters as women. I was struck both by the familiarity (it was a retelling of a legend I had heard many times as a child, and it had that indefinable air of coming home); and by the maturity of the prose.
Benjanun is a magician with words—she uses language to evoke everything from the texture of a festival meal ("The rabbit makes cakes, viscous lotus paste inside and the salted yolks of ghost birds: they were pale rather than orange, but they taste no less rich."), to the violence and despair of Houyi fighting against a demon ("blood warms her, filling her mouth with the aroma of coins, as the demon sinks teeth into her flank and wraps her close with the snake of its tail"); from the feeling of being resurrected from the dead ("the knife of her consciousness peeling off death in layers: this is how she wakes"), to a goddess watching the rise of modern cities ("she watches the houses in the mortal realms change and lengthen, until they become towers which pierce the clouds, until their cities are thick and thronged and she can’t imagine locating her kin anymore in the million-millions that overwhelm the streets").
Since then, Benjanun has gone on to make quite a splash in the genre, with publications in high-prestige venues like Clarkesworld Magazine and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, listings on the Locus Recommended Reading lists, and stories being name-checked for major awards. Though her focus has shifted to a majority of science fiction (she writes wonderful space opera), she's retained her core strengths of beautiful language and exquisite worldbuilding in which she slyly questions gender roles and gender performances as well as colonialism, cultural imperialism and the role of memory and history.
The novella that you're about to read is not science fiction; in fact, it's a sequel of sorts to that very first story I read. It features the wonderful characters of Houyi and Chang'e, now living in modern Hong Kong, keeping an eye on one of their descendants; and it is also a smart retelling of a Chinese tale (I'm not going to tell you which one, for fear I'll spoil the experience). It's urban fantasy, and it's utterly wonderful.
See for yourself.
- Writer
