Deconstructing the starships

by Gwyneth Jones

"These essays and reviews have been selected from work by a practising SF writer produced during a decade in which the stuff of science fiction became part of everyday life. Dreams of galactic empire did not come true, the Invaders from Mars (or from any other alien planet in our locality) are consigned to fantasy. But a great deal of the future imagined by Gwyneth Jones' generation of SF writers is actually with us; reality and science fiction are moving into close conjunction, so that SF is no longer the strange reflection and artistic elaboration of current pre-occupations. The subject matter of this collection is varied, but displays Jones' stance as a practising SF writer and a feminist; the writing is characterised by both an incisive engagement with the texts and a refusal to dress that engagement in jargon. This very readable book both provides insight into the work of one of our most interesting writers and presents strongsometimes even subversive - views of a range of modern