RUSS, Joanna
Novels & Stories

This edition also presents all six of Russ’s “Alyx” stories (1967–71) in one volume for the first time, including her short Alyx novel, Picnic on Paradise (1968), and the late story “A Game of Vlet,” not included in previous collections. A “wild hill girl” from ancient Ourdh, ex-evangelical, sometime assassin, bodyguard, and agent for the far-future Trans-Temporal Military Authority, Alyx is an all-around badass and perhaps Russ’s most memorable character, whose exploits reinvent “sword and sorcery” for a postmodern, feminist era.

Rounding out the collection are the Nebula, Locus, and Hugo Award–winning stories “When It Changed” and “Souls,” the former offering Russ’s first vision of the all-female world of Whileaway, and the latter, in the words of Stephanie Burt, a “perfectly wrought medieval tale.” [publisher's note]

Published by Library of America
Literature / Science/Fiction