Three Observations and a Dialogue: Volume 24 (Conversation Pieces) - Softcover

After WisCon 20, Sylvia Kelso engaged Lois McMaster Bujold in a rich, snappy correspondence about Bujold's Vorkosigan novels. ''You ... remark that '[my] post-modern despair is not [your] emergency' over the failure of feminism to transform SF,'' she wrote to Bujold. ''My postmodern despair OUGHT to be your emergency, buen' amiga, because one of the reasons you are being ignored is that ... you don't fit the male canon either in the community or the critical industry; so unless you catch their eyes with a sand-blaster like The Left Hand of Darkness, the male academics are also gonna find you invisible...''

That correspondence became ''Letterspace: In the Chinks Between Published Fiction and Published Criticism,'' which is published here. Also included are ''Third Person Peculiar: Reading between Academic and SF-Community Positions in (Feminist) Sf,'' a critical essay discussing the intricacies of an Australian feminist scholar writing about science fiction; ''Tales of Earth: Terraforming in Recent Women s Sf,'' which considers colonialism in science fiction by women; and ''Loud Achievements: Lois McMaster Bujold s Science Fiction through 1997,'' which closely examines Bujold's Vorkosigan novels.