Stretto

Marq’ssan Cycle #5

by L. Timmel Duchamp

Stretto, the grand finale of the Marq'ssan Cycle, weaves together the major threads of the Marq'ssan story and encourages readers, as Joan Haran says, "to write beyond the ending." The novel, like the series as a whole, inquires Whose world is it? and shows several possible ways of answering the question through the respective perceptions and perspectives of the novel's five viewpoint Alexandra Sedgewick, heir to the Sedgewick estate; Anne Hawthorne, Security operative; Hazel Bell, subversive activist; Celia Espin, human rights lawyer; and Emily Madden, star pupil of the maverick Marq'ssan, Astrea l Betut san Imu. As always, never predictable, never finished, the consequences of all that has gone before continues to play out.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

482 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2008

About the author

L. Timmel Duchamp was born in 1950, the first child of three. Duchamp first began writing fiction in a library carrel at the University of Illinois in 1979, for a joke. But the joke took on a life of its own and soon turned into a satirical roman a clef in the form of a murder mystery titled "The Reality Principle." When she finished it, she allowed the novel to circulate via photocopies, and it was a great hit in the academic circles in which she then moved. One night in the fall of 1984 she sat down at her mammoth Sanyo computer with its green phosphorescent screen and began writing Alanya to Alanya.

Duchamp spent the next two years in a fever, writing the Marq'ssan Cycle. When she finshed it, she realized she didn't know how to market it to publishers and decided that publishing some short fiction (which she had never tried to write before) would be helpful for getting her novels taken seriously. Her first effort at a short story was "Welcome, Kid, to the Real World," which she wrote in the summer of 1986. Her next effort, however, turned into a novel. (Getting the hang of the shorter narrative form was a lot harder than she'd anticipated.) So she decided to stick with novels for a while. When in fall 1987 a part-time job disrupted her novel-writing, she took the short stories of Isak Dinesen for her model, tried again, and wrote "Negative Event at Wardell Station, Planet Arriga" and "O's Story." And in 1989 she sold "O's Story" to Susanna J. Sturgis for Memories and Visions, "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A." to Kristine Kathryn Rusch for Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, and "Transcendence" to the shortlived Starshore. Her first pro sale, though, was "Motherhood, Etc." to Bantam for the Full Spectrum anthology series.

After that she wrote a lot of short fiction (mostly at novelette and novella lengths), a good deal of which she sold to Asimov's SF. In the late 1990s Nicola Griffith convinced her to try her hand at writing criticism and reviews. In 2004, Duchamp founded Aqueduct Press; since then editing and publishing books (her own as well as other writers') has claimed the lion's share of her time and effort.

She lives in Seattle.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

(7/10) The long Marq'ssan Cycle concludes with the fifth book, Stretto, although perhaps concludes is the wrong word. Like previous books, instead of coming to an epic climax, Stretto kind of just stops, with an afterword urging readers to "write beyond the ending". This could be seen as a cop-out, and it kind of is, but over the course of the series Duchamp has clearly shifted the focus of the books from earth-shaking political events to the interpersonal relationships and personal traumas of the characters. From a geopolitical standpoint, the most important events happen between the fourth and fifth book and go almost completely un-narrated. It's a bold move, one that frustrates the conventional reader, but it's the kind of frustration that's challenging.

Much of Stretto is told through diaries and letters, and this shift to an epistolary form adds some much-needed punch and stylistic flair to Duchamp's writing. The turn to domestic, "feminine" genres (as suggested by Elaine Showalter and other feminist critics) suggests that Duchamp is reclaiming (or perhaps claiming for the first time) the ur-masculine form of the sci-fi epic for a decentred feminist mode of writing.

Duchamp falls into her old habits as the book goes on, with more and more repetitive dialogue and plot points, and there's a level of contrivance involved in bringing together all of the book's central characters. Once again I found myself wishing for more detail on the Free Zone and the titular aliens and less on torture and the carceral state, but perhaps that's just saying that I wish Duchamp's thematic obsessions were my own.

Overall, the Marq'ssan Saga is an intriguing take on the sci-fi epic and an incisive commentary on state power and its inevitable abuse. It's also nice to see a SF novel -- hell, any kind of book -- that's open in its anarcho-communist politics and that maintains a kind of optimism towards radical action in the face of a dystopian world (Bioshock it is not). Still, there are problems that plague the books throughout, some of which are writing issues, and others which stem from an oversimplified and non-intersectional feminism. I read these books on and off over eight months, and if in the end I was left a little disappointed, I certainly don't regret it, and the series definitely worth a look for anyone into thoughtful political SF.

[Anastasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of these days I will read this book all the way through without skipping POV's, but Alexandra Sedgewick's story is so incredibly compelling, it swallows me whole. Monstrous person that she is, the forces that shaped and twisted her even more so, you can't help but sympathize. And it is oh-so-delicious to see Elizabeth Weatherall get undone. The author's note at the end said that she started to have nightmares about finding Elizabeth in her living room - I can relate. Elizabeth is hands down the most frightening character in all of literature. I dare you to disagree with me.

[jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

does our love hold hope or is it consumed by fear?

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning.