Click to Subscribe
‘Cold Pig’
With Delicate Mad Hands by Alice B. Sheldon
© 2014 James LaFond
APR/12/14
1981, anthologized in Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, Arkham House, 1990, pages 225-283
Cold Pig is the cruel nickname given to female astronaut Carol Page, who wanted all her life to fly to the stars. The men call her CP for short. She is built well enough to be used for sex but has an unattractively upturned fleshy nose that has caused her supreme alienation among humans. Through diligence and perseverance and grit she finally gets assigned to a ship headed to the outer solar system. Her plan, all along, is to make it to the stars; to kill her male crewmates, hijack the craft and fly into infinity. She just knows something is waiting out there for her.
CP survives a brutal rape by her captain, does away with he and his crew, and takes mankind’s maiden flight into the unknown. Sheldon’s plot is murky and the narrative is clunky for a novella. It is structured as short story and awkwardly weighted. CP compels the reader on, as if her ugly plight is mirrored in the reader’s less than aesthetic experience. The tenacious hope of CP keeps the story alive in the reader’s mind. Eventually she makes contact with an ETI. I can’t give that away.
There is something about the later works of Sheldon that is brutally graceless and disturbing—I like it. If you are into reading about alienation or feminism With Delicate Mad Hands will strike a chord in your soul, hopefully a chord you like having struck.
Microbes and Macrobes?
book reviews
‘Watchers’ of a World Unveiled
eBook
logic of steel
eBook
songs of aryas
eBook
menthol rampage
eBook
hate
eBook
all-power-fighting
eBook
the gods of boxing
eBook
honor among men
eBook
under the god of things
eBook
wife—
eBook
blue eyed daughter of zeus
eBook
fate
eBook
z-pill forever
eBook
solo boxing
eBook
book of nightmares
eBook
predation
eBook
sorcerer!
eBook
into leviathan’s maw
eBook
the first boxers
eBook
the greatest lie ever sold
eBook
when you're food
eBook
america the brutal
eBook
thriving in bad places
eBook
uncle satan
eBook
taboo you
eBook
advent america
eBook
song of the secret gardener
eBook
time & cosmos
eBook
winter of a fighting life
eBook
within leviathan’s craw
eBook
fanatic
eBook
the greatest boxer
eBook
your trojan whorse
eBook
logic of force
eBook
dark, distant futures
eBook
ranger?
eBook
triumph
eBook
by the wine dark sea
eBook
orphan nation
eBook
night city
eBook
the sunset saga complete
eBook
sons of aryas
eBook
on combat
eBook
cracker-boy
eBook
the lesser angels of our nature
eBook
on the overton railroad
eBook
the combat space
eBook
son of a lesser god
eBook
broken dance
eBook
the year the world took the z-pill
eBook
let the world fend for itself
eBook
masculine axis
eBook
beasts of aryas
eBook
fiction anthology one
eBook
barbarism versus civilization
eBook
the fighting edge
  Add a new comment below:
Name
Email
Message