L. Timmel Duchamp is the founder and publisher of Aqueduct Press. Her work has been on the Otherwise Honor list multiple times and a finalist for the Sturgeon, Nebula, Homer, and Sidewise awards. In addition to her fiction, she has published a good deal of nonfiction including both collections of her own essays and edited anthologies.

Alanya to Alanya by L. Timmel Duchamp

Seattle, February 2076. The Marq'ssan bring business as usual to a screeching halt all over the world, and Professor Kay Zeldin joins Robert Sedgewick, US Chief of Security Services, in his war against the invaders. Soon Kay is making rather than writing history. But as she goes head-to-head against the Marq'ssan, the long-buried secrets of her past resurface, and her conflicts with Sedgewick and Security Services multiply. She faces terrifying choices. Her worldview—her very grip on reality—is turned inside out. Whose side is she really on? And how far will she go in serving that side?

CURATOR'S NOTE

L. Timmel DuChamp's Alanya to Alanya is the first volume of her Marq'ssan cycle. Like the Gussoff book, it's set in a near future Seattle and world that has become fiercely divided by gender, visited by aliens with very different ideas about such things. Political and intricate, this book pulls no punches in setting up a world that echoes that of The Handmaid's Tale while remaining a unique vision. DuChamp is also a literary scholar and publisher; her Aqueduct Press is publishing great stuff. – Cat Rambo

 

REVIEWS

  • "Alanya to Alanya is SF on a broader scale, with The War of the Worlds as one inspiration, but its metaphors apply to a very human tangle of loyalty and betrayal, politics and idealism—Wells and Orwell updated for the end of the 20th century."

    – Locus, June 2005

  • "[Duchamp's] political world building has a level of detail and believability that rivals Bruce Sterling at his best, and her pacing is much better than most other books driven so heavily by political concepts…."

    – Strange Horizons, November 30, 2005

  • "Alanya to Alanya is not so much an exploration of the way humanity responds to an alien presence as an illustration of how a world under siege from its own governments finally revolts; the invaders are simply the catalyst for change."

    – Seattle Times, July 3, 2005
 

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