It Walks in Beauty: Selected Prose of Chandler Davis

This scholarly volume, the first maleauthored book from feminist SF press Aqueduct, explores the work of Chandler Davis, who refused to cooperate with 1950s McCarthyism and was dismissed from the University of Michigan faculty, academically blacklisted, and briefly imprisoned. As Lukin writes in his extensive introduction, Davis's writings "remind us that nothing and no one is as immutable as the dominant order would have us believe." Five stories—including "Last Year's Grave Undug" (1953), in which an "atombombed" America is still in the grips of "the Red scare" even though nations no longer exist, and the sublimely powerful "It Walks in Beauty" (1954), which examines a society where women with careers are rendered genderless—are accompanied by numerous essays, a speech, and a lengthy interview, all of significant interest to any fan of political SF. (July)