Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense, and Other Speculative Fiction
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Written by Brandon Sanderson
What makes a woman dangerous? Well, what makes a person dangerous?
To me, the best kind of danger—which is, in a way, also the worst kind—is unexpected. It’s that twisted kind of dangerous that takes something familiar and safe and reveals it as something deadly. Wolves are frightening. To me, a loyal pet going mad and killing a child is ten times more terrifying.
For the Dangerous Women anthology, I wanted to find a way to express this unexpected sort of danger. I didn’t want a lean, professional assassin or a warrior in her prime, dangerous though those characters might be. I wanted something closer to home, a blend of the expected and unexpected. That is where I found Silence Montane.
The first name is one I ran across while reading puritan names. It was the second piece of the puzzle, as it raised questions. Who names their daughter Silence, and what does it imply? What is it like to grow up with this name? The answers built into the concept of a stout pioneer woman who ran an inn on the frontier, drawing the seediest criminals the land had to offer. She’d then track them after they left her inn and murder them for their bounties.
Familiar, yet unexpected. Kindly, yet deadly. The story turned out better than I could have hoped, and I’m thrilled to have had the chance—and the prompting—to write it.
From the Tor/Forge October newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
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A NATURAL HISTORY OF DRAGONS and THE LAND ACROSS are finalists in the Novel category, and QUEEN VICTORIA’S BOOK OF SPELLS and DANGEROUS WOMEN are a finalists in the Anthology category.
Two Tor authors are being awarded the Life Achievement Award: Ellen Datlow and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, and Irene Gallo is a finalist for the Special Award–Professional for art direction for Tor.com.
Tor.com also has two finalists in the Novella category and one in the Short Story category.
Here is the complete list of Tor’s finalists:
This year’s judges are Andy Duncan, Kij Johnson, Oliver Johnson, John Klima, and Liz Williams. Winners will be announced at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention held in Washington, D.C. in November.
Written by Gardner Dozois
Welcome to the world of Dangerous Women! Here, in full, is the introduction to this brand new anthology, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
Genre fiction has always been divided over the question of just how dangerous women are.
In the real world, of course, the question has long been settled. Even if the Amazons are mythological (and almost certainly wouldn’t have cut their right breasts off to make it easier to draw a bow if they weren’t), their legend was inspired by memory of the ferocious warrior women of the Scythians, who were very much not mythological. Gladiatrix, women gladiators, fought other women—and sometimes men—to the death in the arenas of Ancient Rome. There were female pirates like Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and even female samurai. Women served as frontline combat troops, feared for their ferocity, in the Russian army during World War II, and serve so in Israel today. Until 2013, women in the U.S. forces were technically restricted to “noncombat” roles, but many brave women gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway, since bullets and land mines have never cared whether you’re a noncombatant or not. Women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots for the United States during World War II were also limited to noncombat roles (where many of them were nevertheless killed in the performance of their duties), but Russian women took to the skies as fighter pilots, and sometimes became aces. A Russian female sniper during World War II was credited with more than fifty kills. Queen Boudicca of the Iceni tribe led one of the most fearsome revolts ever against Roman authority, one that was almost successful in driving the Roman invaders from Britain, and a young French peasant girl inspired and led the troops against the enemy so successfully that she became famous forever afterwards as Joan of Arc.
On the dark side, there have been female “highwaymen” like Mary Frith and Lady Katherine Ferrers and Pearl Hart (the last person to ever rob a stagecoach); notorious poisoners like Agrippina and Catherine de Medici, modern female outlaws like Ma Barker and Bonnie Parker, even female serial killers like Aileen Wuornos. Elizabeth Báthory was said to have bathed in the blood of virgins, and even though that has been called into question, there is no doubt that she tortured and killed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of children during her life. Queen Mary I of England had hundreds of Protestants burnt at the stake; Queen Elizabeth of England later responded by executing large numbers of Catholics. Mad Queen Ranavalona of Madagascar had so many people put to death that she wiped out one-third of the entire population of Madagascar during her reign; she would even have you executed if you appeared in her dreams.
Popular fiction, though, has always had a schizophrenic view of the dangerousness of women. In the science fiction of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, women, if they appeared at all, were largely regulated to the role of the scientist’s beautiful daughter, who might scream during the fight scenes but otherwise had little to do except hang adoringly on the arm of the hero afterwards. Legions of women swooned helplessly while waiting to be rescued by the intrepid jut-jawed hero from everything from dragons to the bug-eyed monsters who were always carrying them off for improbable purposes either dietary or romantic on the covers of pulp SF magazines. Hopelessly struggling women were tied to railroad tracks, with nothing to do but squeak in protest and hope that the Good Guy arrived in time to save them.
And yet, at the same time, warrior women like Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Dejah Thoris and Thuvia, Maid of Mars, were every bit as good with the blade and every bit as deadly in battle as John Carter and their other male comrades, female adventuresses like C. L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry swashbuckled their way through the pages of Weird Tales magazine (and blazed a trail for later female swashbucklers like Joanna Russ’s Alyx); James H. Schmitz sent Agents of Vega like Granny Wannatel and fearless teenagers like Telzey Amberdon and Trigger Argee out to battle the sinister menaces and monsters of the spaceways; and Robert A. Heinlein’s dangerous women were capable of being the captain of a spaceship or killing enemies in hand-to-hand combat. Arthur Conan Doyle’s sly, shady Irene Adler was one of the only people ever to outwit his Sherlock Holmes, and probably one of the inspirations for the legions of tricky, dangerous, seductive, and treacherous “femmes fatale” who featured in the works of Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain and later went on to appear in dozens of films noir, and who still turn up in the movies and on television to this day. Later television heroines such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena, Warrior Princess, firmly established women as being formidable and deadly enough to battle hordes of fearsome supernatural menaces, and helped to inspire the whole subgenre of paranormal romance, which is sometimes unofficially known as the “kick-ass heroine” genre.
Like our anthology Warriors, Dangerous Women was conceived of as a cross-genre anthology, one that would mingle every kind of fiction, so we asked writers from every genre—science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical, horror, paranormal romance, men and women alike — to tackle the theme of “dangerous women,” and that call was answered by some of the best writers in the business, including both new writers and giants of their fields like Diana Gabaldon, Jim Butcher, Sharon Kay Penman, Joe Abercrombie, Carrie Vaughn, Joe R. Lansdale, Lawrence Block, Cecelia Holland, Brandon Sanderson, Sherilynn Kenyon, S. M. Stirling, Nancy Kress, and George R. R. Martin.
Here you’ll find no hapless victims who stand by whimpering in dread while the male hero fights the monster or clashes swords with the villain, and if you want to tie these women to the railroad tracks, you’ll find you have a real fight on your hands. Instead, you will find sword-wielding women warriors; intrepid women fighter pi lots and far-ranging spacewomen; deadly female serial killers; formidable female superheroes; sly and seductive femmes fatale; female wizards; hard-living bad girls; female bandits and rebels; embattled survivors in postapocalyptic futures; female private investigators; stern female hanging judges; haughty queens who rule nations and whose jealousies and ambitions send thousands to grisly deaths; daring dragonriders; and many more.
Enjoy!
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From the Tor/Forge December newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.
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More from the December Tor/Forge newsletter:
“Everyone will find something to like here.”
George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s Dangerous Women got a starred review in Kirkus Reviews!
Here’s the full review, from the November 1st issue:
Bold and deadly female characters of many genres stride through the pages of this massive anthology.
When genre collections include this many big-name authors, they’re typically a grouping of series outtakes and Easter eggs. Readers who want to know how Molly got that cool apartment in Jim Butcher’s Cold Days; meet Shy South as a young fugitive before the open of Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country; get a glimpse of Quentin Coldwater after the events of Lev Grossman’s projected Magicians trilogy; or encounter Jamie Fraser as an inexperienced (in several senses) but still clever mercenary soldier prior to meeting Claire in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander will surely be satisfied by these and other entries (which of course include a bloody slice of history from Martin’s own blockbuster A Song of Ice and Fire universe). But the stand-alones in this smorgasbord of fantasy, science fiction, noir, historical fiction and paranormal romance are also worthy of notice, particularly Megan Abbott’s chilling “My Heart is Either Broken,” concerning a young mother’s socially inappropriate response to her daughter’s kidnapping; Megan Lindholm’s sadly believable “Neighbors,” in which a lonely widow becomes ever more alienated from her daily routine, her family and her neighborhood; and Brandon Sanderson’s gripping “Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell,” about an innkeeper/bounty hunter who must defeat rapacious ghosts, brutal outlaws and greedy bureaucrats to keep herself and her daughter safe and free.
Everyone will find something to like here.
Dangerous Women will be published on December 3rd.
“This meaty collection delivers something for nearly every reader’s taste as it explores the heights that brave women can reach and the depths that depraved ones can plumb.”
George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s Dangerous Women got a starred review in Publishers Weekly!
Here’s the full review, from the October 7th issue:
Dangerous Women will be published on December 3rd.
“The wide selection of authors guarantees something to please almost every reader’s tastes.”
George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s Dangerous Women got a starred review in Library Journal!
Here’s the full review, from the October 15th issue:
The wide selection of authors guarantees something to please almost every reader’s tastes.
Dangerous Women will be published on December 3rd.
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