Fantastic Metropolis

A parody by

Liz Henry

writing as Monique Wittig
commenting on
Ursula K. Le Guin’s
The Left Hand of Darkness

 

WARM IN THE SNOW IN FURS
CONSPIRACY STRUGGLE CELEBRATION
BLOOD LAUGHTER WINE DREAMING
STORIES REVOLUTION SWORDS NETS
THE PERVERT PARTY TRIUMPHANT

 

In light snowfall on a windless day, the perverts run riot on their island. The hot wine pours down their throats, they spill it on their faces and on their pesthry-fur parkas. They are playing a game with a ball and a goal and a stick and the game turns violent. The perverts chase each other down the snowy field and instead of hitting the ball they suddenly drive their sticks into the snow and mud’s soft yielding lap and throw themselves on top of each other inside the goal’s billowing net.

 

THEIR BOOKS AND THEIR STORIES
MARY SHELLEY JANE WEBB LOUDON
CATHERINE LUCILLE MOORE
LESLIE STONE LEIGH BRACKETT
DORIS PISERCHIA RAPHAEL CARTER

 

 

 

The perverts live here on the windy islands, the ancient rings of sterile volcanoes long put out by cold and ocean, half-submerged. The ones in permanent kemmer, the ones they call disgusting and halfdead, thrown out of the towns and homesteads if they won’t numb their sex, their drives, their passion, their minds with hormone shots. The ones who go into kemmer as the same sex as their partners, only to see them recoil and then to be avoided in the kemmerhouse. The ones in permanent somer. If they aren’t jailed or killed they find their way eventually, quietly, to the southern islands.

The perverts built a tall lighthouse, a shining phallus, in the center of the largest island’s ring. By its phallic light, the “normal” youths of the south continent’s coast, who have dared each other to raid the land of the half-dead, navigate and land on the black sand beaches, they enter the lagoons. This time, none of them will come back.

 

RA MACAVOY KATHLEEN GOONAN
JO CLAYTON HEATHER LELACHE
ELEANOR ARNASON SALLY GEARHART
IAN MCLEOD L. TIMMEL DUCHAMP
SUZY MCKEE CHARNAS OCTAVIA BUTLER
SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN GEOFF RYMAN
NAOMI MITCHISON GERD BRANTENBERG

 

The perverts are running up the hillside, heads wreathed in myrtle, holding thyrsus and cup, their furs tattered, their thighs wet with blood and wine. As soon as they saw the sail on the horizon, they started smoking crack and getting blind drunk. Gripped by violence, glee and madness they chase the invaders. Podkayne of Mars grabs Robert Heinlein, throws him to the ground and violently engulfs him in a strong, suffocating burlap bag. D.C. Fontana trips up Spock, who shrieks “Highly illogical!” and begs for mercy as he’s clawed to death by Fontana and the naked, blood-smeared Nurse Chapel. Arkady Darrell has caught Issac Asimov, she’s written all over his body with hot pink magic marker and is pissing on him and giggling insanely. China Mountain Zhang is doing some kind of crazy kung-fu on a snivelling Harlan Ellison. Andre Norton has caught up with Phillip Pullman and J.K. Rowling and Princess Leia and Weena and Altaira and with one hand tied behind her back, is clearly kicking their asses, she’s tearing them apart.

 

THEODORE STURGEON SHERI TEPPER
SYDNEY VAN SCYOC MONIQUE WITTIG
PAT CALIFIA PATRICK CALIFIA OZMA
MARGE PIERCY KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY THECLA
JAMES TIPTREE JR. RACOONA SHELDON

 

 

 

On the black sand by the ocean the snow has melted. All the perverts, the animals, the bulldykes and fairies, the half-dead and half-alive, the freaks with one foot in the grave, one foot in either camp; they’re all sitting around the campfire, flushed with victory. Judith Merril gets up and does a crazy obscene pelvis-thrusting lambada with Samuel Delany and Pam Sargent. To accompany the dancing and songs, Nicola Griffith is pounding out a thumping rhythm on a drum made of human skin and bones. Jane Palmer prays and sings to the goddess Moosevan. Liz Henry works on a book about how important books are, but the heroine of her novel keeps throwing the pages into the fire. Gwyneth Jones is eating a drumstick from the roast corpse of Stanislaw Lem. Joanna Russ is deep in discussion with an argumentative Theodore Roszak; sometimes Gwyneth, greasy from her dinner, barges in, violently disagreeing. Finally, as things quiet down, Ursula LeGuin starts to tell a story about some perverts sitting around a campfire…

 

 

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“Les Géthennères” was first published by Tollbooth Press, May 2003.

Liz Henry is a poet, small press publisher, and science fiction writer living in Redwood City, California. She does literary translation from Spanish to English, and her work has been published most recently in Two Lines and Strange Horizons. Lately, she is kept busy by procrastination on her current project, an online database of annotations to Wittig’s Les Guérillères.