This coming Tuesday, February 7 will be a "Thieves' Night" ("what can we steal from [William Gibson / Catherine Moore / insert name here...") discussion of two powerful stories: "The Winter Market" by William Gibson, and "No Woman Born" by Catherine Moore. Craig deLancey & Eric Scoles will facilitate.
The stories explore different aspects of the traditional SF questions about the nature and extent of humanity. In Gibson's story, a woman ravaged by congenital disease and drug abuse yearns for a chance to transcend her flesh. Moore's protagonist is a brilliant stage actress whose body is destroyed by fire and replaced with a marvellous metallic cyborg body, to which she somehow brings the illusion of human affect. Both stories are approached from the perspectives of men who admire them, and both have inspired a wide range of scholarly, critical response.
"The Winter Market" is a typically well-crafted early Gibson work, but like most of his work also functioning as a powerful narrative experiment. "No Woman Born" betrays some of the typical excesses of its time, but is arguably as thematically challenging as Gibson's work.
Where to find them:
"The Winter Market" is anthologized in Burning Chrome
"No Woman Born" is widely anthologized, but probably most readily available in print as part of The Best of C. L. Moore
