Anti-statist and anarchist themes frequently fill the stories, songs, books and other fiction by Leslie Fish, a 2014 Prometheus Award winner.
“Most of my fan fiction has subtle or blatant Anarchist themes,” Fish recently told the Libertarian Futurist Society.
So does her “fan-fic” novel “The Weight,” which is “pretty blatant,” she said.
Meanwhile, her sf/fantasy novel “Of Elven Blood,” published through Writers Of The Apocalypse Press and available on Amazon, is among her pro-published writings that have “subtle anti-statist themes,” Fish said.
That news will come as no surprise to the fans of Fish’s Darkover-inspired novella “Tower of Horses” and her related filk song “The Horsetamer’s Daughter.”
Together, Fish’s novella and the song that inspired it received the 2014 Special Prometheus Award – the first time that the award has recognized a song.
“That got me into the Darkover anthology series — which, alas, is now coming to an end,” Fish said.
Good news, though: Fish reports that she might have another story in the next and final anthology in the long-running Darkover series, first envisioned in a series of novels and stories by the late great Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Well before Fish had written and had published her first Darkover story, Tower of Horses, (published in the anthology Music of Darkover), she’d been writing and publishing in fanzines for decades.
“I think the experience of fan-writing is the best school for writers,” she said.
For those interested in reading other fiction by Fish, she points readers to An Archive of Our Own, a website for fan fiction where much of her fan fiction can be found.
For “The Weight,” though, fans may have to search a bit harder, she said.
“You’ll have to go to a site called Fanlore, look up “The Weight, Collected”, and then search for the one small line on the page which will direct you to the novel itself,” she said.
Her latest professionally published book is “Nobody’s Victims,” a 2020 collection of stories about women available on Amazon.
“The collection is about women who are, indeed, nobody’s victims — in which the Anarchist themes vary from the subtle to the obvious,” Fish said.
A Good Reads review hailed the collection as an intriguing read.
“No matter how formidable the enemy is, the strong female protagonists simply refuse to be marked as victims. They fight against all odds only to emerge as winners. Kudos to the author for giving us such ordinary yet powerful characters,” the Goodreads reviewer wrote.
Another of Fish’s professionally published books is the satirical “Offensive As Hell,” available on Amazon
Fish, who lives in Arizona with a variable number of cats and guitars (according to her Amazon bio), also has written quite a few stories published in other editors’ anthologies.
Among them: books in Jerry Pournelle’s and Terry Carr’s “War World” series and the “Merovingen Nights” series edited by C.J. Cherryh (the 2020 Prometheus winner for Best Novel for Alliance Rising, co-authored with Cherryh’s partner Jane S. Fancher).
In addition, Fish has written other stories published in the Darkover anthologies series edited by Bradley and Debra J. Ross.
Not all of the anthologies she’s contributed to may be in print at the moment, Fish said, but all should be variously available at Amazon.com
Among her earliest fiction: “Amateurs”, a short story published in a short-lived detective magazine; “Night Cry”; and a story in a Baen Books one-shot anthology story based on her song, “Carmen Miranda’s Ghost Is Haunting Space Station Three.”
Also available is Firestorm, Fish’ filk-music album, which Fish says is due for remixing soon while most of her individual songs also can be found on YouTube.
Albums of her original music can be found at www.random-factors.com, and a list of her published stories at her website, www.lesliefish.com.
See the recently posted Prometheus Blog Appreciation of Fish’s Darkover story “Tower of Horses” and related song “The Horseman’s Daughter,” which together won a Special Prometheus Award in 2014.
* Read the introductory essay of the LFS’ 40th anniversary retrospective series of Appreciations of past Prometheus Awards winners, with an overview of the awards’ four-decade-plus history, that was launched in 2019 on the 40thanniversary of the awards and continues today.
* Prometheus winners: For a full list of winners – for the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards – visit the enhanced Prometheus Awards page on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to the full set of published appreciation-reviews of past winners.
* Read “The Libertarian History of Science Fiction,” an essay in the international magazine Quillette that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.
* Join us! To help sustain the Prometheus Awards, join the Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS), a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf/fantasy fans.
