I read Listen Listen by Kate Wilhelm earlier this year and gave it 3 stars.
After having finished “The Clone” which Theodore L. Thomas co-wrote with Kate Wilhelm, I was getting worried. Wilhelm is a fantastic writer, who brings depth & psychological to her work. “The Clone” from 1965 was simply awful. I think Wilhelm hit her stride in the late 1960s/early 1970s and that’s where some of her favorite works of mine can be found, like The Abyss, The Downstairs Room, The Killer Thing, The Infinity Box, Margaret & I, Somerset Dreams and Other Fictions, The Clewiston Test, and, of course, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
This new book, “Listen, Listen” was better than The Clone, but not her best work. Still, a good book by Wilhelm is worth more than a great book by a lesser craftswoman. It contains three novellas, one novellete, and a speech she gave on writing science fiction.
The first novella, “The Winter Beach” (1981), is the Kate Wilhelm I know and love. A hint of science fiction but an abundance of psychology, philosophy and simply beautiful writing. “Julian” (1978) is a shorter novellete that’s a great story for the most part, even with its weird ending. Still, wonderful craft at work.
The novella from 1981, “With Thimbles, with Forks, and Hope”, didn’t do anything for me. I didn’t enjoy it and ended up skimming it. I think the next novella, “Moongate” from 1978, was even worse.
The concluding essay “The Uncertain Edge of Reality” from a talk she gave at a convention in 1980, was good. Nothing spectacular like Joanna Russ’s essay collection “To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction” from 1995, but still an interesting read.