Old Venus

ELEANOR ARNASON

Eleanor Arnason published her first novel, The Sword Smith, in 1978, and followed it with novels such as Daughter of the Bear King and To the Resurrection Station. In 1991, she published her best-known novel, one of the strongest novels of the nineties, the critically acclaimed A Woman of the Iron People, a complex and substantial novel that won the prestigious James Tiptree, Jr., Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Orbit, Xanadu, and elsewhere. Her other books are Ring of Swords and Tomb of the Fathers, and a chapbook, Mammoths of the Great Plains, which includes the eponymous novella, plus an interview with her and a long essay. Her most recent book is a collection, Big Mama Stories. Her story “Stellar Harvest” was a Hugo finalist in 2000. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Here she takes us along with a National Geographic safari headed out of Venusport to the wildest part of the Venusian Outback in search of dramatic wildlife footage, and where they find something much more dramatic than they had anticipated.