The Alien's Corruption

By Sara Crow

Slightly Behind and to the Left by Claire Light

Aqueduct Press, 2010

Claire Light, from her bio at the 
Aqueduct Press website

Slightly behind and to the Left is a collection of short fiction and “drabbles,” as Light calls them—one-paragraph to half-page installments of highly conceptual flash fiction. The book is from Aqueduct Press’s series, Conversation Pieces, which examines feminism with a focus on feminist science fiction.

Light’s prose throughout this book is infused with an aura of menace and loss. She isn’t afraid to throw her characters into torturous scenarios like a mad scientist trying to see what sort of atrocity will emerge from the next diabolical experiment. She illustrates the feminist struggle for equality as a common conflict across not only gender lines, but across alien worlds as well, creating characters that struggle for much more than survival—they struggle to remain human when endowed with responsibilities of power that give them the opportunity to become monstrous.