“The Free Orcs of Cascadia”
Title | “The Free Orcs of Cascadia” |
Year for Search | 2018 |
Authors | Killjoy, Margaret(b. 1982) |
Secondary Title | The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction |
Volume / Edition | 136.3/4 |
Pagination | 165-186 |
Date Published | March-April 2019 |
ISSN Number | 00024-984X |
Keywords | Female author, Transgender author, US author |
Annotation | The story is set in a future in which people in role-playing games choose to fashion their lives on the roles they play. The focus is on the conflict between the “Free Orcs” who are anarchists and the fascist Orcines. The Free Orcs live in the town of Gray Morrow located in the remains of a town in the middle of a “scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir” forest (170). They use “Dark Speech” (related to Tolkien’s “Black Speech”), are matriarchal, which is “roughly anarchist,” (the Orcine are patriarchal), and live by their version of “orcish code of honour” that stresses “interdependence between individual sovereignty and collective identity” (171). The author self-describes as a transgender woman who prefers the pronouns she/her. |
Additional Publishers | Rpt. in her We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow and Other Stories (Chico, CA/Edinburgh, Scot.: AK Press, 2022), 17-35. |
Author Note | Transgender female author (b. 1982) |
Full Text | 2018 Killjoy, Margaret (b. 1982). “The Free Orcs of Cascadia.” The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 136.3/4 (March/April 2019): 165-186. Rpt. in her We Won’t Be Here Tomorrow and Other Stories (Chico, CA/Edinburgh, Scot.: AK Press, 2022), 17-35. The story is set in a future in which people in role-playing games choose to fashion their lives on the roles they play. The focus is on the conflict between the “Free Orcs” who are anarchists and the fascist Orcines. The Free Orcs live in the town of Gray Morrow located in the remains of a town in the middle of a “scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir” forest (170). They use “Dark Speech” (related to Tolkien’s “Black Speech”), are matriarchal, which is “roughly anarchist,” (the Orcine are patriarchal), and live by their version of “orcish code of honour” that stresses “interdependence between individual sovereignty and collective identity” (171). The author self-describes as a transgender woman who prefers the pronouns she/her. |