“The Free Orcs of Cascadia”

Submitted by LT_Sargent on Sat, 08/03/2019 - 23:25
Title“The Free Orcs of Cascadia”
Year for Search2018
AuthorsKilljoy, Margaret(b. 1982)
Secondary TitleThe Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Volume / Edition136.3/4
Pagination165-186
Date PublishedMarch-April 2019
ISSN Number00024-984X
KeywordsFemale 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.