Name:  Don Webb
Address:   6304 Laird Drive
           Austin, TX 78757
Author of book reviewed:  Kit Reed
Editor of book reviewed:  
Translator of book reviewed:
Title:  
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse

Name of press: Black Ice
Address of small press: FC2/ English Department,
Publications Center/ Campus Box 494, UofC Boulder/ Boulder,
CO 80309-0494 
Year of publication:  1994
Cloth and/or paper:  Paper
Number of pages: 
Price:  Paper: $7.00             Cloth:  
 
In the Tantric tradition there are roles for men and
women.  Women provide the energy, the Shakti, the man direct
that energy to change what is created and conditioned --
they provide the word/Name, the Shiva,  that destroys the
existing universe.  At first they are dependent on one
another, but as their self directed unfolding progresses
they achieve internally the power of the other.  Kit Reed
says of this book that title came from another woman, Katy
Reed, and from that word the book grew.  It is a tale of the
Tantric quest set in a future whose roots are clearly around
us, and as such belongs to the best tradition of science
fiction.  The novel is set sometime in the early twenty
first century in Colorado, or there abouts.
 
The book begins with Chag, short for Charlotte Hagen, 
leading the community of Schell Isle, with signs that the
order of things is about to be strongly threatend.  Her
husband is off on a quest (as are all the men of Schell
island).  The left for the war five years ago.  She misses
him, "Of course she wants him back.  But with him come love
and loss, conflict, confusion, and disorder. Without him she
is autonomous./ God she misses him."
 
Schell Island was designed a secure paradise descended
from the gated enclosures the wealthy have begun to hide
behind, hidden far from the the front where men fight.  It
was protected by an artificial lake, which glistened with a
"thousand points.'  Now the lake is dry and motor are heard
rumbling.  The women are afraid they'll be attacked -- they
don't fear the attack but the return of the men that that
would bring. Everything will change with the Retrun.
 
The book is full of poignant love for men and lost
fathers; and for hatred for men, and has an autobiographical
thread.  Young K. seeing her father Craig Reed become
Missing in Action.  (The similarity of the names Chag and
Craig can't be missed, and is further underlined by the fact
that two of Kit Reed's novels 
Gone
 and 
Twice Burned 

were
written under her birthname Kit Craig) Missing is not
killed, as Penelope knew for twenty years, but is the
Penelope approach the only one?  Are women's identities just
for waiting?  The autobiographical thread continues as we
see K. grow up and her mother loose contact with the world
during fifty years of waiting.  Reed effectively contrasts
the real world which lacks the smooth endings of narrative
with the powerful control we have over our fictions:
 
"Q. Name two organizing principles. A. Theology and
narrative.  The first is an attempt to define or justify our
relationship to the eternal. The second, an attempt to order
what happens to us."
 
>From a ruined city the bikers are coming, a group of
motorcycle riding nuns (of the title)  seeking god's name. 
They provide an answer to the question above.  Don't wait --
seek.  They are in the process of refining their own wisdom
and power, "Mystery makes them powerful, they give their
lives to it." Little K. was raised by nuns, who taught her
she could do anything. 
 
Then there are the Outlaws, the enemy of the city.  The
disposed tribe of the land have taken titles of Royalty. 
Their filthy scavenger ways reflect how they feel in their
displacement, and is a strong barrier against digestion in a
"Project" the men at Schell Isle had created for them.  They
prepare for war against the Isle.  Ruled by Queenie, who
plans revenge against the women of the island, with a
variety of scavenged weapons including pumps of disfiguring
nonlethal acid. Queenie is ugly and hates the women, because
she has seen what must be their flawless image on TV.  They
have an unfair access to the abstraction called perfection. 
Her big fear is that her idiot son Prince, who has "spinning
irises", will have a vision and get a Word to destroy her
world-to-be.
 
The Little Sisters of the Apocalypse reach Schel Isle
first, and despite the resistance of Courtney, Chag's hate
filled paranoid second in command, the nuns agree to install
some beefed up security programs in exchange for access to
the Schell mainframe.  The nuns ride the ruined world
looking for computers to run simulations and tests of god. 
They seek seek the mystery under the aegis of math.
 
These groups, each filled with well drawn characters,
interact in the caldron of becoming.  The book is filled
with a deeper level communication going on than of daytime
consciousness.  Trinitas, the leader of the nuns knows that
their presence is the needful ingredient in something that's
about to happen -- something bigger then the encounter
between the women and the Outlaws.  Chag is able to see a
meaning in events in a short poem called "Road Kills" she is
composing bit by bit through the the story.  K. is able to
come to understanding of her mother's long, hard and slow
process by writing the book.  None of these things are
spelled out and hover nicely beyond the narrative page at
the level of epiphany.  
 
These well handled pieces of transcendence give a clue
as to how to get beyond the damage that certain historical
forces -- such as the war, the exile of the Outlaws from the
land, etc. have on the characters involved.  The only
'saving' referent is one from above or beyond the system
that manifests through the devotion of Trinitas and the
mysterious Brother Jerome.
 
"Meanwhile they are here. Shaken, the two visionaries,
or mystics recognize the eschatological function of events
that nobody can understand."
 
This novel comes to grips, well as as anything can come
to grips with two sets of issuses.  One it deal with how
people can be autonomous alone, yet still both miss and
dread the return of the loved one.  This maturity in
postmodern novels is a rare thing, and maybe the hope of
avant-pop that Black Ice proclaims in the various writings
associated with that title line.  Secondly it comes to grip
with that the relationship between human and historical
forces and the force of narrative.  Human and historical
forces have no closure.  They are strange and fitful.  The
first person to ever craft a story, was the first person top
try and impose her or his sense of beauty on this fitful
state.  Of course that very effort, since it fills others
with hopes and fears makes the process more fitful.  Hope is
where we make it, and Kit Reed reminds us of that nicely. 
 
 
 
 


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