The Cherryh Odyssey consists of eight analytical essays on
C. J. Cherryh's works, four personal reflections, and a fifty-six page
bibliography of Cherryh by Stan Szalewicz. Also included is a preface and a
biography, "The Literary Life of C.J. Cherryh" by the editor, Edward Carmien. In "Introduction: What We Do for Love", science fiction author and scholar
James Gunn explains how difficult it must have been for Cherryh to enter the male-dominated science fiction arena in the mid-1970s. He says that she wrote for the love of story-telling rather than for the money. Author and artist
Jane Fancher, Cherryh's business and writing partner contributes a personal tribute, "The Cherryh Legacy ... An Author's Perspective" in which she relates Cherryh's childhood and her school and college years. At the age of ten, Cherryh started writing her own stories when
Flash Gordon, her favorite TV program was cancelled. In this essay Fancher also analyses Cherryh's writing style, in particular a technique Cherryh calls "Third Person Intense Internal" (TPI-squared), in which the writer only narrates what the
viewpoint character sees and thinks about. Betsy Wollheim, the daughter of Cherryh's first publisher,
Donald A. Wollheim, gives another personal account of Cherryh in "A Pioneer of the Mind". Wollheim describes the relationship that developed between her father, also a science fiction writer, and Cherryh, and recounts Cherryh's passion for space travel that is reflected in many of her stories. In "Oklahoma Launch", author Bradley H. Sinor gives his views on Cherryh, who later became his friend and mentor. They both lived in
Lawton, Oklahoma during their childhood, and crossed paths again at a
University of Oklahoma science fiction club meeting. Translator and poet
Burton Raffel explores the literary aspects of most of Cherryh's science fiction novels in "C.J. Cherryh's Fiction". He describes Cherryh as "a master of detail, tone, and emotional wallop." "A Great Deal in Sand:
Hammerfall by C.J. Cherryh" is an extract from author and critic
John Clute's essay collection,
Scores: Reviews 1993–2003. Here Clute analyses Cherryh's
Gene War novels
Hammerfall (2001) and its sequel
Forge of Heaven (2004), and takes her writing to task, complaining about, amongst other things, the "literal back-and-forth slog through the desert" that dominates the story. Heather Stark in "C.J. Cherryh: Is There Really Only One of Her?" questions how one person can write so many books in thirty years. She also examines the ratio of Cherryh's science fiction to fantasy output, concluding that, in her opinion, Cherryh's science fiction works better than her fantasy. In contrast, academic Janice Bogstad praises Cherryh's fantasy in "Shifting Ground: Subjectivities in Cherryh's Slavic Fantasy Trilogy". Here Bogstad analyses Cherryh's
Russian trilogy,
Rusalka (1989),
Chernevog (1990) and
Yvgenie (1991), explaining how her use of magic "complicates and questions typical high-fantasy tropes, particularly wizards and magic powers." Bogstad maintains that Cherryh's books are "satires of their respective genres due to the conveyed intensity of the mental and emotional challenges the characters face in their out-of-the-ordinary experiences." Critic J. G. Stinson explores how human characters in Cherryh's fiction cope with and adjust to
alien cultures in "The Human as Other in the Science Fiction Novels of C.J. Cherryh". She shows how they "all absorb elements of the thinking, behavior, and worldview of their 'adopted' cultures", that gives readers a "highly believable window into worlds and minds outside their own." Janice C. Crosby analyses gender roles in Cherryh's four-book
Morgaine Saga in her essay "A Woman With a Mission; or, Why Vanye's Tale is Morgaine's Saga". Cherryh's
Hugo Award winning novel,
Cyteen is the subject of two essays, "Of Emorys and Warricks: Self-Creation in
Cyteen" by academic Susan Bernardo, and "Dr. Ariane Emory, Sr.: Psychopath—Or Savior?" by academic Elizabeth Romey. Both examine the relationship between a senior scientist Dr. Ariane Emory and her apprentice Justin Warrick at a research facility on the planet of Cyteen. The "Selected Bibliography of C.J. Cherryh" was compiled by Stan Szalewicz, a media librarian at
Rider University in
New Jersey, and is an in-depth 56-page document that comprises: • General biographical resources (interviews, essays and criticism) • Internet biographical resources • Novels, novellas and short stories by Cherryh • Other writing by Cherryh • A list of reviews of works by Cherryh ==Reception==