(cross posted at Ambling Along the Aqueduct*).
Awhile back there was a thread at I Blame the Patriarchy about feminist science fiction. Here’s an incredibly incomplete list of some feminist-minded science fiction that I love. The stories and novels won’t be shockingly new to most people who are well-versed in fantasy & science fiction, but I think they’re newish to people who don’t really watch the genre. I’m also going to skip some of the more obvious feminist canon, such as Tiptree, Butler, Delany, Russ, LeGuin, Atwood, and Piercy. If you haven’t read them, go out and read them!
With those provisos in mind, I’m confining myself to three short story recommendations, and three novel recommendations, so please don’t take this list as representative of anything except the first few wonderful things that occurred to me. I’ll probably revisit the topic later. :)
SHORT STORIES:
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Knapsack Poems by Eleanor Arnason
“Knapsack Poems” by Eleanor Arnason is what I’ve been calling my favorite short story since I ran across it in an anthology last year. It’s about some convincingly alien aliens whose physical presence involves a radical reinterpretation of gender and body. Since it’s online, I’m not going to say more. Go read. :) |
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Love’s Body, Dancing in Time by L. Timmel Duchamp Love’s Body, Dancing in Time is a short story collection by L. Timmel Duchamp, the editor of the feminist publisher Aqueduct Press. In this collection, she explores gender, sexuality, and self-definition, through interesting characters, worlds, and extraordinarily beautiful imagery. All of the stories reflect a deep engagement with feminist ideas, rendered striking and moving through Timmi’s unique interpretations. Timmi’s work has an academic cast which the pedant in me really enjoys; one of the stories in this collection is an alternate history examination of Abelard and Heloise, written as an academic paper. My favorite story in the collection is “The Gift,” the story of a woman from a world with a binary gender system who travels to another world and falls in love with a man who is a member of a third gender. |
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With Her Body by Nicola Griffith The stories in this collection are striking and dark, with strange, beautiful imagery. My favorite story in the collection is “Yaguara,” the last story, which carried me away — past writer brain, past self reading the book. In the afterword, L. Timmel Duchamp writes a fascinating analysis of Griffith’s stories; she discusses Griffith’s exclusive use of women as sexual creatures which creates a world where women are not othered in response to men’s sexuality. She also talks about the constructs our culture has built around feminine versus masculine fiction — for instance, how universality is constructed as masculine, so that feminine characters are seen as ‘limited’ and ’embodied.’ While Nicola’s stories were so beautiful as to carry me past the intellectual interpretation of the work while I was reading, I was pleased to have the concepts brought to my attention by Timmi’s afterword when I was done. |
NOVELS:
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Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson
This book weaves through the consciousnesses of three black women in different places and historical periods: a slave in the Carribean; a dance hall girl who was the lover of Charles Baudelaire; and an Egyptian slave girl who worked in a brothel, and later became a saint. I found this book utterly seductive. Reading it was a profoundly moving experience, for me. The prose is gorgoeus, and there’s a kind of fiery, driving strength that propels the tension through disparate places and events. The reader gets to know each character intimately, and Nalo’s deft, insightful, poetic prose allows each storyline to carry the weight of untold and unwritten histories. Unsurprisingly, it’s really smart about the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, spirtuality, history, and the tension between colonized and pre-contact reality. For more good reading, check out Nalo Hopkinson’s blog. |
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The Slave and the Free by Susie McKee Charnas The Slave and the Free seems to be a rerelease, compiling the books Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines which were originally released separately. I wasn’t sure whether or not to include these books, because they seem to me to be just as much feminist classics as Tiptree or Delany, but I don’t think I’ve met many non-science-fiction-oriented people who’ve read them. And that’s sad. These books postulate a post-apocalyptic dystopian future in which women’s oppression has become literal slavery, homosexuality has been naturalized, and the men interact according to the hierarchical guidelines of age cohorts. A female slave escapes the dystopian society at the same time as it begins to collapse. Leaving the boundaries of the country where she was born, she joins the Freewomen who live outside. Among them, she finds not utopia, but an ambiguous society. The novels raise sophisticated questions about what utopia and dystopia are or should be, always choosing the complicated answer over the simplistic one. |
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China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh I wasn’t sure whether or not it was fair to call this book explicitly feminist — not that it doesn’t reflect feminist ideas, but feminism doesn’t seem to me to be one of its projects. And then, as I was poking around on the internet, I saw that it’s a recipient of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award — which is given to science fiction work that plays with gender. The characters in this novel are indeed portrayed with deep characterization that doesn’t abide by gender roles, but I imagine that the Tiptree committee may have been drawn by this book’s portrayal of a world in which homosexuality has been heavily stigmatized (in America) and made illegal (in China). In this novel, China is the major power, and America is a colonial backwater, which has significantly altered the political and cultural landscape of the world. The novel is told in episodic bursts. The main character has three or four chapters, but the people who wind through his life get to tell their own stories, often in ways that don’t relate directly to the main character’s plot. I was drawn in by the book’s simple imagery and prose, and by the effortless way in which it drew deep characters and a startling world. The prose is both deceptively light and emotionally evocative. Each turn on world politics, race relations, and gender, feels effortlessly smooth and accurately drawn. |
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*Two of the books mentioned on this list were released by Aqueduct Press, a press I have obvious ties to. I bought a slough of their books last year and I’m still working my way through them. The work is at the front of my mind. :)
Yes, it’s YA brain candy; sometimes I think that’s the most important genre of fiction. Almost all of Tamora Pierce’s books have central strong female characters.
Thanks for the Arnason link–I like her work a lot and didn’t know about that story.
My recommendations:
Pat Murphy’s short story collection Points of Departure (featuring the amazing ‘Women in the Trees’ and the better-known award-winning novelette ‘Rachel in Love’) is well worth seeking out. The book is unfortunately not in print, but Amazon has a list of used booksellers with copies available (oh how I miss the Spectra Special Editions line :(). Her Nebula-award winning novel The Falling Woman, though more fantasy (or magical realist/interstitial/slipstream, if you prefer), is also a great read.
Also highly recommended (though non-fiction) is Better to have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril, an entertaining, informative, and at times infuriating portrait (begun by Merril prior to her death and completed by her granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary) of the iconoclastic writer, editor, OG Futurian and New Wave champion, without whom Canada’s SF scene would not be what it is today (ie, in existence). The section where Merril recounts her on-the-ground impressions of the ’68 Democratic National convention (which led to her emigration to Canada) is riveting. I first discovered the ex-pat Merril at a very young age (around 3 or so) during her stint ‘hosting’ Doctor Who on Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO. I give her, the good Doctor and Luke Skywalker credit for cultivating my life-long love affair with SF.
Continuing with the Canuckistan theme, anything by Candas Jane Dorsey is worth tracking down, especially her (solo) debut novel, Black Wine (which, like TFW, is only nominally SF, but whatevs :P).
Oh, and kudos to you, Mandolin, for including China Mountain Zhang, one of my favourite SF novels published in the ’90s. McHugh is an underappreciated talent. And I too think Charnas’ work deserves more attention outside the SF community. The Vampire Tapestry is another unfairly obscure masterpiece which should be universally acclaimed (but isn’t).
:)
My recommendations:
Pat Murphy’s short story collection Points of Departure (featuring the amazing ‘Women in the Trees’ and the better-known award-winning novelette ‘Rachel in Love’) is well worth seeking out. The book is unfortunately not in print, but Amazon has a list of used booksellers with copies available (oh how I miss the Spectra Special Editions line :(). Her Nebula-award winning novel The Falling Woman, though more fantasy (or magical realist/interstitial/slipstream, if you prefer), is also a great read.
Also highly recommended (though non-fiction) is Better to have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril, an entertaining, informative, and at times infuriating portrait (begun by Merril prior to her death and completed by her granddaughter, Emily Pohl-Weary) of the iconoclastic writer, editor, OG Futurian and New Wave champion, without whom Canada’s SF scene would not be what it is today (ie, in existence). The section where Merril recounts her on-the-ground impressions of the ’68 Democratic National Convention (which led to her emigration to Canada) is riveting. I first discovered the ex-pat Merril at a very young age (around 3 or so) during her stint ‘hosting’ Doctor Who on Ontario’s public broadcaster, TVO. I give her, the good Doctor and Luke Skywalker credit for cultivating my life-long love affair with SF.
Continuing with the Canuckistan theme, anything by Candas Jane Dorsey is worth tracking down, especially her (solo) debut novel, Black Wine (which, like TFW, is only nominally SF, but whatevs :P).
Oh, and kudos to you, Mandolin, for including China Mountain Zhang, one of my favourite SF novels published in the ’90s. McHugh is an underappreciated talent. And I too think Charnas’ work deserves more attention outside the SF community. The Vampire Tapestry is another unfairly obscure masterpiece which should be universally acclaimed (but isn’t).
:)
I really need to read more Pat Murphy. And Nancy Kress. And lots of other people. ;-)
McHugh taught at Clarion West last year. A friend of mine who was in her class told me that he recommends China Mountain Zhang to anyone who complains that science fiction doesn’t produce good work. (Personally, I just repeat the words Handmaid’s Tale like a mantra, which is surprisingly ineffective.)
You can’t go wrong with (more) Murphy, or Kress (or Patricia Anthony, or Mary Rosenblum, or Pat Cadigan, or Karen Joy Fowler [Sarah Canary and Sister Noon – gush!!1])
Yeah, ’cause Handmaid’s Tale is teh serious, TLS-approved capitol-L Literature, and thus couldn’t possibly be Sci-Fi [sic]. ;)
(Sidenote: IMO Atwood takes unfair lumps in the SF community for her supposed ‘disdain’ for the genre; I think she’s just stuck in the now-antiquated ‘Speculative’ vs ‘Science’ dispute from the ’70s. A lot of what she says about SF could easily have come from Merril or Damon Knight back in the day.)
Even if she does ‘disdain’ the genre (and I know she says things like Oryx and Crake aren’t science fiction, which admittedly makes me giggle), I don’t really blame her. She should do what she thinks will get her voice acknowledged. (My beef is with the editors and agents and professors who take her claims of not being SF at face value!)
Re: Pat Cadigan, maybe I should have reocmmended Alien Sex. :-)
Yeah, I tend to agree with that. Gary K. Wolf[e] had it right, regardless of John Clute’s rather snippy rejection of charitable interpretation:
Ohhh Alien Sex – another fine choice! ‘Roadside Rescue‘ is a great story (interesting how Cadigan is still largely recognized as a ‘cyberpunk’, even though the majority of her work isn’t even SF.)
Candas Jane Dorsey’s A Paradigm of Earth is brilliant.
I think everyone should read every one of Joan Slonczewski’s books and I think she should write a lot more of them.
And I can’t say enough good things about Arnason’s Woman of the Iron People.
I wish she’d finish the series but I still strongly recommend Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman books.
And I like to give some kudos to Jack McDevitt for being one of the few male scifi writers who consistently writes great women characters (plus I love the archeology).
Much of Lois McMaster Bujold’s work is, if not actively feminist, then certainly good at portraying women as awesome, well-rounded women. (The only reason I don’t feel comfortable describing all of her work as actively feminist is that I’m not sure she would characterize it that way) Even her Vorkosigan novels, which center around a male protagonist in an exceedingly patriarchal society, offer what I would read as pointedly feminist criticisms of strict gender roles and patriarchal society.
And her fantasy is awesome.
She is also the editor/force behind the Women at War anthology, which is said to be “the first-ever original anthology of military SF by women, about women at war.” Most of the stories are, ah, not what I’d call explicitly feminist, but the project is definitely feminist in nature.
Esther Friesner – “Psalms of Herod”, “Sword of Mary”, “Yesterday We Saw Mermaids” and others I can’t remember at the moment, as well as the short story “A Birthday”. For someone who’s mainly famous for writing humorous fiction, she does the serious stuff very, very well.