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fffriday, where we review or rec fiction, fanfic, or other F/F things every Friday. This review is linked from there.
A re-read. This vivid and satisfying science fiction novel, Griffith’s first, has no male characters in the entire book.
Anthropologist Marghe Taishan arrives on Jeep, a planet owned by the sinister Company that seems to control everything, willing to give up everything for the chance to study its people and cultures. The Company’s first expedition found that Jeep was entirely populated by women, and only belatedly discovered why when all its men and 20% of its women died of a plague. The remaining women were quarantined there until a vaccine could be found, and have spent the last five years avoiding meaningful contact with the locals and trying to preserve their existing culture untouched by change.
Marghe has taken an experimental vaccine which may or may not work, and only lasts for six months even if does. She sets out to discover what became of her missing predecessor, and finds that when you look into other cultures, they may also look into you.
Though aspects of the plot are a bit wobbly and there’s enough loose ends that I wonder if a sequel was intended but never materialized, this is a very enjoyable book if you like detailed cultural worldbuilding. (I sure do.) Though character is somewhat secondary to worldbuilding, Marghe’s outer and inner journey is satisfying and her eventual romance with a local woman is believable. She also has an interesting relationship which is neither sexual nor romantic, but otherwise similar enough to a ton of heterosexual genre romances popular at the time that I have to wonder if Griffith was doing a deliberate take on the problematic nature of captive-to-lover romances.
And, of course, if you want to read a book where all the characters are women, there still aren’t many and this is a good one. There’s multiple societies involved, all female and all different and not one partaking of any stereotypes of how women are or how all-female societies would be better or worse than the ones we have. They’re societies. They’re people. No more, no less.
This concept is still neither dated nor much imitated; gee, I wonder why...
Ammonite
fffriday, where we review or rec fiction, fanfic, or other F/F things every Friday. This review is linked from there.A re-read. This vivid and satisfying science fiction novel, Griffith’s first, has no male characters in the entire book.
Anthropologist Marghe Taishan arrives on Jeep, a planet owned by the sinister Company that seems to control everything, willing to give up everything for the chance to study its people and cultures. The Company’s first expedition found that Jeep was entirely populated by women, and only belatedly discovered why when all its men and 20% of its women died of a plague. The remaining women were quarantined there until a vaccine could be found, and have spent the last five years avoiding meaningful contact with the locals and trying to preserve their existing culture untouched by change.
Marghe has taken an experimental vaccine which may or may not work, and only lasts for six months even if does. She sets out to discover what became of her missing predecessor, and finds that when you look into other cultures, they may also look into you.
Though aspects of the plot are a bit wobbly and there’s enough loose ends that I wonder if a sequel was intended but never materialized, this is a very enjoyable book if you like detailed cultural worldbuilding. (I sure do.) Though character is somewhat secondary to worldbuilding, Marghe’s outer and inner journey is satisfying and her eventual romance with a local woman is believable. She also has an interesting relationship which is neither sexual nor romantic, but otherwise similar enough to a ton of heterosexual genre romances popular at the time that I have to wonder if Griffith was doing a deliberate take on the problematic nature of captive-to-lover romances.
And, of course, if you want to read a book where all the characters are women, there still aren’t many and this is a good one. There’s multiple societies involved, all female and all different and not one partaking of any stereotypes of how women are or how all-female societies would be better or worse than the ones we have. They’re societies. They’re people. No more, no less.
This concept is still neither dated nor much imitated; gee, I wonder why...
Ammonite
