Female science f iction and fantasy writers first published in the 1970s, Part I (A-G)

[rachelmanija]

Once again, it has been made abundantly clear that female sf writers get less respect, less reviews, and less sales than male sf writers. In response, I’d like to take the meme going around (in honor of Joanna Russ) and give it a bit more content.

The original meme is a basic list, available here, which simply shows which writers you're familiar with.

My version: Drop the authors you’ve never read to the bottom. For the remainder, discuss or rec at least one of their books with at least one sentence of explanation about why you do or don’t like it. Ask your readers to tell you about the authors you’ve never read.

Eleanor Arnason. Ring of Swords. A first-contact story involving a race of furry aliens, hwarhath, with a strictly gender-segregated society. The alien culture is wonderfully detailed, unusual but not gratuitously bizarre, and it captivated me. The plot is fairly standard, but the characterization and prose style is good, and oh, those aliens!

Octavia Butler. Wild Seed is an exceptionally well-characterized and thoughtful novel set largely in Africa, about the multi-generational relationship and battle between two people whose mutant abilities make them effectively immortal. Most easily available in the compilation Seed to Harvest, but note that while it stands on its own and ends hopefully, the loosely related sequels are really depressing. Click her tag for more reviews.

Joy Chant. Only read one of hers, and was not enormously impressed. Click her tag to read the review.

Suzy McKee Charnas. I’m a fan of hers. All else aside, she made me read a horse bestiality book – and like it! Her books are all extremely different from each other, and several of the ones long out of print are back, either in paperback or Kindle, such as the unsentimental The Vampire Tapestry, the moving southwestern fantasy Dorothea Dreams (Heirloom Books), and the genuinely epic post-apocalyptic feminist quartet beginning with The Slave and The Free: Books 1 and 2 of 'The Holdfast Chronicles': 'Walk to the End of the World' and 'Motherlines'. For the latter, warning for upsetting content and amazingly non-gratuitous bestiality. If you can get through the first one, they get steadily less depressing and more hopeful as they go along. Click her tag for more reviews.

C. J. Cherryh. I love Cherryh, bizarre prose style and all. No one captures paranoia, sleep deprivation, and alien thought processes quite like she does, which makes reading her books a disconcerting yet immersive experience. I often have to plow through the beginning before I get sucked in, but I am immensely rewarded when I do. My favorites are Cyteen (you can skip the stultifying prologue to get to the juicy emotional and psychological dynamics between the clone slaves and their co-dependent owners), and the weird and wonderful duology Rider at the Gate (Nighthorse, Book 1) and Cloud's Rider, which is both revisionist of and glories in the tropes of the companion animal story, set on a planet where all the animal life is telepathic, and humans must huddle in enclaves protected by the bonded riders of native “horses,” lest they be driven insane. Click her tag for more reviews.

Diane Duane. I’m a huge fan of her, from her marvelous Star Trek novels suffused with a sense of wonder, to her great original fantasy. She can be uneven, but her better work is fantastic. So You Want to Be a Wizard and Deep Wizardry (The Young Wizards Series, Book 2) are still wonderful (the sequels are uneven), and I will never stop pushing her adult fantasy “Tale of the Five” books, which are charming and lovely and have dragons and polyamory and battles and shapeshifting and very cool magic, and make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (Note: warm fuzzies notwithstanding, the second book contains a non-gratuitous, plot-essential scene of child sexual abuse.) Also, you have to click this just to see the most hilariously inappropriate cover in the history of anything: The Door Into Fire (The Tale of the Five #1). Click her tag for more reviews.

ETA: I have been tipped off that "Tale of the Five," several of the Young Wizards books, some uncollected short stories and an original fantasy novel I never heard of before are all available now in e-book form, DRM-free and for anyone in any country to read, here.

Mary Gentle. I either love or hate her books, which vary widely in tone and subject matter. Her completely engrossing A Secret History: The Book Of Ash, #1 (one book split into four due to length), is an alternate history/science fiction/steampunk/war story, about a medieval woman mercenary on a very, very strange journey, featuring stone golems, incursions from the future into the past (and vice versa), a Carthage that never fell and where the sun never shines, and a whole lot of pigs. Dark and violent but not depressing, and laced with black comedy. It might well have been hailed as one of the essential classics of the field had it been written by a man and had a male protagonist: in terms of ambition, scope, and cutting-edge ideas, it’s up there with Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun.

Authors I’ve never read, A-G: Lynn Abbey, Moyra Caldecott, Jaygee Carr, Jo Clayton, Candas Jane Dorsey, Phyllis Eisenstein, Sally Gearhart, Dian Girard, Eileen Gunn. If you’ve ever read anything by any of them, please discuss in comments.

Comments

[jinian]

Good addition! I've read most of these but have very little time this morning. I'll take Jo Clayton. One of the first SF books I ever bought for myself was her Drinker of Souls, which would make an interesting paired reading with Butler's Fledgling for vampirism (handled very differently) and sexual people who appear to be children. It has a special place in my inner ten-year-old's heart. I've also continued picking up her stuff and find a lot of it very interesting and appealing. SKIP the Drum trilogy, written only partly by her during her final illness; it is conventional and boring. READ Skeen's Leap et seq. for spiky, nonstandard narrative fun with a strong female protagonist.

[nonethefewer]

I still want to write a nice letter to Diane Duane, because it occurred to me that all of my favourite books in the ST:TOS series (of which I have nearly all of the books) were written by her.

[julian]

She's very net-responsive, so I suspect an email would work.

(Unless you want to make it all artistic & effortful, which I could see.)

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I need to read Butler and more Cherryh: I read Rimrunners ages ago, but other than that nothing except the Morgaine books (after you mentioned them here). Oh, and I guess a few stories here and there (e.g., in Heroes in Hell). Ditto for Duane, as I've only read her Star Trek books.

I've owned Ash for ages but haven't yet mustered the energy to read it. Real Soon Now.

I do not think I have read anything by the authors you haven't read except a short story or two by Gunn (I know I have read "Stable Strategies for Middle Management"). And maybe some stories by Abbey, but if so I can't recall them now - I never did read the Thieves' World books.

[londonbard.livejournal.com]

Octavia Butler, I loved "Survivor" and I did not know it was rare and valuable until after my copy was stolen.

Suzy McKee Charnas; Holdfast Chronicles, esp. Motherlines.

Cherryh, Rider at the Gate and Cloud's Rider, and I so want more books set on that planet.

Diane Duane, I can't chose between them.

Mary Gentle, "Grunts"

Jaygee Carr - don't hesitate for another moment, read "leviathon's Deep". I've been hesitating over reviewing it, but nice readers don't give spoilers.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Tell me more about Leviathan's Deep! I'm not asking for spoilers, just something more than "it's good."

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

I think that's the one about the quasi-Hellenic/feudal society where most of the less well off eighty or ninety percent of the population is essentially indentured to the wealthier upper crust, generally referred to as "contract holders" or, more familiarly, "c'holders."

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

No, that's the Rabelaisan space opera series. Leviathan's Deep is the one with the quasi-aquatic matriarchy where a woman learns not be sexist by interacting with a male human spy.

[branna.livejournal.com]

Yes! _Survivor_ was the first Butler that I read and it fascinated me at the time. I think I still have my (actually my father's) copy, somewhere in the boxes of books we have not yet unpacked. Seriously, it's that rare?

[foibos.livejournal.com]

Oh Mary Gentle. Golden Witchbreed was, I think, the first really long novel I read in English (I had read LotR in English earlier, but that doesn't count since I more or less knew it by heart already in Swedish). It was... an experience.

But: what about Tanith Lee? The great literary love of my youth -- doesn't she qualify?

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I expect she will be in the second post (this is just A-G).

[foibos.livejournal.com]

Oh, right. Well. Looks, brains: I've got neither.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Did you see that Diane Duane has been re-releasing the Tale of the Five as ebooks and also various short stories set in that world (http://ebooksdirect.dianeduane.com/collections/vendors?q=Lionhall+Press)?

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

SHORT STORIES, no. *zooms*

(er, thank you.)

[estara.livejournal.com]

Glad to spread the addiction ^^

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I did not! Thank you very much!

[estara.livejournal.com]

Glad to spread the addiction ^^

[affreca.livejournal.com]

Lynn Abbey I mostly was introduced to her via the Thieves World books. Jerlayne is a domestic book, about running an elvish household in an alternate dimension.

Phyllis Eisenstein I read Sorcerer's Son when I was young, and blind to its flaws. Bog standard fantasy world, man searches for his father and finds a soap opera. None of the rest of her books made an impression on me, though I managed to hunt down most of them.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Is Jerlayne any good?

[branna.livejournal.com]

I find that an admirably spoiler-free but oddly misleading description of JERLAYNE, actually.

I liked JERLAYNE quite a bit, but it's an extremely odd book. I'm not sure I could tell you why I found it worth reading without spoiling it completely.

[affreca.livejournal.com]

The obsession about kids and the magic necessary to run a household is what I remember about the book (The image of stealing Teflon pans sticks in my mind). It may not be what other people get out of the book. It is an OK book, but not great. I'm not good at analyzing books, so I'd love to see someone else's take on spoiler.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Don't tell me, I'll dig up a copy.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I mostly know Gearhart from stuff like her Tarot book, and Loving Women/Loving Men: Gay Liberation and the Church, which is sort of what it says on the label. She's a big ol' queer and feminist activist. I haven't read any of her fiction.

Lynn Abbey, I know from Thieves World, and she was fun there, but having looked her up for the meme, she seems to have written /way/ more than that. Some of which looks fun.

As for Duane -- wow, what? That cover. I just. ... OK then! (I thought the blue horse-and-sword cover was bad -- (Er, this one (http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/55/d0/55d0855d36b55c55979736d51414141414c3441.jpg).)

Black Wine

[amberley.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it yet, but Jo Walton liked Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey very much. Sadly out of print, but available on Amazon for not that much.

Re: Black Wine

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

That sounds great. Thanks!

[branna.livejournal.com]

As far as Joy Chant goes, I wasn't a big RED MOON, BLACK MOUNTAIN fan. The Vandarei novel I read and loved was WHEN VOIHA WAKES. I'm also sort of fond of THE HIGH KINGS.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it's been more than 20 years since I read Jo Clayton, but I remember she had a cool mix of fantasy/sf worlds with hermaphroditic people in the Drinker of Souls trilogy. I came across them because of the Jody Lee covers and they were definitely interesting to read, but I didn't keep them on my keeper shelf...
She wrote way more than that (http://www.dm.net/~mjkramer/), though. And from what I gather the Diadem series is better known.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Also: The Young Wizards INTERNATIONAL EDITTION can be sold everywhere EXCEPT the USA! - because the USA publisher has those ebooks under contract - so you ought to be able to buy everything at DD's site, except the Young Wizard novels, really.

[amyaderman.livejournal.com]

You mentioned Mary Gentle's Ash books! I have so much love for this series and am always disappointed that few people seem to know about them. My favorite parts are the black humor, the Academics/Archaeologists Doing Stuff, and the idea of alternate histories.

I also second the recommendation for Black Wine by Dorsey.

[phoenixreads.livejournal.com]

Oooo! Awesome!

My post.

I went ahead and did the whole 70s; I'm sadly underread in that decade, though I think I'll do better when the 80s roll around. The only authors I have under my belt are Butler (2), Cherryh (12), Gentle (1), Jones (1), Kress (3), Lee (1), McKillip (16), and Willis (all except the new ones). But two of those (McKillip and Willis) are on my favorite-of-all-time list, and another two (Butler and Cherryh) are on my will-attempt-everything-they've-ever-written list! :)

[poilass.livejournal.com]

I have read a lot of Butler but there are times when I wonder if she was fully aware of how massively creeptastic most of her protagonists are. My favourite of hers was the first of the Parable books, but I've never re-read it and it was a long time ago.

I've read lots of Duane, including the whole YW series and Spock's World (which is awesome!). When she's good, she's very very good. When she's not very good, she's still pretty decent. Tales of Five I read a long time ago but I want to reread them; I'm hopeful they are books I'll actually get more out of as an adult, rather than having that teenage shine fall off. Was the series ever finished though? I remember it ending on a cliffhanger.

I think that's about all I've read from A-G, apart from Cherryh's Foreigner books. I struggle with her beginnings too, which is why I've never made it more than a chapter into Downbelow Station. I have a copy of the Wanderground by Gearheart, but I've never read it. (I paged through the first chapter just now; probably won't be reading it!)

I have to say, that list seemed really short to me, but I went through a few of my books; apparently I've read more from the 80s.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

"The Tale of Five" was never finished, but it doesn't end on a cliffhanger, unless you count, "Yeah, evil is still out there and will probably make more trouble later." It ends with a giant polyamorous wedding!

[poilass.livejournal.com]

Good to know, though I do not remember the giant polyamorous wedding! I must've stopped reading before that one.

[thinking-lotus.livejournal.com]

I had a positive fuzzy feeling upon seeing Jo Clayton's name but after I googled the only title that seemed more than faintly familiar (they are all kind of generic, no?) was "Changer's Moon," which seems to be the 3rd part of a trilogy so I wouldn't start there.

Otherwise, Butler is depressing and I basically love Cherryh with no ifs, ands or buts.

Mary Gentle I remember rather liking (An Alien Light?)