Here's a place to talk about science fiction written by women. 'Girlybooks' is a different community of readers than, say, 'Science Fiction Fans' is, so I thought it would be interesting to open up some conversations here.

Whether you read Le Guin, Butler, Russ, Slonczewski, Jones, Tiptree, Hand, Bujold, Cherryh, Charnas, Bear, Sullivan or the many others, let's talk.

First, how did you start reading SF? and when did you discover women authors of SF (and who was it?)

My first introduction to SF was when i was in the early teens. The first book was A Rag, A Bone, and a Hank of Hair by Nicholas Fisk. But after that I didn't read much more SF until my partner introduced me to Philip K Dick.

Shamefully I hadn't investigated SF by women writers until starting on Librarything! (unless The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake count - are these 'speculative fiction' works rather than 'science fiction'??)

Since then I've tried and enjoyed Le Guin, Butler and L. Timmel Duchamp thanks to recommendations from LTers.

I tend to buy SF by publisher because my knowledge of the genre isn't that wide, but women seem to rarely appear in the SF Masterworks or Gollancz series.

I have Kate Wilhelm on my TBR list, but would like to be introduced to new authors.

Forgot to add that I'd be interested to know what people feel women writers bring to the genre. Is there a difference in focus between male and female SF writers? The Butler and Duchamp that I've read appear to have a more political focus, examining the development of future societies to reflect on how our own is constructed. Whereas some male authors I have read have been what I think are called 'space operas' - epic tales of exploration and adventure. (as I said above, my reading is not wide, so apologies if these examples are sweeping stereotypes!)

What an excellent idea Avaland. I really enjoy science fiction when it’s good, but I’m really particular about what I think falls into the category of good science fiction.

My favorite women science fiction writers are as follows:

Ursula Le Guin ***** I’d be hard pressed to pick favorites. In general, I tend to prefer her later work to her earlier work, but I’ve been reading her since her earlier work was her work. She has developed into a stunning crafter of prose. My favorite of her novels is The Telling. It got mediocre reviews, but if I were a gambling woman, I’d say it will one day be considered her best novel. Contenders for second place include The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and Tehanu although I suppose Tehanu technically qualifies as fantasy.

Suzette Hadin Elgin**** I really like her Native Tongue series. This is one of the most underrated set of works by any science fiction writer male or female.

Connie Willis ***.5 I think her books make for a nice, light read.

Octavia Butler I'm not sure how I'd rate her. I've kept reading her over the years so that says something. I had composed a long exposition for the Butler thread but LT ate it, and I haven’t been able to work up sufficient energy to rewrite.

Doris Lessing ***** I know people don't usually think of her as a writer of science fiction, but I really like her Canopus in Argos series, in particular The Making of the Representative for Planet Eight (I cried at the end) and the Marriage between Zones Three, Four, and Five. I know Le Guin doesn’t think much of this series, but while Le Guin is an excellent writer period, she’s a terrible judge of good science fiction and fantasy. I’ve bought a number of books on the strength of Le Guin’s reviews or recommendations. The majority were duds or else vastly overrated. That’s the funny thing about Le Guin. She’s generous with less talented writers than herself but doesn’t seem to recognize those writers who are as talented as she is. Back to Lessing, I also love Memoirs of a Survivor – a gorgeous piece of writing.

Sheri Tepper Again, I don’t now how to rate her. When she’s good, she’s very good, and when she’s bad she’s execrable. Her bad writing represents all the stuff I don’t like about science fiction. I just bought two of her novels, which I’m getting ready to recycle. At her worst, she constructs worlds that simply aren’t believable, which contain lots of bizarre aliens with bizarre names that demonstrate a lack of grounding in linguistics. It’s rather a “let’s see what sort of interesting name I can invent.” I enjoyed her latest The Margarets and The Gate to Women’s Country.

Mary Doria Russell ***** The Sparrow and The Children of God are excellent. She was an academic before turning novelist. Her background is in anthropology and biology. Like Le Guin, she has the ability to engage in believable world building. But then Le Guin’s parents were anthropologists as well. I have a theory that the most believable worlds are those constructed by writers well grounded in anthropology.

Margaret Atwood’s ***** Oryx and Crake and The Hand Maid’s Tale are both excellent.

Jeannette Winterson’s The Stone Gods is great. I know, I know. She denies that it’s science fiction, but she’s just being snobby. The term has a bad reputation because of all the incredibly rotten sci-fi out there. Being shelved under science fiction is like being sent to death row (if one is a serious writer and not simply a hack with a formula).

Edith Forbes **** My rating is based on the one novel of hers that I’ve read Exit to Reality. She did the whole Matrix thingy before people were doing the Matrix. I’ve never met anyone else who has read her work.

Maureen McHugh Most of her novels are okay (three stars), but Mission Child is phenomenal. I noticed that LT has somehow managed to delete her from my library. Hmmmm. I just added her again.

Scarlet Thomas’s The End of Mr. Y is also excellent although it may perhaps fall more into the speculative fiction category than the science fiction category. That’s the problem; the borders between genres are usually blurred. Thomas mostly deals in other genres.

And . . . Alice Sheldon aka James Tiptree – I really enjoyed the recent biography about her. Based on her biography as well as the handful of her short stories I’ve read, she strikes me as incredibly imaginative and smart, but immature and suffering from a case of arrested development. Here again, she’s another writer about whom Le Guin raves, but I just don’t see it. Sheldon had a great imagination but she was not a good craftswoman. Her prose style stinks. She reminds me a bit of the artist Louise Nevelson – her wood sculptures are interesting but she’s a crappy woodworker. In fact, she knows nothing about woodworking. Her art will not hold up over the long haul outside the carefully, climate controlled atmosphere of a museum because its badly assembled. Nevelson doesn’t respect the medium with which she works. That characteristic really pisses me off. But back to Sheldon, she had the ideas, but lacked the focus to carry them out. She clearly had the intelligence and ability, which makes her all the more frustrating to read. Although she’s hailed as a great feminist writer (and I would agree), I can never shake the feeling that to her, “good feminism” means being a better “man” than the other men. I want to say to her, “Norman Mailer was wrong. You don’t need a penis to write.” Incidentally, I agree with Truman Capote’s assessment of Mailer: “Norman doesn’t write, he types.” A brilliant statement.

I know I’ve read other women science fiction writers, but their names escape me at the moment, either because I didn’t like their work enough to keep it on my bookshelves or because it falls between genre cracks and is less easily identifiable as science fiction.

For children, Madeleine L’Engle is great. Her adult fiction is “icky” and tends to sentimental religious stickiness.

Sylvia Engdahl is another great writer of children’s science fiction. She’s on LT. I found her library disappointing Sorry Sylvia, I loved your books so much when I was young that I was expecting a spectacular library, so please take the “disappointing” as relative.

Vis á vis your other questions, I started reading science fiction when I was in second grade. The first two writers I read were women – L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet) and then Engdahl (Enchantress from the Stars, This Star Shall Abide, Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains, and The Far Side of Evil). I just googled her. She apparently has written some books for adults as well. I have to check into this. By sixth grade, I had read all of what then existed of LeGuin’s Earthsea series. I had also started reading Kurt Vonnegut about the same time. When I was in middle and upper school, I thought he was brilliant. My assessment has changed since then. Other science fiction writers that I read as a child and teenager include Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Frank Herbert. I also read a lot of really crappy stuff that I thought was crappy at the time. Consequently, I tend to exercise caution when buying science fiction.

P.S. What’s the story on the international science fiction scene. What are writers in non-English speaking countries doing. I only know of a handful of non-English speaking science fiction writers (mostly utopian/dystopian fiction at that). Does anyone else have information to share here?

This is all so fascinating, especially for someone like me, who knows absolutely nothing about the subject.

My first introduction would've been elementary school with books like The Forgotten Door and Runaway Robot leading on to the Tom Swift series. It was a smallfraction of what I read. As I got older we had to read books like Alas, Babylon! and Fahrenheit 451 in school, still this was a tiny fraction of my reading.

It really wasn't until the early 1980s when I was home with three small children that I started reading SF with great intensity. I think my first female-authored SF was likely Kate Wilhelm, perhaps Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang but Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness could not have been far behind. From there I launched into feminist SF (loosely defined as SF which might deal with women's roles in society) with such fabulous books as Walk to the End of the World by Suzy Charnas; The Female Man by Joanna Russ; The Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski; Gate to Women's Country by Sheri Tepper and so many more. I also read essays by many of these authors.

My SF reading has faded into the background quite a bit, particularly the space and heavily technological stuff, but some of the more interesting titles I have read in the last couple of years are:

Fledging by Octavia Butler. Race, family, and the nature of power is stuffed into this very, very unusual vampire story (the premise is SF)
The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Hand. A 'cure' is offered to a group of workers with autism - what does it mean to be 'normal'?
The Shadow Speaker by Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu A coming of age novel set in a future Niger.
Taylor Five and Siberia by Ann Halam a.k.a.Gwyneth Jones Suspenseful and adventurous YA novels with a SF premise (environmental issues and genetic engineering)
The Secret by Eva Hoffman. A daughter discovers she is her mother's clone. A book about self-identity (find this book on the mainstream shelves).
Carnival by Elizabeth Bear. Enjoyable SF adventure novel set on a planet where women rule.

avaland, if you liked the secret, read Mary Modern. I quite enjoyed it.

Urania1 - interesting question about non-English writers. I really have no idea. I hope some one has some suggestions.

And thanks both for the info on female authors. My bookmooch list has increased yet again.

This thread has set me thinking about SF this afternoon and I've decided that ultimately it's incredibly frustrating because I won't live long enough to find out which author's creations turn out to be the closest to what actually happens in the future!

Oh, hands down, Sheri S. Tepper, is my favorite recommendation. I love her! But, you already know that, avaland, I think.

I started reading SF by picking up my dad's Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein books, which set me on the path to read more and more. I don't remember how I got into female SF authors, it was all SF to me, but I remember Tepper and Le Guin from early on, and, of course, Anne McCaffrey, although she is a bit more on the fantasy side.

In some ways, I don't think that gender matters, because I love some male and some female authors. I do think that women investigate a wider array of possible societies, in some ways. Coming from the non-dominant worldview, women have an easier time turning societies around and viewing them from a wider angle, I think. It is difficult to really root out all of your assumptions about the way things have to be, and I think it is more difficult if you haven't come up against as many walls that try to hem you in. I don't think this is as true as it once was, but women are more likely to have had experiences that force them to go around the standard route to do what they want, when they hit upon core assumptions of a society, if that makes sense.

Thanks for bringing this topic here, avaland!

Ok, many people came and posted while I was composing (too much multi-tasking). Urania1, I agree, Tepper can be pretty bad, but I love her really good stuff so much that I find I don't even hate her bad stuff. The Gate to Women's Country is one of my favorite books ever, and I really like some of her other stuff, too, although she definitely has her weaknesses (preachiness, a tendency to overdo the "men are evil" stuff in some books, etc.).

A newer writer that I like a lot is Chris Moriarty. She writes just about everything I love--hard science, artificial intelligence, the nature of sentience, interpersonal relations, space travel, world-building, and her second book even throws in a bit of the spy thriller! Oh, swoon...

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2008, 1:59pm.

urania, that looks like an interesting book, I may have to check it out. Agree somewhat about Tepper, when she is good she is very, very good! I'm still chuckling over aliens impregnating the right-to-life talking heads because they wouldn't abort the offspring (was that The Visitor or The Fresco?) Have loved Maureen McHugh, she has a new book out co-authored with L. Timmel DuChamp that I have in my Amazon basket. Have loved Willis for entertainment also.

Susan, ditto with much of what you said re: Tepper. Have not read Moriarty. Is she big on girls-with-guns?

Charbutton, I have heard great things of du Champ. Are you reading that series she has written? I can't decide whether to start there (obviously with book 1) or with her short fiction collection.

I would have to think about a list of current favorite authors. . .

I don't have much to add at the moment about non-English-speaking writers (there was the French author Jacqueline Harpman who wrote I Who Have Never Known Men). Will have to think on this more.

#10 sussabmax, I'll definitely check out Chris Moriarity. avaland and charbutton, I've ordered Alanya to Alanya. It should be here any day now. And avaland, funny you should mention it, but the mailwoman delivered Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men to my mailbox today.

N.B. Everyone should check out Small Beer Press. They're not strictly science fiction, although there's a bit of that. They specialize in interstitial fiction (that stuff that falls between genres - part sci-fi, part speculative, part fantasy, part fabulist, etc., etc., etc.,). The press has a great website with lots of interesting links. They also publish some interesting women writers, more so than your average not dedicated to women's press. I've been happy with almost everything I've ordered from them. They may have an LT presence; they did at one point, but I don't know what the current status of publishers being online is right now. I know there were some complaints. Oh and they put out an absolutely tres fabulous chapbook entitled Lady Churchhill's Rosebud Wristlet.

I also just remembered one other book that I absolutely adore Into the Forest by Jean Hegland. This book is sort of a post-apocalyptic, all infrastructures are breaking down, story about two sisters. An extremely interesting book, it was originally published by Calyx and then then years later picked up by one of the major houses. I'm proud to say I bought it when it was still a Calyx publication. Okay, so I'm a book snob.

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2008, 4:17pm.

>12 Gavin and Kelly are on LT as "Small Beer Press" (and they've just entered a bunch of new associated books to their library). When they first went on, Gavin told me they had some trouble deciding what they would come on LT as, so this is what they decided. I have been following them since their beginning and have most of their books which I tag 'Small Beer Press" (when I remember). I don't go for the straightforward fantasy like Kushner and Marks, though.

I have had the Hegland in the TBR pile for some time now. . .

Wow -- this thread got spun out quickly! I'm not sure when I started reading sci fi -- it's always been a rather guilty minor interest. I think I've trended more towards alternate worlds and fantasy more than hard core sci fi -- the hi tech stuff pretty much bores me. When I was in college, Dune by Frank Herbert was all the rage, and the Easter vacation that I spent on campus writing my senior thesis, I escaped into Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan. I loved Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness and read some of Anne McCaffrey. Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood was intriguing. And there's Angela Carter's The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and The Passion of New Eve -- not my favorite of her novels, but anything by Carter is good.

I share Urania's enthusiasm for Doris Lessing's Canopus in Argos series and Memoirs of a Survivor; I also quite liked her recent Mara and Dann -- it's stayed with me over the past few months.

And we mustn't forget the mother of all science fiction: Mary Shelley and her remarkable Frankenstein.

I have The Mount by Carol Emshwiller in my TBR stack -- anyone have any reactions to that one?

I first got into SF in high school, when I discovered my parents' shelf of old book (well, old - mostly from around the 70s). Some of my favorites are the Women of Wonder books. There are three, I think, anthologies of SF short stories, all written by various women authors.

avaland, yes I'm reading the Marq'ssan Cycle. I've read books 1 - 3 so far.

1 and 3 are really interesting, looking at what might happen if women rule the world, or at least a part of North america. Book 2 focuses much more on the relationship/power struggle between the two main female characters, which I found less interesting.

Hmm, avaland, I am not sure what you mean about girls-with-guns. Her main protagonist is a soldier and a woman, but it doesn't seem to be the main shtick. Her relationship with the AI and genetics are a much bigger element. The books really explore how different you need to be to stop being human. Can you have human compatible DNA, and still not be human? How much technology can you integrate into your being before you stop being human? Is humanity a function of biology, or of emotion? Fascinating stuff.

ETA: I am going to have to start ordering more books online. I get great recommendations here, and then I head to the bookstore, and I can almost never find any of the books. I do have luck at the used bookstore occasionally, but Borders or Barnes and Noble? Forget about it.

I want to pick up some Du Champ, and I Who Have Never Known Men sounds good. Plus many more--keep the recs coming, please!

Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2008, 6:23pm.

avaland, I agree with you about the Kushner; however, Kushner's retelling of Thomas the Rhymer is beautiful and has that fey quality that one looks for in literature about fairies. The rest of her stuff I can do without. I do like Marks although I don't think I'd give her higher than a three. She's got some really good concepts; however, she tends to explain too much to make sure that her readers get the weighty point she's trying to make. I think the points will make themselves if she'd just back off a bit. She also needs to work on fleshing her characters out. They're a bit flat, yet Marks gives one enough of glimpse that one finds oneself wanting to know more. It sounds like you're on a first name basis with the folks at Small Beer. They sound so interesting.

>19 I'm not much one for fairies, although I do go for retold fairy tales from time to time (i.e. Carter)

>18 There seems/ed to be a large number of stories featuring girls-with-guns. Perhaps some of the books are only marketed this way and stories are about something more or at least different. Call it a reoccurring motif, perhaps. Bear's Carnival is a case in point. Women rule in New Amazonia and they value their weapon very highly. Or what about Tricia Sullivan's Maul which features girls in gun battles. Is this the modern SF equivalent of the Amazonian warrior? I don't know, just wondering out loud about these things (here's an older one... remember the 'bald woman in SF'?) If it is a trend or even just a reoccurring motif, I wonder what it says about women or feminism today.

>17 Thanks for the tip. Book 1 is what I have in my Amazon basket but I was holding off until I had a recommendation or two. Marietherese is a big du Champ fan, I think; perhaps she will pop in at some point.

>jane, unless of course you are Tom Disch who argued passionately that Edgar Allan Poe was the father of science fiction (I didn't buy the argument, nor most of his others either). I remember The Mount being amusing and thought-provoking but it was soooo many books ago.

On the girls with guns motif, I seem to remember Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig was an early manifestation of the Amazonian theme. Though it's been years since I read it, I remember being a bit chilled -- have to go take a look at it again.

SPOILER ALERT for Les Guerilleres

>21, If I recall correctly, the women didn't have guns. Wittig was interested in the way language structures culture. The women seized control of the naming game - a considerably more pacifist set of Amazons than grrrls with guns. But . . . as I said, it's been a while. I need to pull out my copy and check. Are you familiar with Susan Donnelly's poem Eve Names the Animals? I can't seem to find a copy of it anywhere either in the poetry section of my bookcase or online or I'd print it here.

Ah, I see what you mean, especially about Maul. Actually, Catherine seems to go more in for (cybernetically-enhanced) hand to hand combat than her gun, and she certainly doesn't fetishize her gun. So, I'd say no, it is not in that motif.

As a trend, I'd say it is more about girls co-opting traditional male environs, as if that is the only way to power. In Maul, though, they are actually young girls that are doing this, showcasing, to me, what an immature thing this is. You get the idea they may be figuring out that it is not quite as cool as they thought. Or, maybe just a comment in general on the immaturity of using guns as a way to cope with life.

I have to say, Carnival looks pretty interesting. But I liked Joan Slonczewski's vision of a all-female society based on cooperation and consensus in A Door Into Ocean much better than the idea of a military all-female society.

Urania - Just found this info on the web: Eve Names the Animals- apparently the title poem is in both The Norton Introduction to Poetry and the Norton Introduction to Literature. Perhaps you may have these books. I do not unfortunately.

Whoops, I accidentally flagged you englishrose60. Sorry. I do have both Nortons and was positive the poem was there. However, I couldn't find it in the index. I must have the wrong edition of both works. When I moved out of my office, I got rid of a lot of anthologies that were mostly redundant. "Eve Names the Animals" was probably in one of those "redundant" anthologies. Ouch.

Oh! Dear! Urania. Amazon.com and biggerbooks.com have the Connelly book for sale, second-hand I think.

Damn it all englishrose60! I had you pegged as one of the "sweet" ones, but it turns out you're a siren of temptation after all. I'm off to Amazonia to buy the Connelly book. There goes the rest of my pocket money for the year.

Oh! The Forgotten Door - I loved that book!

I think one of the things that women bring to Science Fiction is a treatment not only of the nifty gadgets, but also of how the nifty gadgets affect humans, both on an individual and a social level. A great example is Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold which is all about how genetic engineering to adapt to free fall causes adaptation in the social group as well.

Women authors? There are so many!

S. L. Viehl's Stardoc series is great for alien encounters
Rebecca Ore's Becoming Human trilogy is a wonderful mediation on what makes a human a human and an alien an alien.
Jo Clayton for classic visit other planets and wow them with your psychic powers. Ann Maxwell is good for that too.
Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy offers insight into possible ways human cultures might develop after colonizing other planets.
Emily Davenport Life in the possible corporate frontier of space.
Sara Stamey another take on human cultural variety
Michelle Crean Girls and their high powered planes, plus a war on the genetically engineered thrown in.
Dana Stabenow's Star series for colonizing nitty gritty
Elizabeth Moon Star pirates and excitement in and out of the space military

Okay . . . I have to stop to breathe now. Anyway - what a great topic! My TBR list is growing by leaps and bounds.

Message edited by its author, Sep 24, 2008, 6:51pm.

*grins*

Urania, I think I have that poem in a single author collection; will find it and post later tomorrow, up to my eyeballs in schoolwork at the moment (which is why I'm in here taking a brain break).

Susan, your comment As a trend, I'd say it is more about girls co-opting traditional male environs, as if that is the only way to power. might just be 'spot on'. The guns in Carnival have more importance but it's not central to the story.

I read Carnival because I wanted to see what the younger (younger than me) writers were writing as SF. The idea of women ruling a New Amazonia intrigued me and was reminiscent in some ways of The Gate to Women's Country but, although a fun adventure story with some plenty of action and intrigue, and some interesting and mildly thoughtful elements, I thought it stopped short of becoming a novel like Gate or Door Into Ocean. If you read it, I will be very interested in what you have to say about it.

Have any of you read Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall? I read a blurb about it somewhere and it sounded really interesting. I've been looking for it at the library, but haven't found it yet.

>31 No, but I've got The Carhullan Army (which won the Tiptree Award) and The Electric Michelangelo in my TBR pile, assuming it's the same Sarah Hall.

Just checked on it, it is the same Sarah Hall and drat! it does look intriguing (it's her 3rd novel). . . (by drat! I mean it slipped into my Amazon cart. . .)

ooh! avaland you tell such porkies - slipped indeed:-))

er...thanks...superfancy, urania, and charbutton, I just purchased Daughters of the North, Mary Modern and the 1st Du Champ book.

Note: will keep an eye out for some of these classic SF novels by women at the library sale tomorrow.

Off to find the poem...

Message edited by its author, Sep 25, 2008, 5:12pm.

Buried in bottom the box (books in that room boxed while I strip wallpaper), a collection of poetry Eve Names the Animals by Susan Donnelly who I heard read in 1994 (book is signed with that date). Published in 1985, poem by the same name, pages 4-5.

Eve Names the Animals

To me,lion was sun on a wing
over the garden. Dove,
a burrowing, blind creature.

I swear that man
never knew animals. Words
he lined up according to size,

While elephants slipped flat-eyed
through water

and trout
hurtled from the underbrush, tusked
and ready for battle.

The name he gave me stuck
me to him. He did it to comfort me,
for not being first.

Mornings, while he slept,
I got away. Pickerel
hopped on the branches above me.
Only spider accompanied me,

nosing everywhere,
running up to lick my hand.

Poor finch. I suppose I was
woe to him---
the way he'd come looking for me,
not wanting either of us
to be ever alone.

But to myself I was
palomino
raven
fox. . .
I strung words
by their stems and wore them
as garlands on my long walks.

The next day
I'd find them withered.

I liked change.

Oh, I just thought of one of my favorite SF novels, He, She, and It by Marge Piercy.

>36 I liked that one also.

Has anyone read any Louise Marley? She wrote some excellent sci-fi novels, including The Terrorists of Irustan and The Goddess Child, with well-thought out themes of current interest.

Some of the other sci-fi novels by women that I have read and loved are Tepper's Gate and Grass; Tiptree's Brightness Falls from the Air; LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven; Suzy Charnas' Walk to the End of the World series; and my favorite sci-fi duo of all: Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God.

I read everything in the juvenile section of my small town library by 5th grade, which included 1 Heinlein and 1 A. M. Lightner and a complete set of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Then when I went to high school in a larger neighboring town, I found Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke, more Heinlein, and Andre Norton. I was in love. Look at my library--I have a nearly complete collection of Andre Norton, one of the first and a highly influential woman writer. One of her major influences--Marion Zimmer Bradley explored the role of women in society and relationships in The Shattered Chain and Thendara House especially. I agree with others about Tepper--but I had so much fun with Gibbon's Decline and Fall--it took almost two full days before I could speak civilly to my husband. Le Guin is definitely a favorite. I like Egan and Moon a lot. No one has mentioned my favorite current SF writer yet, Lois McMaster Bujold. And as we seem to be slipping over into fantasy as well, Nina Kiriki Hoffman and Pat Wrede and Jane Lindskold among many, many others.

I thought about initiating a fantasy thread but decided the genre was just too darn big and varied to be discussed on one thread, imo (at least at the moment). So I left it alone. If one of you feels up to introducing all or part of it, I say, you go, girl. Just take a peek at the wikipedia entry for fantasy which includes all the subgenres (a few of which I read) and you'll see what I mean. I also have a problem saying I read 'fantasy' - the word immediately conjurs up a specific stereotype, doesn't it? perhaps one or two basic stereotypes.

I picked up a small mass market copy of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower today at a library sale. If anyone wants it, post here but then leave your address in a private message on my profile page. I thought I'd be able to find more but didn't!

re: "Eve Names the Animals"

thank-you Avaland and Urania -- what a lovely poem -- I don't know how I've missed that one along the way.

I've just been having a look through my TBR pile and have come across The Incomer by Margaret Elphinstone, published the the Women's Press Science Fiction. I've read her non-SF work and have enjoyed them so I'll be interested to see what its like. Has anyone read it?

I hadn't realised that the Women's Press had a specific SF section - I'm off the check their website for more info....

....hmmm, no mention of SF titles as a separate set of titles on their site. How disappointing.

Message edited by its author, Sep 27, 2008, 8:20am.

charbutton, are these the gray and white mass market-sized books? I have eight of them on my shelves (maybe I've read half), picked up in various places when I've seen them (not easy to find here). Hm, Elphinstone wrote something that would be considered SF?

edited to add: Looks like you have something newer. I also just checked out their website and yeah, it looks like they don't separate out the SF. I did see Parable of the Talents and Woman on the Edge of Time and some others in the list of books published since 2000.

Message edited by its author, Sep 27, 2008, 10:20am.

Storeetllr, I have! I read a Louise Marley book (The Maquisarde)on your recommendation, I believe. I want to read more, but I never see her in the bookstore. I am going to have to check out the library, I think--cheaper that way, anyway. Or, I could buy online, but I am trying to cut back on my buying.

I read Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin recently. I was glad to find something of hers I hadn't read besides the Earthsea books. One of these days, I will have to get those, too, but I never want to spend the money on them individually, since they are such short books. I need to find some kind of an omnibus, at least for the first 3 or so.

Susan, leave your address privately on my profile page and I'll send you my Marleys (I think I have two). I think I have The Terrorists of Irustan and The Glass Harmonica.

Alot of these books sound interesting ! I've been slowly reading Mists Of Avalon for a while now . LOL !