Settings Reads Classic SFF by Women

Thought I'd make an organizational thread - I've been having fun with this but it will be slow updating.

Atm I have short lists based around year 1900, 1955, and 1976 but the 1955's and 1976's lists are stalled while I finish up some lengthy series (Andre Norton's Witch World, Leigh Brackett's Solar System, CJ Cherryh's Alliance/Union, and Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Series).

These are dated novels so obviously there's offensive stuff here - I think looking at the politics rules it's okay to mention it, but I definitely don't want to argue about it.

(I'm not adding touchstones on purpose - I plan on editing the posts and it's too annoying when an edit kills the touchstones after you spent 15m selecting the correct works.)

Good sources for finding authors.
https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_collections/utopias/utopias.html
https://www.isfdb.org/

Authors Active in 1900

Yet to read
Marie Corelli: Vendetta and my Wonderful Wife (1886), Ardath (1889), The Soul of Lilith (1892), Barabas (1893), The Sorrows of Satan (1895), Cameos (1896), The Mighty Atom (1896), The Master-Christian (1900).
HD Everett / Theo Douglas: Nemo (1900).
Eliza Lynn Linton: The Second Youth of Theodora Desanges (1900), The Mad Willoughbys and Other Tales (1875 but unavailable).
Caroline Atwater Mason: A Woman of Yesterday (1900).

Read or Rejected

Harriet Stark
--The Bacillus of Beauty (1900). Moral story in which a promising student is infected with a bacterium that transforms her into the most beautiful woman in the world. Her good character and relationship with her fiance subsequently suffer. More feminist than usual and attempts to be anti-racist. Readable and entertaining.

Sydney C Grier
---An Uncrowned King (1896) / A Crowned Queen (1898) / The Kings of the East (1900). A trilogy of novels beginning when an imaginary Balkan country begs a UK gentleman to be their king, which is obviously highly offensive. I didn't read the last volume. This wasn't particularly SFF besides the country being imaginary, but it felt SFF. This is the essential plot behind a fantasy world begging a visitor to be their king.

Marie Corelli
I believe Corelli is the author on this short list most popular today and I think for good reason - I really like her prose and stories. Her ideas about the occult and human nature, even if we don't accept them, at least seem fresh and interesting.

---A Romance of Two Worlds (1886). Corelli's first novel. Very light on story and heavy on religious / philosophical content - this is borderline nonfiction.
---Ziska (1897). Reincarnation story set in contemporary Egypt. More anti-imperialist than usual but as should be expected it's strongly orientalist.
---The Song of Miriam and Other Stories (1898). A variety of highly readable stories I wish I'd written comments on back when I finished it.

Eliza Lynn Linton
---Witch Stories (1861). Briefly told pseudo-historical to historical stories about the persecution of individuals thought to be witches. Quotes its sources heavily. Only marginally SFF but interesting in sourcing attitudes about witches.
---Azeth: The Egyptian (1846). Very long and boring reincarnation novel set in Ancient Egypt with lengthy descriptions and overwrought characters, where the author expresses her beliefs in a universal religion. Has some real historical events.
---Amymone (1848). Another very long and boring novel similar to Azeth, but set in Ancient Greece in the age of Pericles. I believe most of the characters here are real historical figures - the author is showing off her deep knowledge of the classical world, but it's ancient Greece as seen from the 1840's UK, not how we see it today. The villains Amymone and Cleon are more compelling than the virtuous Aspasia and Pericles, something that isn't helped by how Pericles justifies his actions using UK-style imperialist arguments. This isn't listed as SFF anywhere but I threw it in with Azeth - it does have prophecies and a witch.
---The True History of Joshua Davidson (1872). In which Jesus is reincarnated and asks pointed questions of everyone around him. Obviously very religious.
---With a Silken Thread and Other Stories (1880). One of the ones that most makes me think making a thread on these and remembering to update it would be valuable. I did read this and it isn't a short work, but you got me if I can remember anything about it. Ah, this is the one with the long novella about the beauty who gets engaged to the local aristocrat, then after his family is cold to her decides that she'd be better know her place and goes home. : I'm not exactly sure any of these were SFF - The Countess Melusine story sounds like it'd be but it isn't an SFF retelling.

Mary A Cornelius
---The White Flame (1900). I couldn't get through this, the twee child was too annoying. I might get back to it.

Virginia Frazer Boyle
---Devil Tales (1900). Retelling of African American tales written by a Confederate loyalist. I don't dare to even try reading this.

Dora Sigerson Shorter
---The Fairy Changeling and Other Poems (1897). Imo not very good - see this as an example of poetry back from when poetry was popular as entertainment, but the author may have seen it otherwise.
---The Father Confessor: Stories of Death (1900). This is the only one from 1900 (so far) that I thought was poorly written.

Eloise O Randall Richberg
---Reinstern (1900). Short Utopian story in the style of Equality by Edward Bellamy. Focuses on childcare and agriculture.

HD Everett / Theo Douglas
--Iras (1896). Another Egypt-themed insta-love reincarnation romance, although technically without the reincarnation - the love interest was put in stasis rather than reincarnated.

Authors Active in 1955

Yet to read
Ivy Kellerman Reed: A Messenger to the Gods (1955 but unavailable).
Andre Norton: Star Rangers / Star Guard (1953), Sargasso of Space (1955).
Katharine Wigmore Eyre: The Lute and the Glove (1955).
Edith Simon: The Twelve Pictures (1955).
Marguerite Steen: The Unquiet Spirit (1955).
Margot Benary-Isbert: Aufruhr in Vogelsang (1955).
Naomi Mitchison: The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), We Have Been Warned (1935), The Fourth Pig (1936), The Bull Calves (1947), The Big House (1950), Travel Light (1952), Gaeme and the Dragon (1954), To the Chapel Perilous (1955).
Kathleen Lindsay: A bunch but all unavailable.
Joan Aiken: All You've Ever Wanted and Other Stories (1953), More than You Bargained for and Other Stories (1955).
CL Moore: Fury (1950), A Gnome There Was and Other Tales of Science Fiction (1950), Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Fairy Chessmen (1951), Judgment Night (1952), Mutant (1953), Shambleau and Others (1953), Beyond Earth's Gates (1954), Northwest of Earth (1954), Line to Tomorrow (1954), No Boundaries (1955).
Ilse Aichinger: The Bound Man and Other Stories (1953).
Leah Bodine Drake: A Hornbook for Witches (1950), This Tilting Dust (1955).

Read
Leah Bodine Drake: A Hornbook for Witches (1950). Short book of fantasy poetry.

Helga Nielsen
---Deep in the Sky (1955). Utopian story in which a pilot crash lands on an alien planet. I didn't realize they were still writing these things into the 1950's.

Andre Norton
---Huon of the Horn (1951). Retelling of a chivalric romance.
---Star Man's Son, 2250 AD (1952).
---The Stars Are Ours! (1952) / Star Born (1957). A pro-science romp in which scientists (the good guys) flee Earth's anti-intellectual movement (the bad guys) on a space ship then land on a habitable planet.

Leigh Brackett
Brackett is interesting in that you can watch the optimism and faith in scientific progress transform into skepticism over the course of her career. I haven't read these recently enough to give non-overlapping reviews, but my favorite story is "The Jewel of Bas" and many of these were able to successfully grab me. Most of Brackett's stuff is in her 'Solar System' series of short stories and novels set on different planets in the solar system.

---Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (2002, collection), The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977, collection), The Halfing and Other Stories (1973, collection), The Coming of the Terrans (1967, collection), The Nemesis from Terra (1951), The Starmen of Llyrdis (1952), Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963), The Big Jump (1955), The Secret of Sinharat/People of the Talisman (1964).
---The Ginger Star (1974) / The Hounds of Skaith (1974) / The Reavers of Skaith (1975) Internal trilogy with Eric John Stark - Brackett's Tarzan-type character. I find the idea kinda slimy instead of compelling. There is some commentary on isolationism/traditionalism versus globalization but the heart felt out of it, somehow. It doesn't let you breeze through it, either, requires you to pay attention so you don't miss things. Not among my favorites.
---The Long Tomorrow (1955). Brackett's most popular work and not a Solar System novel. I have read it but don't much remember it.

Naomi Mitchison
---The Conquered (1923). Historical novel about captured slaves and their Roman masters. You read the topic, look at the publication date, and expect this to be a nightmare, but it was actually very readable. The SFF content is only brief religious magic.

---Barbarian Stories (1929). Prehistoric to more recent historical fiction about 'barbarians', meaning non-Romans. Some of the stories have more magic than others.

Authors Active in 1976

Doris Piserchia
These are rather different than each other. A Billion Days of Earth is a weird psychological SFF non-human characters. Struggling trying to describe Mister Justice in that I haven't read it recently, but a more 1984 spy-type novel with a school.

---Mister Justice (1973)
---A Billion Days of Earth (1976).

Marilyn Harris
---The Conjurers (1974).

Sharon Wagner
---Curse of Still Valley (1969). Readable but not particularly well written gothic.

Katherine Kurtz
---Deryni Rising (1970) / Deryni Checkmate (1972) / High Deryni (1973).

Emma Tennant
---Hotel de Dream (1976).

Andre Norton
Just Witch World (1963-2005) novels for now until I finish it and can get to her other stuff. I found the first two novels a bit boring but imo the series picked up with Year of the Unicorn and continues to be fairly strong up to 'Ware Hawk (1983), excepting Garan the Eternal, which seems to have been written much earlier than its publication date. This series was shocking influential on other popular American SFF authors - as I think one of Mercedes Lackey's (?) introductions says, they were sold in drug stores where children who otherwise wouldn't have had access to such SFF, particularly SFF with prominent female characters, were able to buy them.

---Witch World (1963) / Web of the Witch World (1964).
---Year of the Unicorn (1965).
---Three Against the Witch World (1965) / Warlock of the Witch World (1967)/ Sorceress of the Witch World (1968).
---High Sorcery (1970, collection).
---Spell of the Witch World (1972, collection).
---Garan the Eternal (1972, collection).
---The Crystal Gryphon (1972) / Gryphon in Glory (1981) / Gryphon's Eyrie (1984).
---The Jargoon Pard (1974).
---Trey of Swords (1977) / 'Ware Hawk (1983).
---Zarsthor's Bane (1978).
---Lore of the Witch World (1980, collection).
---Horn Crown (1981).
---Tales of the Witch World I (1987).

CJ Cherryh
I really like this author - that Gate of Ivrel and Brothers of Earth are 1976 is why I chose 1976. Many of Cherryh's novels space operas set in the Alliance/Union universe, whose main plot-line concerns the Alliance and Union governments, although many novels are set in times and places far removed from the core plot. Some of Cherryh's novels may or may not be part of this universe (the Morgaine novels, Hestia, and the Chanur novels). I pretty much loved of these but there are exceptions. Wasn't a fan of Hestia (more of a throwback to classic first-contact SFF than the others), Cuckoo's Egg, or the Merovingen Nights collections (multi-author anthologies).

---Gate of Ivrel (1976) / Well of Shiuan (1978)/ Fires of Azeroth (1979 / Exile's Gate (1988).
---Brothers of Earth (1976).
---Hunter of Worlds (1977).
---The Faded Sun Trilogy (1979).
---Hestia (1979).
---Serpent's Reach (1980).
---Downbelow Station (1981).
---Wave Without a Shore (1981).
---The Pride of Chanur (1982) / Chanur's Venture (1984) / The Kif Strike Back (1985) Chanur's Homecoming (1986) / Chanur's Legacy (1992)
---Merchanter's Luck (1982).
---Port Eternity (1982)
---Forty Thousand in Gehenna (1983).
---Voyager in Night (1984).
---Cuckoo's Egg (1985).
---Angel with the Sword (1985) / Festival Moon (1987) / Fever Season (1987) / Smugglers Gold (1988) / Divine Right (1989) / Flood Tide (1990) / Endgame (1991).
---Cyteen (1988).
---Rimrunners (1989).
---Heavy Time (1991) / Hellburner (1992).
---Tripoint (1994).
---Finity's End (1997).

>1 Settings: Very impressive lists. Good luck.

This is a really exciting project! There are so many great female SF writers that I have yet to read. I'll be following your progress with interest.

Thanks for posting this list. Very interesting for me to see who I’ve read and which ones I might add to my list. I didn’t realize that I had missed come of Cherryh’s Company/Alliance/Union novels. For example, I didn’t know about Port Eternity.

Have you read The Female Man? That might be worth adding to your list.

>7 Neil_Luvs_Books: I've got The Adventures of Alyx by her as well as The Female Man. Try searching for the publisher The Women's Press; they had a SF line (not so much in the way of fantasy).

Another potential author is Jo Clayton.

The Worlds Without End website is a great resource for SF/F/H. Here are three of their lists of women authors:

• Mistressworks
• Award-Winning Books By Women Authors
• Science Fiction By Women Authors

There is also a large number of other lists under the 'Books' menu.

LibraryThing has at least one list as well:

https://www.librarything.com/list/234/Best-Feminist-Science-Fiction

Happy that people here are so welcoming!

>7 Neil_Luvs_Books: I liked Port Eternity, the Arthurian concept is interesting. It's fascinating how many different concepts Cherryh can make working within Alliance/Union.

>8 Maddz: (&7) I haven't gotten to The Female Man but I did read the Alyx stories and And Chaos Died, definitely hope to get to more Russ and try something by Jo Clayton.

>9 ScoLgo: >10 vwinsloe:
These are some amazing resources.

>11 Settings: A warning re Jo Clayton: none of her books are stand-alone, they're all series, both science fiction, science fantasy and fantasy. There's cross-over between series too; mostly the SF and science fantasy series.

Skeen's Leap is book 1 of the Skeen trilogy, and is currently on sale (99p for me in the UK) at Kobo. That's science fantasy more than SF, although it starts as SF.

>12 Maddz: Huh? Jo Clayton has written a few stand-alone novels. These are the ones I have read...

• My Real Children
• Among Others
• Lent
• Or What You Will
• Tooth and Claw

The first two are excellent.

>13 ScoLgo: Jo Walton?

>13 ScoLgo: Jo Clayton not Jo Walton

The former died in 1998, the latter is very much alive and writes columns for Reactor magazine...

>14 haydninvienna: >15 Maddz: Oops! Evidently, my reading comprehension ain't what it used to be... ;)

The Ginger Star (1974) by Leigh Brackett. First of the Skaith trilogy (1974-1976) at the end of Brackett's Solar System series (~1940-1976). Not one of the ones I liked. This is an Eric John Stark one - Brackett's Tarzan-type character, and I find the idea kinda slimy instead of compelling. There is some commentary on isolationism/traditionalism versus globalization but the heart felt out of it, somehow. It doesn't let you breeze through it, either, requires you to pay attention so you don't miss things.

Gryphon's Eyrie (1984) by Andre Norton & AC Crispin. In the Witch World series (1963-2005). I broke by-publication series reading order and skipped 'Ware Hawk to read this one because I had it checked out as a library book and it's the last in an internal trilogy. It continues the Kerovan / Joisan story and is the first co-authored one I've read in this series. It is noticeably different then the solo-authored ones. Slower and more contemplative. Most of the Norton's I've read are very concisely written in a way that I think is common in classic SFF but less popular now. This one seemed more modern. It was readable but there's nothing here than makes this one stand out. The plot elements are common in the series and imo the Kerovan / Joisan story only needed one book.

>17 Settings: I have Ginger Star and didn't find it memorable, but I enjoyed it.

>18 Settings: The only book in the series I haven't read! They are certainly more concise than most novels today.

>19 Karlstar: That's a lot of reading!

The Hounds of Skaith / The Reavers of Skaith by Leigh Brackett.

Last two in Brackett's Solar System series (~1940-1976). Found these a slog so I'm happy to be finished with the series but it's sad that there are no more left.

These directly continue the plot of The Ginger Star, making this a true trilogy, but there is effort to make them work as standalones. Hounds has a recap and reintroduces characters for the reader and Reavers starts with a glossary of people and places. I don't think my problem with these is that they're badly written, it's that they don't interest me. Hounds was even less interesting than Ginger Star. Reavers picked up a bit, particularly when Stark was not the POV, but not enough to get that spark back after wading through the other two.

>20 Settings: I actually kind of liked The Hounds of Skaith, but apparently not enough to get the 3rd book. I really liked the Planet Stories editions, that may have influenced my rating a bit.

'Ware Hawk (1983) by Andre Norton. Another Witch World novel (1963-2005). This is a solo authored one. It's also not as concise as the earlier ones but it isn't a fall off point. Most closely linked to Trey of Swords.

Tales of the Witch World 1 (1987) by Andre Norton. First of the multi-author Witch World (1963-2005) anthologies. Norton frames this project as an exciting collaborative opportunity, rather than an author losing creative control over her world and clarifies that Witch World never had strict, pre-planned worldbuilding. It isn't LotR. Authors who add their own perspectives add to the project. I guess whether we like this idea depends on whether the stories are any good. The first story is by Norton, there's an introduction by Norton, and the stories are followed by short blurbs where the authors talk about what Witch World means to them and where their story inspirations came from. Unfortunately, even though the authors do seem to understand what the series is (it has deep personal meaning to most of them and only a few gave me that off-type aversion I've encountered every time I've tried to read web fanfiction), what's given here just doesn't seem to be anyone's best work. This was readable but not great.

Witch Stories (1861) by Eliza Lynn Linton. A collection of pseudo-historical to historical stories about 'witches' and the witch-hunts. Sources are given but their accuracy is going to vary. They are heavily quoted. There's a head-nod to those who believe witchcraft is possible, but the author is framing these as persecution narratives, which makes it more readable than if they did otherwise, and the last few pages spell out the author's intent very clearly - these are lessons on how not to behave. The content is horrific but there's a lot of stories here, each of them is very brief, and the victims are long dead - after a while the stories blend and become very difficult to pay attention to, which is disturbing in itself. More historical context would have helped, but I'm resistant to directly studying UK history - I just don't want to.

There's a story here where a man claims the devil's told him that no man can take his life - and so after the first executioner drops dead they get the executioner's wife to substitute. There's multiple stories where children fall into fits and make false claims. And stories where people condemn themselves by claiming to have visited elf-land.

Glad to be done with this one, hopefully this will be the last from my 1900's list that isn't enjoyable to read.

>23 Settings: Have you changed your LibraryThing username? If you would like I can edit the topic to reflect your new name.

>24 clamairy:

It's a nickname I used elsewhere but it was a mistake, actually, if you could I'd appreciate it.

>25 Settings: Done!

>26 clamairy: Thank you!

Iras: A Mystery (1896) by HD Everett / Theo Douglas. This is another Egypt-themed occult novel with star-crossed lovers reaching for each other across time, a category which seems to have been moderately popular. This one contrasts with Linton's Azeth (1846) and Corelli's Ziska (1897) in that we're not getting lengthy asides nor is it heavily religious - it's rather short and plot forward. It's competently written and acceptable as a popcorn read but doesn't really stand out in any way.

It is briefly rather harshly anti-Arab, a lot of the outdated values in these things are more subtle, embedded in themes or possible to overlook, for example I'm sure my ignorance of what Victorian occultists actually practiced is interfering with how I approach those references, but that was overt.

A Hornbook for Witches: Poems of Fantasy (1950) by Leah Bodine Dake. This is a short book of fantasy poetry - I was gearing up for it to be dreadful stuff because I did not like the first poem, but it was mostly readable to pretty good. Its wikipedia page makes much of its Arkham House publisher and small publication numbers, which seems to make it a coveted item, but it's readily available online and public domain. I suspect there's more collections of poetry with fantasy-folkloric stuff that are not subtitled 'poems of fantasy' and so aren't getting claimed as SFF by the resources I'm using.

Internet is really wonderful for this classic stuff, especially since my 1900's list is entirely public domain. I'm even getting better availability for that list than the 1955 list. If only someone who scan in The Mad Willoughbys.

A Romance of Two Worlds (1886) by Marie Corelli. This is Corelli's first novel and compared to the other ones I've read there's much less concession towards being entertaining. Author has things to say about her religious ideas and the point of the novel is to say them.

I've started trying to read some NF to give more context to these.

A Short History of Fantasy by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James. Brief overview of mostly English-language fantasy. Odd how frequently this book hits on things I read as a child that I thought were obscure - clearly I was not alone. As context, I'm not sure how helpful this was since the vast majority of the names were already familiar to me. One of the reasons why I thought 1976 was a good year to pick for reading, besides that it gets in CJ Cherryh's Alliance-Union, is that it's before the rise of the Tolkien-inspired epic quest fantasies. Shannara is 1977, which this confirms.

This does point out that the genre of fiction set in a made-up European Country is called the 'Ruritanian Romance' - that would be the Sydney C Grier books I read earlier.

To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction by Joanna Russ. Particularly biting essays.

Of course, the ancestor of all Ruritanian romances is The Prisoner of Zenda. It's a bit earlier than your 1900 list, and suffers badly from Victorian tropes, but is a useful read to understand the general idea.

>31 Maddz:

Suffers badly from Victorian tropes is a mood, lol. I missed reading Zenda but it's definitely interesting to go back and read the classics.

Open Secrets: The Popular Fiction of Britain's Occult Revival, 1842-1936 by Christine Ferguson.

More context. I guess I want multiple things from the context. (1) It's interesting, (2) I want to better understand what I'm reading, and (3) I want to be better able to talk about it without being bumbling-offensive because I missed the implications. There will be a process.

This, imo, is more so a performance piece than an attempt to inform the reader, or perhaps I was just too astounded by this author's talent for academic prose it distracted me. This is an extremely, extremely well written example of its style.

Most of the chapters focus on only a few works. There's helpful stuff in the details here for someone new to the topic, but a broad overview or an introduction it is not. I was most interested in the part on Ziska (Marie Corelli, 1897) and was disappointed it didn't discuss A Romance of Two Worlds (Marie Corelli, 1896) for longer - I'm now seeing parts of it as a response to The Blossom and the Fruit (Mabel Collins, 1887). I was least interested in the parts on Occult Journalism or Aleister Crowley.

Much of this is about the works of Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose modern reputation is as a hack who wrote "it was a dark and stormy night" florid purple-prose, but seems to be deeply influential on popular fiction before the critics turned on him (and during). Thank you to NF authors for reading stuff like Bulwer-Lytton so I can read about it without having to read it.

Points out that the Women's Reincarnation Romance was a popular genre of fiction around the turn of the century, which is why multiple books I've read from my 1900 list are Women's Reincarnation Romances. There's that extremely discussed topic of what is and what isn't genre-SFF where the broad interpretation is to throw anything with speculative elements or magic in, which I'll go with because I want to read more books not less, but there's ambiguity here.

Also very briefly mentions The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) by Naomi Mitchison, which is on my 1955 list because of Mitchison's long career. I very much hope that novel lives up to expectations because everything I've heard about it makes it sound excellent.

>32 Settings: Will be interested in what you think of The Corn King and the Spring Queen. I recall quite liking it when I read it over 15 years ago.

>32 Settings:, >33 ludmillalotaria: I read it a year or two ago and loved it! It really immerses you in the time and place.

More context.

Idol of Suburbia: Marie Corelli and Late-Victorian Literary Culture by Annette Federico.

Thought this was alright. There are numerous biographical details here but it is not a biography - multiple biographies of Marie Corelli already exist and Federico doesn't want to be redundant. Corelli comes across as an intensely passionate person who was serious about her art while also wanting to make money, pro-woman yet complicated in her approach to women's rights, and unhappy with the Victorian press while still wanting their approval of her art. Large sections on Corelli's secrecy and cultivation of her public image, and discussions of various novels, including Open Confession in the context of Corelli's letters to Joseph Severn.

--

Struck out on finding a pdf scan of Theo Douglas / HD Everett's Nemo (1900), which is supposed to have a possessed automaton, so read some of Douglas's other novels. These are not really that good but are entertaining.

A Bride Elect (1896). A murder mystery. Almost supernatural but not quite. The murderer gives Frankenstein / resurrectionist vibes but it seems to be a delusion not science fiction.

Behind a Mask (1898) and A Legacy of Hate (1899). Two domestic thrillers, the first with a fake heiress and the second with threatening letters. A Legacy of Hate does have some supernatural elements long range astral projection / possession.

I liked A Bride Elect and Behind a Mask better than A Legacy of Hate. A Bride Elect is written from an older woman's POV, as is much of Behind a Mask, which is unusual. A Legacy of Hate has an annoyingly love-struck gentleman for a POV (and his romance plot is unappealing).

What Makes This Book So Great by Jo Walton

This one has articles on CJ Cherryh. It reads extremely quickly for its length because it's entirely short blog plots (130 of them) in breezy language. Most of the posts are on individual novels but some were on more general topics or multiple books.

Imo the author is interesting in an anthropological sort of way (anglophone SFF isn't just a hobby to them - it's their culture). But their commentary isn't particularly insightful and the articles on books I haven't read are extremely, extremely tedious. I'm very lucky that I have actually read all of the Vorkosigan books (15 articles), because otherwise those would be just as bad as the Steven Brust articles. I think the only book this mentioned that I hadn't yet read that I'm now more interested in, not less, is Through a Glass Darkly by Kathleen Norris ("The Weirdest Book in the World"). Even the quoted sections Walton intended as examples of good hooks or superior prose came off as intensely unappealing when presented in that way.

^Wrote this and the above post because I was procrastinating on finishing up the last 40p of this, and the last article ("Literary criticism vs talking about books") convinced me to 1 star this. Walton's approach is why they've made the books they covered seem so shallow and boring.

Vendetta and My Wonderful Wife (1886 for Vendetta) by Marie Corelli

This one is listed as SFF by isfdb but I think it's not. At one point early on in Vendetta the narrator is bitten by a mysterious something while in a crypt, which suggests to me that vampire fiction was a thought, but that plot point is dropped in favor of a revenge plot. Wonderful Wife is also not SFF, but is a really interesting example of Corelli's complicated views towards proto-feminism. The narrator, a rather milksoppish sort, marries Honoria, a brash, hunting dogs and cigar loving woman, expecting that she'll become more feminine post-marriage.

Regenesis (2009) by CJ Cherryh

Well past classics now but this continues the Alliance/Union series, which started in 1976. This is set within the Union government, which has given political power to their scientists and 'Great' minds. Found this rather disappointing. I still have 2 more in the series, but those are prequels, so this is the furthest along the main plot, and I guess I hyped myself up too much. I wanted more plot.

Alliance/Union novels are written within the mindsets and values of the POV characters, and Cherryh has set up some very disturbing political systems in Alliance/Union for her characters to accept. The author shows the characters continuing to be people, despite all that. The main POVs in Regenesis seem to have smothered their humanity in exchange for being effective intellects and acceptance of their political system. Which includes the entire concept of the Azi. I think it gives the characters a shallow, hollow paranoia that makes them hard to connect to or care about. I guess this is interesting, but if that's what it is it's subtle enough that other readers will disagree. I think the intent was to show Ari breaking from this, somewhat, but I don't think it worked. I find the contrast to Finity's End, the previous book in this series, very stark.

More Context

Merlin's Daughters: Contemporary Women Writers of Fantasy by Charlotte Spivack

This has chapters on Andre Norton, Susan Cooper, Ursula K Le Guin, Evangeline Walton, Katherine Kurtz, Mary Stewart, Patricia McKillip, Vera Chapman, Gillian Bradshaw, and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Didn't much like this one either. I'm looking for context and this is almost entirely plot summary. The author is good at these and frequently insightful, but even the summaries of books I've read were boring and when it touched onto broader topics I felt the author was arguing to force a point instead of telling the truth.

>38 Settings: That's a pity. I was about to start looking for a copy based on the list of authors, but your review has stopped me. Thank you.

>38 Settings: You've done some really interesting reading since you've launched this thread. For what it may be worth, Charlotte Spivak was primarily noted for her studies in feminist science fiction and fantasy. I know I read her work on Le Guin twenty years ago.

>39 Sakerfalcon:
>40 jillmwo:

That's interesting to hear abut Charlotte Spivak. I did think the Ursula Le Guin chapter was a high point and I'm curious what she has to say on Le Guin's science fiction. That didn't make it into Merlin's Daughters because the topic was fantasy fiction.

If I was an academic writing a paper on the topic, Merlin's Daughters would be a great reference, which I'm sure is closer to its purpose than being read by someone for pleasure hobby reading.

>41 Settings: I see Spivack has written a monograph about Ursula Le Guin (touchstone should link to the book).