Female fantasy/sci-fi writers

Hello, I'm new to this group.

For many years, I have made it a policy of mine to read as many books written by women as by men. This has been a great thing, "forcing" me to explore and finding new literary landscapes. Many of my absolute favourite writers (Muriel Spark, Amelie Nothomb, Jane Bowles to name a few) I perhaps wouldn't have stumbled across if it wasn't for this "assignment".

For next year's 1010 challenge, I have a fantasy and sci-fi category, and would like some help and inspiration in in finding more female writers in these fields.

I'm not big on high fantasy (parties setting out to complete quests, magical swords and farm boys saving the world), but prefer weirder, less black-and-white stories. To drop a few names I like: Kelly Link, China Miéville, Steph Swainston, Jeff VanderMeer, Jeff Ford, Nicola Barker...

KJ Bishop is top of my TBR pile. Mary Gentle's Ash is sitting on my shelf, but is a little daunting at 1100 pages. I've only started out discovering Angela Carter (and thankfully accept tips on where to start reading), and am pretty curious about Kathe Koja.

Are there any sci-fi/fantasy readers here who could give me some more tips?

Thanks!

/Anders

Hi Anders -- welcome to the group.

I know next to nothing about scifi/fantasy and would undoubtedly steer you wrong; but here's a thread from the sci-fi - fantasy group that might be helpful - I didn't read the whole thread....

teelge,

that was an extremely helpful thread, thank you!

Well, you basically can't go wrong with Ursula K. LeGuin. Margaret Atwood is not a sci-fi/fantasy writer but has written two excellent dystopias that could fall into a sci-fi category of sorts - The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake are both fantastic. I myself have not read any Octavia Butler, but have been recommended her many times by people who enjoy female-authored sci-fi/fantasy.

Also, this group might be useful: http://www.librarything.com/groups/feministsf

@#4 I read LeGuin's Earthsea series as a kid, but that is the only thing I've read of her. I have a feeling she's really productive? Do you have recommendations on where to start?

I've read a fair bit of Atwood, including those two titles. I like those books a lot, both original and well-crafted dystopias.

Butler's name kept popping up on that other thread, which makes her a writer I'll definitely want to check out soon. Does anyone have specific titles they'd like to share?

Thanks for antoher good link!

For LeGuin, start with The Left Hand of Darkness. Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus is a brilliant semi-fantasy. Her darker sci-fi/fanstasy books are The Passion of New Eve and The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffmann

>5 GingerbreadMan:,6, or start with The Dispossessed, which is good.

>6 janeajones:, Jane thanks for those Angela Carter recommendations. Going to check them out right now.

The passion of New Eve is my only read Carter so far. And while being a little too episodic to really knock me out, it definitely had me interested in discovering more.

Thanks for the other tips, both of you.

A few more authors off the top of my head...
Ekaterina Sedia
Catherynne M. Valente
Nalo Hopkinson
James Tiptree Jr./Alice B. Sheldon

Also, if you browse through the lists at http://www.tiptree.org/?see=award you'll definitely find some great books by female authors.

Butler is definitely worth checking out. If you like vampires (with a twist) read Fledgling; historical fiction and time travel try Kindred, aliens & post apocalyptic try lilith's brood or xenogenesis which are both an omnibus of 3 novels; also seed to harvest/patternist series

also if you have time, most of my fantasy & science fiction tagged books are written by women. It's not the universe of course, but a start

happy reading!

You may get a kick out of this. In the Jane Austen Book Club, the male protagonist, Grigg, (played by Hugh Dancy) is a big sci fi fan and shows how women have contributed to the genre
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080821164925AA1Ns1T
including
Mary Alice Norton (with pen names) and Pat Murphy are some of the other women mentioned.

You may find more titles watching the film!

I have to second Ursula K. LeGuin, I love her novels.

And I do have to also put in a plug for Elizabeth Moon. Her books are space operas, but I find them incredibly appealing and moreish. She's not going to win any awards for innovative sci-fi, but what she does, she does very well. The one sci-fi book that she's written that isn't a space opera, I also enjoyed very much: The Speed of Dark, from the point of view of a man with autism.

(And now I'm going to have to go out and check out Octavia Butler and Angela Carter!)

ETA: Oh, and Robin McKinley does some nice retellings of fairy tales. Young adult, but nicely entertaining.

I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but have enjoyed Connie Willis. The Doomsday Book is probably a good place to start. I also enjoyed Passage.

Welcome, Gingerbread Man! I am also a fan of Miéville, VanderMeer, Link and Ford! (tried Swainston but just couldn't get into it). Based on those particular authors, I'd would suggest (and some of these echo suggestions above):

Fledgling by Octavia Butler (as noted by noodlejet22 above). Not your run-of-the-mill vampire novel, something very different. A dark-skinned vampire has been genetically engineered so as to be able to stay awake during the day in hopes that she will be able to help her race (a human hybrid, if I remember correctly).

Black Juice by Margo Lanagan. A collection of intriguing, darkish, weird short fiction, mostly fantasy but some SF. Marketed as YA here in the states, because, I suspect, of its adolescent protagonists, but honestly, it transcends the usual adolescent-centered themes. I have read a lot of SF (and some certain kinds of fantasy) and Lanagan was the first new genre author since Miéville that I really got excited over.

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand. Technically, I suppose, psychological suspense, it won the Shirley Jackson Award last year (Jeff Ford won it this year with The Shadow Year). A burnt out photographer is sent on a gig to coastal Maine where she unearths a decades old mystery.

The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia. While I haven't read this yet, it does boast a short blurb from Gaiman - something about she does in this book for Moscow, what his Neverwhere did for London. Rarm, above, has also mentioned her.

Brown Girl in the Ring or Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson (also mentioned by Rarm above) This is some of her early work which is more SFish and might be a nice segue for you from what you have been reading. Her newer stuff is also excellent but more towards the magical realism sort of thing; it's been marketed as mainstream.

A bit of a departure but you might be interested: In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan. From my husband's review: This excellent story of alternate history, our own grim history, and the nature of consciousness follows Sam Dance through World War II and the postwar years. He serves in the war and lives out a civilian life afterward, while burdened with the knowledge of a strange technology that might permit altering history, or reaching alternate timelines.

For something more straightforward SF, her Queen City Jazz is excellent.

I adore Angela Carter (as does China Miéville, btw), and agree with Jane above, but considering your reading tastes, go for her darker stuff like The Bloody Chamber. I also second Fanny Price's recommendations of Atwood's dystopias. In Oryx and Crake and the forthcoming Year of the Flood, she does display a bit of humor along with the grimness, as befitting a dystopian satire.

Apologies for running on & on! Mostly expounding on authors others have mentioned first (pssst. I hear VanderMeer has a new one coming out...)

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not a big sci-fi reader. The above suggestions, however, are terrific. I'll be adding some of these to my TBR pile. Thanks to all, and thanks for the original query Gingerbreadman.

I can only second what theaelizabet says. I'm utterly excited, and will need to pay a visit to Stockholm's excellent Science Fiction bookstore in the very near future, looong list in hand!

(No need to stop now, though. Keep them coming!)

>16 GingerbreadMan: I'd be interested to hear what you able to find of these in Stockholm.

Certainly we should not forget The Unit by Swedish author Ninni Holmquist (no touchstone, apparently), a dystopia I recently bought (and I know fannyprice has it in her TBR pile also)

The short stories I've read by Andre Norton and C.S. Friedman, and Tanith Lee have been enjoyable. C.J. Cherryh has a huge following as well. Wilmar H. Shiras was another writer (1940s) who, like Tiptree, wrote under a male pseudonym.

Marion Zimmer Bradley is often noted for her fantasy though I myself have mainly read her older science fiction stories. Others have already mentioned LeGuin and Butler.

Naomi Novik's Temeraire series is interesting -- classed as fantasy, it's actually alternative history/military fiction with dragons as the sole "fantasy" element.

And, of course, mention must be made of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, often considered to be the first science-fiction novel. :)

(Lee, Bradley, Shelley and Novik won't touchstone for some reason, but they do, of couse, have author pages on LT, which can be found via the Search function.)

GingerbreadMan, teelgee already provided you the informative Female Authors thread in the Science Fiction Fans group. There is also a Fantasy Fans group; not sure if there is a "female authors" thread in there or not, but if not, you could probably post one. :)

My favourite in the genre/s are Lois McMaster Bujold and Diane Duane (can't link them by author for some reason...). Both brilliant, and both write SF and fantasy.

Amélie Nothomb typically doesn't write sci fi (although most of her stories are highly imaginative), but I think Acide sulphurique qualifies where she takes a TV reality show to new heights...

@#17 I'll keep you posted! As for Ninni Holmquist's book, I've seen it in bookstores forever but haven't picked it up. After reading some reviews here I'm really interested!

@#20 Amelie Nothomb is a new(ish) favourite of mine, although there are very few books available in swedish. Just a few days ago I realised how many of her books I could read in english instead, and Sulphuric acid was one of the titles that caught my eye. It will very likely be included in my next order from adlibris.se.

Oh, my wishlist is growing by the second!! And, how funny, I actually put the second Temeraire novel (Naomi Novik) into my backpack this morning, in preparation of finishing my other novel sometime today.

Result:

Ka-ching. Got some lecture money in today, and me and my beloved wife Flea went on an internet bookstore spree. (So no visit to the SF bookstore this time).

I picked up a bit of other stuff too, but as a direct consequence of this thread, I'm waiting for:
Butler's Fledgling
Hopkinson's Brown girl in the ring
Nothomb's Sulphuric Acid
Lanagan's Black juice

Thank you so much, all of you. And rest assured I keep this thread starred for future reference!

Definitely Lois McMaster Bujold, Connie Willis, Elizabeth Moon, Kage Baker, C. J. Cherryh, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sharon Lee, Amy Thomson, Karen Traviss, Sheri Tepper, Sharon Shinn, for science fiction, although several write in the fantasy field as well.

Joanna Russ, Andre Norton, Judith Tarr, Phyllis Gotlieb, Octavia Butler for classic science fiction.

For fantasy, Jane Lindskold, Diana Wynne Jones, Patricia McKillip, Robin McKinley, Liz Williams, Patricia Wrede, Jane Yolen.

There's also C. L. Moore who wrote a lot of shorter science fiction (and fantasy) pieces for the pulp magazines of the 1930s.

Her best known science fiction character is Northwest Smith and the well regarded Shambleau, in which he stars, has been anthologized many times.