List of books for feminist science fiction, fantasy
I had only read 5 from that long list:
Octavia Butler. Wild Seed.
Leonora Carrington. The Hearing Trumpet
Charlotte Perkins Gilman. "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Mary Shelley. Frankenstein
Sylvia Townsend Warner. Lolly Willowes, or, The Loving Huntsman (1925)
A number of the titles listed sounded quite interesting, a few were familiar, but most were absolutely new to me.
I've read some Ursula K. Le Guin, but that's about it.
ReplyDeleteThere are quite a few female scifi authors that are on that list that I read though... just many, many more men. Not that men always write better scifi stories, but there's usually more action in them.. and less fluff.
Since I've read mostly male authors in this genre, I'm not qualified to say much about the female authors.
ReplyDeleteOctavia Butler's Wild Seed I read years and years ago, but it made a deep impression. I thought it excellent.
I remember very much liking the premise and the novel The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey and some of Sherri Tepper's novels.
It really is a male dominated field, isn't it? At least, the most well-known names are male.
Another great female scifi author is Connie Willis. I've read Promised Land and Doomsday Book.. I loved both.
ReplyDeleteI've also read a lot of S. L. Viehl, Star Doc series, etc. She's just too heavy on the medical jargon, as her background is in medicine.
I've know of Anne McCaffrey, but I can't say I've ever read anything of hers.
If we extend the genre of scifi to fantasy, there are definitely a lot more famous female authors!
The only thing I've read by Willis is To Say Nothing of the Dog - liked it a lot. I will be on the look out for the other two you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteI've never read Butler, and might give it a try one day -- she sounds interesting. Of your list, I know Gilman (calling her science fiction/fantasy seems a bit of a stretch -- I guess at the end of that story, there's some fantasy stuff going on) and Frankenstein. The Townsend Warner sounds interesting too.
ReplyDeleteDorothy W. - Butler's Wild Seed had, at least at the time, a unique quality. It isn't typical science fiction fair; I enjoyed it very much.
ReplyDeleteGeeze, the only book on that whole list that I've read is "Frankenstein." There are also a few authors on there that I'm familiar with from having read other books of theirs, but not those exact books. I was surprised at that considering I've been a fan of the genre for 30 years! But as you say, it is a quite male-dominated area of fiction.
ReplyDeleteI'm a long time fan, too, Deb and had not realized that my reading had been of mostly male authors until looking at this list. There are some titles that I plan to look up and check out, though.
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