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Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthResponding to a geek_feminism post asking for recommendations of women writers with an SF/genre/geek mentality, I put together an alphabetical list. (Hey, I like structure). Not sure the comment over there will post in full (it contains links) so I'm reproducing it here:
I read a lot of SF, and a lot of books by women: in fact I'm currently reading through an A-Z of women writers. (Dithering about Kim Edwards versus Margaret Elphinstone). I tried scribbling down a list of SF (and geekish) authors I like: it didn't take long (though I hit gaps at I, Q, U and V -- if anyone can recommend writers to fill these, I'd be grateful :))
Meanwhile, a few suggestions: links, unless otherwise specified, go to non-spoilery reviews on my book blog.
Kate Atkinson -- crime / twisty literary fiction; very much aware of geek culture; I'd start with Emotionally Weird.
Kage Baker -- SF, time travel. Often extremely funny. Start with In The Garden of Iden.
Pat Cadigan -- 'Queen of Cyberpunk', and extremely good at showing how technology slips sideways into 'ordinary' lives. Synners is my favourite.
Patricia Duncker -- literary / historical. James Miranda Barry is an exploration of the life of a noted military surgeon, who was discovered after death to have been female.
Margaret Elphinstone -- if I say 'magic realism' don't be put off! Hy Brasil is an adventure story set on an imaginary island, and also a thought experiment.
Karen Joy Fowler -- SF, literary. Sarah Canary is a book that excited considerable comment, because it's utterly different depending on whether you read it as SF or not. Have to say my favourite is Wit's End, about fiction (and fanfic) and blurring the boundaries of reality and identity.
Greer Gilman's prose is simply ... lexophiliac. She writes fantasy that is dark and mythic and lyric and raw. Moonwise is the place to start.
Elizabeth Hand writes unsettling SF and fantasy. Not sure where I'd start, coming fresh to her work: maybe Winterlong.
I am stuck for 'I' ...
Gwyneth Jones; SF and fantasy and works that are both and neither. She's much-lauded for her hard SF but I am wholly in love with Bold as Love and its sequels: a near-future UK where magic works and the government is run by rock musicians.
Elizabeth Knox; literary fiction, I s'pose; The Vintner's Luck is about a fallen angel (Xas) and wine and love. It gets pretty theological but never loses sight of the characters.
Kelly Link writes short fiction -- SF/fantasy/magic realism/horror, what used to be termed 'slipstream' -- and has won a Hugo and 3 Nebulas (amongst other things) for 'em. (Both her anthologies are available free, via her website, under a Creative Commons license: links on Wikipedia. My review of Magic for Beginners ...).
Pat Murphy writes SF, and her There and Back Again is a transformative work based on The Hobbit.
Audrey Niffenegger's novels so far riff on SF (The Time-Traveller's Wife) and horror (Her Fearful Symmetry).
Helen Oyeyemi is a British-Nigerian fantasy writer, though I haven't read enough of her work yet to be sure if 'fantasy' is not too limiting a label. White is for Witching is about race, twins, eating, and a house. It's marvellous.
Sheenagh Pugh, author of The Democratic Genre, also writes poetry with an SF/geek sensibility (subjects include William Dampier, future history lessons, Farinelli). I love this one: Do You Think We'll Ever Get To See Earth, Sir?. More on her website.
I'm stuck on 'Q' too.
Justina Robson writes SF, of varying hardness, usually with female protagonists, often with a cyberpunk flavour. I'd start with Natural History: cyborgs! terraforming! sentient technology!
Tricia Sullivan writes SF with focus on the minutae of ordinary lives and the individual's interaction with consumerism. Which makes her work sound rather less fun than it is. Maul is a good place to start.
Sheri Tepper's SF and fantasy is extremely variable: when she's good she's very good, but when she's sentimental / black-and-white ... My favourite is Grass, though her recent book The Margarets is entertaining SF with strong fantasy elements.
I'm stuck on U and on V, though could probably rec Joan Vinge for the latter ...
Connie Willis is another variable SF/fantasy writer: indeed, a friend posited that 'Connie Willis' is actually a cooperative involving a romance writer, a hard SF writer and a fun-loving historian. Lincoln's Dreams is fab; Bellwether is also highly recommended.
female writers beginning with X, anyone?
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is best-known for her Count St Germain novels (horror: vampires): I prefer her short fiction, especially the stories with an opera / music theme. A few linked here.
Pamela Zoline (SF) has, as far as I know, only published one anthology: but it contains The Heat Death of the Universe, which has been collected all over the place as a classic of feminist (female) SF.
I read a lot of SF, and a lot of books by women: in fact I'm currently reading through an A-Z of women writers. (Dithering about Kim Edwards versus Margaret Elphinstone). I tried scribbling down a list of SF (and geekish) authors I like: it didn't take long (though I hit gaps at I, Q, U and V -- if anyone can recommend writers to fill these, I'd be grateful :))
Meanwhile, a few suggestions: links, unless otherwise specified, go to non-spoilery reviews on my book blog.
Kate Atkinson -- crime / twisty literary fiction; very much aware of geek culture; I'd start with Emotionally Weird.
Kage Baker -- SF, time travel. Often extremely funny. Start with In The Garden of Iden.
Pat Cadigan -- 'Queen of Cyberpunk', and extremely good at showing how technology slips sideways into 'ordinary' lives. Synners is my favourite.
Patricia Duncker -- literary / historical. James Miranda Barry is an exploration of the life of a noted military surgeon, who was discovered after death to have been female.
Margaret Elphinstone -- if I say 'magic realism' don't be put off! Hy Brasil is an adventure story set on an imaginary island, and also a thought experiment.
Karen Joy Fowler -- SF, literary. Sarah Canary is a book that excited considerable comment, because it's utterly different depending on whether you read it as SF or not. Have to say my favourite is Wit's End, about fiction (and fanfic) and blurring the boundaries of reality and identity.
Greer Gilman's prose is simply ... lexophiliac. She writes fantasy that is dark and mythic and lyric and raw. Moonwise is the place to start.
Elizabeth Hand writes unsettling SF and fantasy. Not sure where I'd start, coming fresh to her work: maybe Winterlong.
I am stuck for 'I' ...
Gwyneth Jones; SF and fantasy and works that are both and neither. She's much-lauded for her hard SF but I am wholly in love with Bold as Love and its sequels: a near-future UK where magic works and the government is run by rock musicians.
Elizabeth Knox; literary fiction, I s'pose; The Vintner's Luck is about a fallen angel (Xas) and wine and love. It gets pretty theological but never loses sight of the characters.
Kelly Link writes short fiction -- SF/fantasy/magic realism/horror, what used to be termed 'slipstream' -- and has won a Hugo and 3 Nebulas (amongst other things) for 'em. (Both her anthologies are available free, via her website, under a Creative Commons license: links on Wikipedia. My review of Magic for Beginners ...).
Pat Murphy writes SF, and her There and Back Again is a transformative work based on The Hobbit.
Audrey Niffenegger's novels so far riff on SF (The Time-Traveller's Wife) and horror (Her Fearful Symmetry).
Helen Oyeyemi is a British-Nigerian fantasy writer, though I haven't read enough of her work yet to be sure if 'fantasy' is not too limiting a label. White is for Witching is about race, twins, eating, and a house. It's marvellous.
Sheenagh Pugh, author of The Democratic Genre, also writes poetry with an SF/geek sensibility (subjects include William Dampier, future history lessons, Farinelli). I love this one: Do You Think We'll Ever Get To See Earth, Sir?. More on her website.
I'm stuck on 'Q' too.
Justina Robson writes SF, of varying hardness, usually with female protagonists, often with a cyberpunk flavour. I'd start with Natural History: cyborgs! terraforming! sentient technology!
Tricia Sullivan writes SF with focus on the minutae of ordinary lives and the individual's interaction with consumerism. Which makes her work sound rather less fun than it is. Maul is a good place to start.
Sheri Tepper's SF and fantasy is extremely variable: when she's good she's very good, but when she's sentimental / black-and-white ... My favourite is Grass, though her recent book The Margarets is entertaining SF with strong fantasy elements.
I'm stuck on U and on V, though could probably rec Joan Vinge for the latter ...
Connie Willis is another variable SF/fantasy writer: indeed, a friend posited that 'Connie Willis' is actually a cooperative involving a romance writer, a hard SF writer and a fun-loving historian. Lincoln's Dreams is fab; Bellwether is also highly recommended.
female writers beginning with X, anyone?
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is best-known for her Count St Germain novels (horror: vampires): I prefer her short fiction, especially the stories with an opera / music theme. A few linked here.
Pamela Zoline (SF) has, as far as I know, only published one anthology: but it contains The Heat Death of the Universe, which has been collected all over the place as a classic of feminist (female) SF.
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:16 pm (UTC)Obvious V is Catherine Valennte, though I haven't read any of hers yet.
Only I can think of is Grace Ingram, whose feisty heroines impressed various dark ages heroes in Red Adam's Daughter and other "historical" romances of my youth.
U and Q draw blank in my failing memory.
Thanks for the link.
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:49 pm (UTC)I can think of a few 'I's -- Ibbotson (her romance novels are being repackaged for teen market, but I think them serious and thought-provoking and her heroines are interestingly independent -- e.g. the ?Austrian one who wants to be a paleontologist in 1930s Europe); Irwin (And still she wished for company is on the to-read stack) -- but nobody I'd really class as geeky / SF ...
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Date: Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Tuesday, June 8th, 2010 12:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:19 pm (UTC)Xinran. Also, of course, other Chinese writers whose names transliterate in Pinyin into an X-word.
SF writers is more difficult, but I'm sure they must be out there...
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:50 pm (UTC)I wish one could search Amazon alphabetically without first selecting genre (especially as they misfile).
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:25 pm (UTC)Possibly Scarlett Thomas, Louis Walsh, Donna Tartt, Val McDermid. Emma Tennant and Angela Carter. Jenny Uglow for the eighteenth century?
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 03:52 pm (UTC)Josie Long? Sarah Millican? Jessica Hynes/Stevenson? Am terribly out of touch: anything you can point me to online?
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Date: Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 04:01 pm (UTC)Hynes/Stevenson cowrote Spaced and Lizzie and Sarah; may have had input into Nighty Night. Was in two or three eps of nu Who.
Long and Millican probably both on YouTube - Long did a show inspired by the Pitt Rivers Museum, Millican noted that absent from A Hundred Ways to Drive Your Man Crazy was "Hide his Battlestar Galactica boxsets, and explained why people think The Emire Strikes Back is the film of the Star Wars they should like back. But all of these are writer performers (and Lucy Porter probably belongs on the list).