Category: Discussion

If you’ve been following the Super Creatives and Special Guest series, you would know that I’ve been getting to meet some wonderful people of late. The frustrating thing is that it’s often a transient contact at a convention or expo, and try as you might it’s hard to sustain a realtionship on a brief encounter, no matter how much you connected with someone. I’m stubborn though, and I don’t give up on people I like easily!

At AussieCon, I happened to have the good fortune to be on a panel with Kim Stanley Robinson and Ian Irvine which was moderated by Melinda Snodgrass. She did a brilliant job and I would love to have had the chance to talk more with her. The next best thing is to mention her new book and suggest you check out her post On Genre.

Melinda says, “It’s the eve of Armageddon, and the gates of hell are about ot yawn open. Christ is a homeless schizophrenic living in a cardboard box. Lucifer commands the forces of light and humanity’s best hope is a tormented young beat cop from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Basically I’m writing a series about the war between science and rationality and superstition and religion.”

Clearly my list is limited by what I have read. There will be some significant omissions, no doubt, simply because certain books haven’t found their way into my sphere. So taking that and subjectiveness into account:

Tricia Sullivan – Maul

Maxine McArthur – Time Future

Octavia Butler – Fledgling

Nancy Kress – Probability Moon

Karen Traviss – City of Pearl

Nalo Hopkinson – Brown Girl in the Ring (just outside the ten year mark, but I’m ignoring that)

Kathleen Ann Goonan – Queen City Jazz

Nicola Griffith – Ammonite ( replaced Bujold but should have been on here in the first place anyway)

Joan Slonczewski – Door Into Ocean

Mary Gentle – Ash: a secret history

Year of Our War – Steph Swainston

The sad thing is that publishers are not buying much SF currently, and I fear that our current crop of talented female SF writers will wither and die, or be waylaid. Truly, if I had the funds, I would start my own imprint.

And here is a name to watch out for:

Joanne Anderton – Debris (forthcoming from Angry Robot)

I’ve been quietly following the women and SF discussion at Torque Control and plan to write my list of potential classics over the weekend. Here are some that have been posted so far:

Liviu Suciu’s list from over at Fantasy Book Critic:

Spirit, Gwyneth Jones
The Year of Our War, Steph Swainston
The Etched City, KJ Bishop
Chaos Space, Marianne de Pierres
The Alchemy of Stone, Ekaterina Sedia
Principles of Angels Jaine Fenn
Darkland, Liz Williams
Daughters of the North/The Carhullan Army, Sarah Hall
Spin State, Chris Moriarty
Banner of Souls, Liz Williams

And Tansy Rayner Roberts from TRR.com:

Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones
The Time Traveller’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Farthing, Jo Walton
Nylon Angel, Marianne de Pierres
Passage, Connie Willis
Lavinia, Ursula Le Guin
Less Than Human, Maxine McArthur
Fallen Gods, Kate Orman (and Jonathan Blum, but I still want to count it)
The Empress of Mars, Kage Baker
Carnival, Elizabeth Bear
Spirit, Gwyneth Jones
New Amsterdam, Elizabeth Bear
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Blackout/All Clear, Connie Willis
Lifelode, Jo Walton