Sorrow and anger: Books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t started

I don’t usually write negative reviews of books, because (1) it’s usually not fair on a writer to pillory them in public, (2) why waste the reader’s time? But sometimes writing a reasoned critical appraisal for the record can be a public service. For those searching online to find out if anyone else hated this book … Continue reading Sorrow and anger: Books I couldn’t finish or wished I hadn’t started →

Ian Sales, All That Outer Space Allows

I don’t know Ian Sales, but for about a year I’ve been sending him some of my posts about female-authored sf for him to repost in his sfmistressworks site. Then suddenly, out of the blue, he blurts out on Twitter that the fourth of his Apollo Quartet novels is in the 2015 Tiptree Award Honor … Continue reading Ian Sales, All That Outer Space Allows →

Letters to Tiptree: homage to a ground-breaking author

Update: On 25 September 2016 Letters to Tiptree won the British Fantasy Award for best non-fiction. Well deserved! If you’ve not heard of James Tiptree Jr, the acclaimed author of science fiction short stories and a handful of novels, he was active from 1967 to the late 1980s. He also wrote as Raccoona Sheldon, and … Continue reading Letters to Tiptree: homage to a ground-breaking author →

Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang

Three months ago I had never heard of Kate Wilhelm. Science Fiction and other Suspect Ruminations ran a week of Wilhelm guest reviews recently, which alerted me to her existence. I found Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang in Aberdeen's fine second-hand bookshop Books and Beans, a week after that, and carried it home in triumph. Where Late won … Continue reading Kate Wilhelm’s Where Late The Sweet Birds Sang →

Gender and body difference in Vonda N McIntyre’s The Exile Waiting

This was Vonda McIntyre’s first novel, published in 1975, about twenty years after the first thalidomide disaster in Germany, the UK and North America, in which around 10,000 children died or were born with malformations. The novel is about disability, and difference, and how society accepts and rejects different differences. It’s also an astoundingly undated speculation on a … Continue reading Gender and body difference in Vonda N McIntyre’s The Exile Waiting →

Snake healing in Vonda N McIntyre’s Dreamsnake

This week is Vonda McIntyre week. Today's post on her 1979 novel Dreamsnake is from my podcast miniseries on feminist science fiction; tomorrow's post on Vulpes Libris is on her new novel, The Moon and the Sun. With Dreamsnake I’m not talking about dragons, but proper hard-edged science in futuristic fiction, even if it’s made-up science, where … Continue reading Snake healing in Vonda N McIntyre’s Dreamsnake →