Canon formation

As this group gets bigger it'll be interesting to see what books come up as most commonly shared! And I think that will be useful input for thinking about how we define feminist sf. Nifty.

The "most common shared books" list for this group is really remarkably coherent - - this group's list goes well into the 40s before it shows any books that are off-topic.

Looking around the LT tags:

- The tag "feminist sf" is used 133 times by 9 users.

- The tag "feminist science fiction" is used 97 times by 8 users.

I haven't looked at others' tags, but my own tag is used on 53 books; that's not a bad starting point for a core collection, if not for "the" canon.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?tag=feminist+science+fiction&view=As...

Very consistant isn't it. I dont know how long ago the zeitgeist was updated but so it might changed but it seems to suggest feminist literature forms a ghetto within the genre. That people who with a cmore casual interset are avoiding the group. Odd in some ways there are some very popular authors who deserve a place in the canon. On the other hand talking about LeFanu's book is a different activity from talking about one of Le Guin's novels and they can do that with ease in one of the other forums.

What about newer writers like Nicola Griffith and Justina Robson (both British)? Perhaps there is a US bent operating here as well - I'm surprised not to see Canadians such as Nalo Hopkinson, whose books have done really well in the US.

Also -- where's The Female Man? I know that queer SF is another subgenre within a subgenre... Is anyone tagging "lesbian science fiction" out there?

And no Herland or Frankenstein?!

I don't think of Justina Robson as particularily feminist. Karen Traviss is a name I would mention. That her very british SF is not published here astounds me. I don't see queer SF as a valid subgenre there is no movement just individuals. Delany and Huff come to mind as do Susan Wright and David Gerrold. No doubt there are plenty of others, but they seem to be lonely voices rather than a disscussion.

Hi, deliriumslibrarian.

Griffith has won a Tiptree, for Ammonite.

Female Man was published before the Tiptrees started, and is one of the top books tagged "feminist sf".

I think there are too few Tiptree winners to form much of a conclusion about their biases and limitations. (Obviously, we all need to buy more at their bake sales, so they can recognize and encourage more feminist books....)

I'm not seeing any tags used on LT for "gay/queer/lesbian sf/science fiction". And the sub-genre certainly exists....

"Also -- where's The Female Man? I know that queer SF is another subgenre within a subgenre... "

Three of Joanna Russ's books show up in the top 20 of this group's Zeitgeist. When I looked just now The Female Man was #14. A couple of her other books show up further down as well. So she's pretty well represented here.

I imagine a lot of users probably don't tag Frankenstein as sf, although a strong case can be made for it fitting into the category. Until fairly recently though, most English lit textbooks discussed it as a "gothic" novel.

I don't know if I consider Herland a true example of sf. I guess I tend to think of it as primarily a "utopian" story. It's been a long time since I read it though (I find Gilman's prose pretty pedestrian-one of those writers whose ideas surpass their abilities), so perhaps I need to read again and rethink this.

Karen Traviss is a name I would mention. That her very british SF is not published here astounds me.

#5 Simon:

Not sure where 'here' is for you but her books are published in the US. She has a series called the The Wess'har Wars .

The books are:

City of Pearl
Crossing the Line
The World Before
Matriarch

While they may not be published in the UK, they are all available on amazon.UK for quick shipping, except The World before which has a 1-3 week delay.

I would also disagree about her SF being very British, to me its very US (Cherryh's Union/Alliance and Foreigner novels spring to mind) and I suspect that is why she isn't published in the UK.

I would also disagree about Gay SFF not being a viable sub-genre. There have been awards given for gay SFF books since 1989. They were called the Lambda awards, and it looks like they have become Gaylactic Spectrum Awards at http://www.spectrumawards.org/. Besides the awards they have also produced a suggested reading list of gay SFF.

On top of that there are more gay SFF authors than you list, and almost all the recent Tiptree winners are either gay authors, or gay stories. This from a a Gay SFF author who is not happy with that development. There is also an annual convention called Gaylaxicon. I know this because one of the series I read is by Susan R. Matthews, a gay author, and she has a story that is set in her Jurisdiction series in their 2006 sampler for the con. I ordered it through Amazon.

#7

Weird, as I understood it Frankenstein started the science fiction genre. Was it the first major novel where the premise specifically depended on an imaginary scientific advancement?

8>
Oh I must disagree about Traviss Her character's dialogue and cultural attitudes are as British as The Sweeny.

Umm I was not consciously listing gay authors I will have to take your word for it that they all are, Of course there are more than Yes I vaguely remember the Lambda awards and have a few winners on my shelves.

The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards means nothing to me.

Maybe its all a bit low to lowkey to strike me as a movement, Maybe I am just uninterested. Shrug

Of course there are more than four gay SF authors I am astoundied that you might think that I thought otherwise.

#10

One can only go by what is written on the screen, having no interest in being a mind reader.

I was responding to your incorrect assessment that there were 'only lonely voices not a discussion', when you made the sweeping proclamation that gay sff was not a valid sub-genre.

Often these types of comments are made, based on either incomplete information or on prejudice. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I simply wanted to make you aware that there are in fact quite a few gay authors and quite a bit of gay sff.

Your comments implied that you were in fact, unaware of their existence, so perhaps you should pack your astounded-ness away for another day.

Bother LT went down just as I was posting this let me see if I can reconstruct it:

11> you are mistaken, You are infering something I did not imply.
I do not understand how you could think " No doubt there are plenty of others" could mean I was unaware of the existance of other writers on gay topics in the field. What was implied, not apparently very sucessfully , was that I could not be bothered to go through my catalogue enumerating those authors that might belong to something that I, you are quite correct, sweepingly condemned as too ill-defined to be called a movement.
certainly queerlit is movement but it manifestation in the genre stricks me as faint. espescially compared to feminism which found and used a loud and unique voice in SF.

By the way you seem to define writers that support gay issues as synonymous with gay writers. Please tell me I also am inferring something you did not imply.

Ragnell, I completely agree that Frankenstein is a science fiction novel and that those claiming it as the first science fiction novel present a good case. However, in its own time science fiction as a known quantity, a literary "genre" did not exist, and it's taken a surprisingly long time for standard undergraduate English lit textbooks to catch up to modern literary theory and acknowledge the radical nature of Mary Shelley's best known work.

I would imagine that many people who are not English literature or cultural studies buffs might tag Frankenstein as "horror" or "suspense" or something similar and those most comfortable with an older literary tradition would simply think of the story as "gothic". None of these tags are wrong-they just demonstrate different aspects of this remarkable, multi-faceted work.

All I've read by Karen Traviss is her most recent Star Wars novel. While I found it to be very political, I actually disliked her offhand comments about women. She used a lot of "for a women" or "even though she was a women" type comments...

Is this forum just for SF or for feminist fantasy as well? If so, Anne Bishop heads my list for that.

Is this forum just for SF or for feminist fantasy as well?

I can't speak for anyone else here, but I use "SF" in the sense of "Speculative Fiction" - the umbrella term that encompasses both "science fiction" and "fantasy".

What canon list are we all working from? The tag list?

I don't tag feminist SF & F as such; although I own and have read a great deal of it.

For new writers I'd like to add Judith Berman. I'm not sure she set out to write a feminist novel when she wrote Bear Daughter, but I think it very much is one. Although not without its flaws, it is one of the best female coming-of-age novels I've read in the genre.

14>I can't comment on triple zero, if thats the one not having read it, though I suspect we are seeing her characters views expressed rather than hers, In her series commencing with City of Pearl we have rather the opposite situation women tend to out tough the men unremarked.

Simon

I like the term "speculative fiction" - it's a good catch all. And it really helps for works that really are both Sci-fi and fantasy.

Yep. The border between "science fiction" and "fantasy" is pretty fluid. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Mccaffrey insists that the Pern books are actually "science fiction". The Darkover books started out as science fiction, and gradually drifted over to "fantasy". When did they change?

Rather than worry about the exact taxonomy, better perhaps to just call it all "SF" and be done with it.

I can't categorize Traviss' books as feminist because of the things I've read on her Live Journal about feminism. I haven't read her Star Wars books, but her opinion is pretty much what was stated in #14.

I call science fiction, fantasy, and horror speculative fiction too because I disagree with most people, including #19 here about Pern (it's very much science fiction in my mind) and then there's the whole debate about dark fantasy vs. horror too, and there are the crossover novels like Doyle and Macdonald's Mageworlds series, which has elements of both science fiction and fantasy.

Are we/you defining this as female authors who write SF (accepting this is as speculative rather than science), or authors who write predominently pro-female SF?

There will be more of the first than the second?

Are we are limiting it to canon works rather than authors?

#8 Cherryh is readily available in the UK - not all her works, because some are rather old now, but a lot. In terms of canon I wouldn't use either Foreigner or the Ali./Uni as neither are particularly pro-female. The Chanur Saga is though and in some respects Morgaine is too.

Apparently, I'm slow to catch on. To the "checklist" on the website, which I am assuming is what is being used as the canon, I would add Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce; also I don't think I saw I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. Also the Judith Berman mentioned above.

Please let me know if I'm completely missing the point, the first few posts seem like they had a beginning in another conversation somewhere else...

Oh yes we had been talking about the tiptree awards and hence I at least was thinking more of examining gender roles than espousing any particular feminist position.

It's a tag I plan on using once I go back and start the tagging thing. There's a heck of a lot of GLBT specfic out there - and there's an annual award (The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards - not sure if I can add a URL here or not) which is similar to the Tiptrees.