Strange Horizons Reviews, December 6-10

This week's Strange Horizons reviews are dedicated to women writing science fiction: Farah Mendlesohn reviews Tricia Sullivan's Lightborn, Duncan Lawie reviews Jaine Fenn's Guardians of Paradise, the third volume in her Hidden Empire series, and Matt Denault reviews Kaaron Warren's Walking the Tree.

This is in honor of Niall Harrison's project to spotlight women in SF.  Sparked by an interview with Tricia Sullivan in which she discussed her sense that there is a growing inequality between men and women in the SF field, Niall posted his own thoughts to Torque Control, which led to a long conversation, and later to a plan to spend the first week of December discussing science fiction by women.  You can find the posts from this spotlight week here: they include several reviews of recent books, links to other reviews and discussions of SF by women, and the results of a poll conducted by Niall to name the top ten science fiction books by women of the last decade.

Comments

Alexander said…
Abigail, do you have your own list for top female SF writers in the past decade? I recall your reviews of The Time Traveler's Wife and Farthing were rather unimpressed and I'd presumes some broader drift from both Niall's choices and the larger consensus, it'd be interesting to see how your own picks compared. And it'd likely give me at least half a dozen new quality SF works to read.
December 12, 2010 4:35 PM
Abigail Nussbaum said…
Actually, the reason that I haven't made much of a contribution to the discussion is that when, prompted by Niall's observations, I went back to my reading lists to see what my selections for the best science fiction novels by women of the decade would be, I was dismayed and mortified to discover just how few such novels I've read. So Niall's project has had the effect on me that I hope it's had on a lot of people, of spurring me to seek out and read more science fiction by women. I've read Bold as Love, and am hoping to read Life later this week, and there are several other novels on the top ten list that I'm interested in. And, as you say, some that I'm not so fond of, but I can certainly think of worse names that could have been (and in some cases, almost were) on it, and don't seem to be in a position to offer better ones, so for the time being I think the list is a good place to start.
December 12, 2010 5:07 PM

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