How great to see E. Nesbit and Joanna Russ praised in the same piece.

Yes, yes, yes to Joanna Russ. The Female Man was difficult for me, even as a young lesbian, because it demanded I step so far outside the mental and cultural boundaries of this existence. But the impact has never stopped resounding.

As illuminating as the fiction of LeGuin and Russ is, however, I also strongly recommend their essays about what they faced in writing what they did — for instance, how LeGuin couldn’t hope to get The Left Hand of Darkness published if all Gethenians were referred to as “she”, it HAD to be “he”, the male default is omnipotent. When I was able to read the book later republished with the pronouns as LeGuin preferred, it rocked my world all over again.

If you haven’t read her, I’d recommend C.J. Cherryh as the third leg of this feminist sci-fi triad. But NOT her fantasy novels. Instead, the Deep Space and Cyteen books are astonishingly brilliant creations of a future human space-based culture. And the Chanur series is my favorite of all time — about a pocket of space where species other than humans have achieved sentience and space travel, and have an uneasy, often xenophobic alliance of trade. (One of these groups, the hani, is a matriarchal cat race.) I reread all the Chanur books every six months, and get something new to chew on every time. As I was halfway through the series the first time, losing sleep because I was staying up all night to read, I went looking for information about Cherryh (didn’t even know her gender yet) to see if I could figure out why these books were hitting me so hard. When I discovered she lived at that time in Norman, Oklahoma, I realized the saga is about North American tribes right before and at the point of European invasion. Hope that’s not too much of a spoiler. It’s even better done than Butler’s profoundly disturbing, incredible glimpse into the absolute destruction of Africa by slavery, also done as an allegory.

Joanna Russ is a very fine writer but quite different from Le Guin. Try her short stories first — the two more recent collections are Extra(Ordinary) People and The Hidden Side of the Moon. She’s good — tough, insightful, often hilarious, sometimes touching. She may infuriate you, but Joanna Russ will always, always make you think.

(Note the quotations on this icon. Both classic Russ.)

How do you feel about Octavia Butler?

Why was it better to read That Hideous Strength when you were older?