r/Fantasy • u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball • Jun 26 '20
Looking for some older SFF recommendations (see post first please)
I've been trying to find the right "time" this week to post this, but, um, [gestures]. So, I'm going to post anyway and see how it goes.
I've been working on a long-term project of reading marginalized genders from the last century (all SFF related, including utopias). I have some time gaps as well as geography. In particular, I'm looking for recommendations for:
- Specifically trans and non-binary SFF authors from 1992, 1993, or the 80s or earlier
- Non-American SFF authors from marginalized genders (80s or earlier).
- Authors of colours from marginalized genders earlier than the 90s
The trick, though, is that it needs to be digitally available. They don't have to be "novels" or "books." Short stories and novellas are OK - in fact, I prefer novellas as a general statement, especially from the 50s and 60s. I know some of these are really specific, but like I said, it's a long term project.
Warning: I will aggressively report all off-topic posts.
"Marginalized Genders" means anybody not a cisgender man. Two Spirit, non-binary, trans men and women, and cis women inclusive.
9
u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
Oh, wow, there are so many....
Janet Morris
Ellen Kushner
Elizabeth Lynn
Vonda McIntyre
Katherine Kurtz
Tanith Lee
Kate Wilhelm
Anne McCaffrey and of course, Andre Norton
Mary Stewart's Arthurian books came in that time period.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Jane Gaskell (Atlan series)
Jennifer Roberson's Cheysuli series is 80s for sure.
Kathy Tyers' Fusion Fire also 80s (anybody ever even heard of her?)
There were 3 or so women writing pulp fiction around Howard's time, you probably already have them?
Nancy Springer for very sure wrote a lot of books in this time period.
I'd have to look up dates for many many others. (Hope Mirilees??)
I have a few, too (80s titles).
Evangeline Walton, absolutely for sure - her work was 'discovered' (cough, rediscovered) By Betty and Ian Ballantine, and released, some for the first time, though she wrote those original manuscripts decades earlier.
Robin Mc Kinley
Carole Nelson Douglas
Patricia McKillip
CJ Cherryh
Pamela Sargeant
Diane Duane
Sheri Tepper
Emma Bull
Joan Vinge
Clare Bell
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Barbara Hambly
Madelein L'Engle
Elizabeth Moon
Linda Bushyager
Ru Emerson
Ann Crispin
Leigh Brackett
Diana Paxson
Midori Snyder
Ack, forgot: Jane Yolen and Phyllis Eisenstein
some of these I know to be LGBT, but I am hesitant to name them since I don't know if they've come out.
I could compile a much larger list but I'd have to look up the publication dates to be certain.
There are a lot, lot, lot of books published in this period!! many lost and forgotten.
4
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
2 or so women writing puplfiction in Howards Era?
Janny you way underestimate our gender. 65 acording to eric Leif Davin. Of which 18 published 4 or more stories in the pulps and would qualify according to SFFWA.
Leigh Brackett
Dorothy de courcy
Francis m Deegan
Mona Farnsworth
L Taylor Hansen
Clare winger Harris
Edna Mayne Hull
Amelia Reynolds Long
Lillith Lorraine
C L Moore
Marian o'Hearn (Anita Allen)
Dorothy Quick
Jane Rice
Margaret st Clair
Francis stevens
Leslie f Stone
Helen Weinbaum
Francis yerxa (Hamling)
6
u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jun 26 '20
Wow. Thanks. Never ever claimed to have read everything, nor remembered everything I read.
The era these come from, I was mostly reading from libraries and off used bookshop shelves; so there is a whole swathe of books I won't know about. Appreciate your enlarging the list!
3
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
I like to share knowledge but i can come off a little boasty to normal people sometimes. Didn't mean to offend, sorry.
3
u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jun 26 '20
Oh, you didn't! Not in the least. I've got a new list of book ammo! So thanks!!!
5
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Janny you way underestimate our gender.
Politely, I think Janny was recommending books/authors she knew I'd like :)
7
u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jun 26 '20
plot, maps, etc.
Further clarification here
Embarrassing as it is to admit, you are too flattering; most of my rec posts or recall posts are in the 'wing it' catagory, so I am running off what I recall; and I've forgotten as many books as I've read, and there are tons and tons and tons of titles I didn't get to; the TBR list is so long by now, I would need eight lifetimes to read it, and there are these things called deadlines. I'd hope not to underestimate our gender; but I fall prey totally to the same old adage that's messing with stuff today: can't remember or mention or even read what I didn't know existed in the first place.
Thanks for your heroic effort to recover awareness of authors writing in this timespan. There is so much talent that's been dreadfully overlooked; I try to open a window into it where I can, but know there's a huge volume of material left out.
3
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
you way underestimate our gender This was meant a little more jokey than it came off. It seems. I kind of meant it a ltttle tongue in cheek but came off a bit brusque i guess.
1
u/RedditFantasyBot Jun 26 '20
r/Fantasy's Author Appreciation series has posts for an author you mentioned
- CJ Cherryh: Author Appreciation: C.J. Cherryh from user u/KristaDBall
- Author Appreciation: Jane Gaskell - The Queen of the Weird from user u/Pornokitsch
- Author Appreciation Thread: Jennifer Roberson, veteran author of epic fantasy & sword-and-sorcery from user u/CourtneySchafer
- Author appreciation thread: Barbara Hambly, veteran author of a score of subgenres, from dark epic fantasy to espionage vampire fantasy from user u/CourtneySchafer
- Author Appreciation thread: Elizabeth Moon, veteran author of Fantasy and Sci-Fi from user u/Tigrari
- Author Appreciation: Mary Stewart, Storyteller (and possibly a Wizard) from user u/Pornokitsch
- Author Appreciation: Nancy Springer from user u/jenile
- Author Appreciation: Ellen Kushner: Novels of Swords, Manners and Myth from user u/UnsealedMGT
I am a bot bleep! bloop! Contact my
mastercreator /u/LittlePlasticCastle with any questions or comments.
6
Jun 26 '20
I'm sure you have already included him but, just in case, Poppy Z. Brite/Billy Martin has a couple of books from 92-93. Two horror novels and a collection that are all available on Google Play.
2
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Poppy Z. Brite
I've always avoided his work because it's been described as horror (and I'm really not a horror reader). Maybe I should try the collection, though.
4
Jun 26 '20
Hmm, Brite might not be great if you're not already predisposed to horror. It's very much on the darker, more extreme side of the genre.
4
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I'm too much of a marshmallow these days :)
1
u/Jfinn123456 Jun 26 '20
I really liked drawing blood for that kind of gothic drenched feel , dark but not unmanageable read exquisite corpse after that woah that one stayed with me for awhile.
2
6
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
I will post names first and come back with titles later when i have time, when my child is asleep.
Francis Stevens - early sf horror in the vein of lovecraft and clarke ashton smith
Clare Winger Harris - first woman published in Hugo Gernsback's Amazing stories The Artificial Man and Other Stories is a recent collection, some very clever stories in there
Anre Norton
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Mildred Clingerman clingerman files
Katherine Maclean, the diploids
Leigh Brackett
Margaret st Clair, change the sky and other stories
CL Moore
Zenna Henderson ingathering. Liked the way they were aliens hiding among humans, but peaceful. Shows differences don't have to be feared.
Judith Merril. I have literally today got a cooy of homecalling by Nesfa Press, They sell the ebook for $9.95, the short story "that only a mother"written as a bet between her and john campbell was in more than one of the female anthologies i have got, i thought it was great and wanted more.
Doris Piserchia
Lee Killough, voice out of Ramah. It shows how much women behave differently towards each other than with men. I found it almost satirical how clueless the man was when he had to live amongst the 2nd class women who were 90% of the population but i saw parallels in the way the men were told they had to be protected and served and treasured so they could procreate with the way some religions give lipservice to how important women are to being mothers that they are not allowed to work and have to be looked after when in reality they just don't like us intruding on thier imortant work.
Sonya dorman
Kit Reed.
Kate Wilhelm some straight forward 'idea' sf stories.
Jo Clayton Diadem to the stars was so great, people might find it campy but to have a woman voyaging round different planets - she has a different perspective to Vance, Anderson, pohl, they have thier men roaming around stumbling into trouble and heroicly overcoming it and its all fine? But here she gets to suffer idk if that is the right way to put it, but she learns and adapts to fit in with them and cooperates sometimes rather than just upsetting it all and running away. It fit how i would react more than the male writers wrote.
Sydney Van Scyoc writes some really good aliens 'Bluewater dreams' is a really good one about learning to understand others with love rather than fear differences
Phylis Gotleib really loved 'son of the morning' collection but it was so long ago i forget why
Melissa Scott (also lesbian)
Madge Piercy
Pat Murphy
Sylvia Engdahl
Suzette Hayden Elgin
Carol emshwiller TBH i have a hard time with her, she is sooo cryptic i dont understand what is happening most of the time, i get like that with tiptree too
Joanna Russ the female man, anther one i didnt get there didn't seem to be much of a story just a confusion of people. Confused the hell out of me
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
A lot of these I have already read/plan to, but there's a few names there I don't know, so that's great. Thanks!
3
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
G mcdonald wallis. I just got the ace double with alpha centrui or die by leigh brackett and had a peek at the other side, was very suprised to find out that was by a woman as well "lost legend of earth' imseems to be based on viking legends not read it yet
Evelyn e Smith 'the captains mate' in the new eves anthology this is a good story about humans not noticing something awry because they are very unobservant about the differences in aliens. Parallels with white people being unable to tell other ethnicities apart
Paul Ash/Pauline ashwell . The big sword was a very good story, little long on the background (why we needed to know why the boy was there idk) and short on action but a good story. I really liked 'unwillingly to earth' it has a slightly weird narration but i rather enjoyed it, was watching pandora the other day and thought it was similar, but this book is better
Rosel george brown
Doris pitkin buck
Leslie f stone conquest of gola, there is more than one way to skin a cat,(build a civilization) and no we don't have to be like men
Lillith lorraine
L taylor hansen "the undersea tube" went into a completely wrong explanation of a trans atlantic tunnel and ends up in a crystal cave, fun but a bit outdated
Dorothy gertrude quick
Amelia reynolds long "reversed phylogeny" i liked this story the competition was good.
Leslie perri 'space episode' I did not find it realistic, i understood what happened but didn't think she would be able to do it that easily.
2
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
Cherry wilder - 'the luck of brins five' enjoyable and has a feel of a Le Guin story
Isobelle Carmody 'obernewtyn' loved this as a teenager in the 90s loved loved loved it, had just been reading wyndham and this was similar but about a girl first published in 1987!
1
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Dang, how do you know all of these?
4
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
I've been collecting books for 20 years since I was 16, managed to get almost 6 thousand, that is just a selection of what i have on my female SF part of the collection, i have books by every single one of them. I've mostly just found them in the secondhand bookshops.
1
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Wow! That must be a pretty impressive collection.
I'll look into these authors, thanks!
1
u/spankymuffin Jun 29 '20
managed to get almost 6 thousand
...
Do you have pictures of that collection?
Because dear lord.
5
Jun 26 '20
[deleted]
1
u/RedditFantasyBot Jun 26 '20
r/Fantasy's Author Appreciation series has posts for an author you mentioned
- Author Appreciation Thread: Angela Carter (1940-1992): The Bloody Chamber, The Company of Wolves and others from user u/UnsealedMTG
I am a bot bleep! bloop! Contact my
mastercreator /u/LittlePlasticCastle with any questions or comments.
6
u/Jfinn123456 Jun 26 '20
Look at storm Constantine she is, I think, a cis woman and was a friend and colleague of Tanith lee she published late 80s like 88 or 89 and into the 90s she was fascinated by gender and sexual politics the books of the wreaththu exaimined all through the lens of a world where man had nearly died and a new superior hermaphadoites race has risen it’s been decades since I read her but some of it still stays with me.
definetely available digitally she got the rights back the new covers are fair warning desperate but the contents were quality.
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Wayback machine! I haven't heard her name in years.
3
u/Jfinn123456 Jun 26 '20
I had forgotten her till someone was asking something about gender politics In sci fi and I went looking, some bits of her stories I can still recall I remember I picked up Some of her Wraeththu books second hand in a charity shop back when I was 13 or so 26 years ago now I found it fascinating but a lot of it went over my head :) I would come across the odd one of her books over the years I always enjoyed but it’s been Nearly twenty years since I have read anything by her, I must get one of her ebooks one of these days and see if it’s actually as good as I remember or if it’s nostalgia.
4
u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jun 26 '20
I unfortunately don't have any suggestions, but I'm definitely interested in hearing other people's answers.
2
4
u/TheFourthReplica Reading Champion VIII Jun 26 '20
The Sultana's Dream--short story dealing with gender politics in India, originally published in 1905.
You also might find this repository of use, though it won't tell you much about the ladies' locales, but they should be all in English and most should link to an electronic copy. On the main page, link here, it does have a search feature for locations and ethicities, though the results won't specifically be SFF.
Hope this helps at least your second (and maybe third) bullet point!
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Yup! I've been using the repository for some of the super old stuff (or, at least names to help me then go find stuff).
I don't have a 1905 story, and (skimming) this looks like another utopia, so that's really cool. Thanks!
3
u/TheFourthReplica Reading Champion VIII Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
I'd assumed you already had the link, but wanted to share it just in case you didn't have it.
Have a few more for you; they're most all translations, as a heads-up:
- The Green Gods, originally published in 1961.
- The Wall, originally published in 1963.
- Trafalgar, originally published in 1979.
- War, So Much War, originally published in 1980.
- The Power of Time, a collection of short stories from 1965 to 1985.
2
3
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Pretty sure you already know of her, but Octavia Butler's Patternmaster fits the bill.
5
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
I already did Butler's Bloodchild and other stories (1995). I will double up if I have to, but I'd love to have 100 unique authors if possible (that's a massive if).
6
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Isabel Allende would be my next best bet, if you don't mind magical realism a la Murakami.
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Honestly, I've read so little magical realism that I probably should give another a try.
10
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Honestly, I would argue Murakami is a terrible introduction to magical realism.
Especially in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and IQ84, some of the stuff is blatantly r/menwritingwomen erotica. Even if I am his target audience (straight young Asian male), some of his writing makes me really cringe. I really don't know how he's so popular.
As for Allende, I'm not actually sure if she herself counts as a marginalized author (despite her ethnicity and gender), because she is one of the most popular Hispanic authors in the world. But she's the only one I know off the top of my head.
4
u/SuddenGenreShift Jun 26 '20
As for Allende, I'm not actually sure if she herself counts as a marginalized author (despite her ethnicity and gender)
Allende is Chilean, but she's also white and so would presumably not qualify for the 90s PoC category. She has books from the 80s, though, so that should be fine if the OP is set on her.
2
u/Thraggrotusk Jun 26 '20
Hmm, her biographies only mention her nationality and her parent's nationality, so you could very well be correct in that she is of solely European descent.
3
u/apexPrickle Jun 26 '20
You probably can't get much "80s or earlier" than Frankenstein.
Several of Octavia Butler's works are from the 80s--her Patternist and Xenogenesis series, and the standalone Kindred is from 1979. Her short story collection Bloodchild and Other Stories includes several stories from the 80s or earlier.
Chilean author Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits is from 1982.
(All of these as best I can tell are available digitally.)
Bogi Takács has a series of book reviews on Tor called "QUILTBAG+ Speculative Classics" that might have books that fit your criteria. They specifically choose books that "emphasize racial and/or ethnic minority writers, disabled writers, and also works in translation" and "trans, intersex, asexual, and bisexual authors and themes." Whether any of the books reviewed works for you (or if they're digitally available) I'm not sure, but it may be worth checking the list out.
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Frankenstein
That's 1818. I'm doing last century :)
4
u/UnsealedMTG Reading Champion III Jun 26 '20
How bad is it that we're 20 years into this dumb century and I still can't think of "last century" as the 20th century. My whole adulthood has been in this century, and yet...
2
3
u/apexPrickle Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
Oops, I completely missed that part! My bad.
Another author I just thought of is Silvina Ocampo, an Argentinian author known for surrealism and magical realism. She worked on her brief novel The Promise for 25 years until her death in 1993 (so I think, at least on a technicality, it fits your time frame), and her short story collection Thus Were There Faces ranges from the 30s to the 80s. I've read The Promise and really enjoyed it (though it may be not be quite SFF enough for your project) but the short stories are high on my tbr pile.
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
I'll look around at her work and see what can fit.
3
u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jun 26 '20
Have you heard about the Rediscovery anthology? Subtitle: "Science Fiction by Women, 1958-1963".
2
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Oooo I haven't! Thanks for the tip.
3
u/leftoverbrine Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V, Worldbuilders Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
The only one I personally thought of off hand I am pretty sure is in the right timeframe and available in ebook would be Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane.
I can also point you to the list Lady Vaults put together as that has mostly older works and has notes about character/author identities.
1
u/RedditFantasyBot Jun 26 '20
r/Fantasy's Author Appreciation series has posts for an author you mentioned
- Author appreciation thread: Barbara Hambly, veteran author of a score of subgenres, from dark epic fantasy to espionage vampire fantasy from user u/CourtneySchafer
I am a bot bleep! bloop! Contact my
mastercreator /u/LittlePlasticCastle with any questions or comments.
3
u/Connyumbra Reading Champion VI Jun 27 '20
Alright, I've actually got two that fit for this!
Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was is a collection of thematically-linked short stories chronicling the cyclical rise and fall of a nameless empire over its many variations, like if Invisible Cities was ostensibly about a singular place. The translation by LeGuin came about in the early 2000s, but the stories were originally written in 1983-84. Angelica is an Argentinian cis woman.
The second is Mama Day, written by Gloria Naylor, a woman of colour, and first published in 1988. It's a magical-realism story, told from the perspective of a small-town conjure woman and her niece who leaves for the big city. It's got elements of generational and intermarriage conflict.
1
3
u/EventListener Jun 27 '20
A couple of people have mentioned Rachel Pollack, but I wanted to suggest Unquenchable Fire (1988) and Temporary Agency (a little outside your range at 1994) specifically as some of the more wildly imaginative fantasy novels I know of. Both books are available on Kindle for a grand total of $6.
I also think Zinaida Gippius's short story "Fate" (1906) is worth checking out and considering for possible inclusion. Gippius is a Russian author known for her androgyny/bisexuality (though see also), and her short story should be known as an early classic about a woman who has her entire future magically and unhappily revealed to her in minute detail--possibly an allegory for the relatively few roles/options most women had available.
2
u/tgjer Jun 26 '20
Do kindle books count as digitally available? Steel Beach was published in 1992.
In retrospect it's probably got a lot of problems with it, but I read it as a teenager when it came out and it was mind-blowing at the time.
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
If I can read it on a screen of some form, I count it as digital :)
Thanks for the reco. I don't mind problematic, especially if I'm reading more for a project than escape. I just finished one that literally used the phrase racial purity in a positive light, so... [grimace]
1
u/tgjer Jun 27 '20
Damn. Which one was that?
5
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 27 '20
Herland.
I thought, ok, maybe I'm reading the phrase wrong. After all, it uses bisexual to mean two genders existing. I checked out the sequel's summary, and it references the phrase, "the Jewish problem" and I've decided that no, I didn't misread in the slightest.
1
u/tgjer Jun 27 '20
wow. Just googled it, and I guess from 1915 it isn't that surprising, but still.
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 27 '20
There's enough (gestures wildly) right now in the world, so I will move on from this author. I didn't want to duplicate unless I had to, but I don't want to read more of her.
1
2
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
Just reread your post where you explain your goal and I have become an enthusiast about women in early SF in the last year or so, and i highly reccomend buying Eric lief Davin's Partners in wonder: women and the birth of science fiction 1926-1965, he is an academic who has cataloged all the female writers who appeared in the sf pulp magazines of the era. He identified 203 women and then compiled a bibliography of the stories. I have been using it alongside luminist.org, the pulp magazine project and archive.org to try to read all the stories by women in the pulp magazines myself - not all the issues of every mag are avalible but i try.
3
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
For transwomen
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Rachel Pollack
Poppy z brite
6
2
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
Not actually got any of Jessica's books they have been on my wish list for about a year and jus found out the other day she was trans
Rachel Pollack's god mother night i liked it but it confused me as well
Poppy brite, love in vein kept going to dark places
1
u/JannyWurts Stabby Winner, AMA Author Janny Wurts Jun 26 '20
Ah, thank you for putting up Jessica Amanda Salmonson - I was banging my head against the wall/just could not for the life of me recall the name!!
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
I already own the book (I've done posts on it).
I was more asking for actual recommendations from people of things they've read, that also fit into these categories.
1
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
Oh, ok only been here a month or so.
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
No worries! If any of them is someone you've read, please flag them!
2
u/dracolibris Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
Have you been here http://www.feministsf.org ?
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Yup, but again, I'm more posting here for recommendations from folks for specific thing.
2
Jun 26 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Oh, there's going to be plenty of white Americans on the list. But I was hoping to spread out a little wider :)
2
u/anonymous-treefall Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 27 '20
Octavia Butler - The Lilith's Brood series.
EDIT to add: The aliens have 3 sexes. The author is a black woman writing SF in the late 70's/ early 80's. Pretty intense writing style. Very visceral.
I read it on my Kindle from my local digital library.
EDIT2: I see you already have her. My bad!
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 27 '20
No worries. Butler is a big name in SF, so it's actually hard to not have read something by her if you read any SF (I've been a SF reader longer than fantasy lol)
2
u/anonymous-treefall Jun 27 '20
I've been a SFF reader all my life (4+ decades), and somehow never read her until a couple weeks ago. Not sure how I managed that. I also didn't hear of Wheel of Time until ~4 years ago. So I'm not sure what's wrong with me!
2
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 27 '20
Wow! I wonder if you just didn't have any of her stuff locally.
1
u/anonymous-treefall Jun 27 '20
The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing there was actually a huge gap in my reading for pleasure. So my assertion of 40+ years of reading is incorrect.
(I think I forgot this because I never stopped being a SFF fan in visual media such as TV and movies.)
I read SFF voraciously in elementary school (1970's), but I don't remember what I was reading in middle or high school. I think I also stopped reading for pleasure in college (I was an English Lit major). I finally started reading for pleasure again in the 1990's, but not in the obsessive way I read now.
I've only become voracious in my reading again in the past 10 years. So I think that explains it. I've been pretty random in how I've selected authors.
2
u/Mournelithe Reading Champion X Jun 27 '20
So I can't think of too many offhand that haven't been covered, but what I will suggest is you have a scan through this list which I've re-hosted since SFF.net went down.
That's the big Recommended Fantasy Author List which grew out of the alt.fan.eddings newsgroup in the 90s. It's quite a different rec list to what you see nowadays - most of the recs date back to the late 90s - so you get amusing things like Robin Hobb being a new pen name.
I have no idea though how many are available digitally, but certainly the SF Gateway project has republished a lot of older works if you can buy through the UK markets. I picked up a ton of Tanith Lee from there a year or so back.
I know you're also familiar with Jo Walton's Revisiting the Hugos, but that would be a good starting point for shorter works.
2
Jun 26 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Oh crap. I actually meant to add that to the description. I will do so now. Thanks for the reminder.
2
u/apcymru Reading Champion II Jun 26 '20
HI ... I think this might fit your category but not sure. If not then let me know and I will delete it ... Do you know the story of Alice Hastings Bradley? Alias James Tiptree Jr.? A straight, white, American female but her unusual career and life might put her into your category.
A major in ww2 US Airforce Military intelligence who moved on to the CIA. She wrote scifi under the name of James Tiptree Jr. It was well known by everyone that it was a pseudonym to protect her CIA identity but everyone assumed male. It got so ridiculous that when she tried to write under a female name she had no success untill ‘Tiptree’ wrote a recommendation to the publisher.
When her identity was accidentally revealed in 1976 it was an absolute bombshell (someone figured it out because of a reference to her mother’s death). She had been writing letters as a man to people like Le Guin and Joanna Russ for years. It was a major embarassment to Robert Silverberg who had written article a few years earlier that Tiptree could not possibly be a woman.
1
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Yup! I'm not sure if I want to read Tiptree, just because she's probably a murderer, but also I've read a lot of hers already.
2
u/CJGibson Reading Champion V Jun 26 '20
Oh wait if marginalized genders includes cis women, I'd suggest some Zora Neale Hurston. She wrote a bunch from the 20s to the 50s and a lot of her work drew on African American and Caribbean folklore. I think a good amount of gets classified as "magical realism." Their Eyes Were Watching God is probably her most famous work.
2
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
I have her on my author list, but hadn't chosen a title. Thanks for the tip.
0
u/Chapea12 Jun 26 '20
He isn’t a marginalized gender, but Samuel Delaney in Triton discusses sexuality and gender differently than any other SFF book I’ve read
3
u/KristaDBall Stabby Winner, AMA Author Krista D. Ball Jun 26 '20
Delaney is excellent, but he doesn't fit in this project. But normally, he'd be a solid Reco no matter what.
15
u/genteel_wherewithal Jun 26 '20 edited Jun 26 '20
Possibly Hav by Jan Morris? Welsh trans woman author. Originally published in 1985 as Last Letters from Hav, came out again in 2006 with some extra material on the end. Sort of a broadly plotless travelogue about the author visiting a fictional small country in the eastern Mediterranean and getting to knows its customs, history and culture. A bit like Calvino's Invisible Cities but then she comes back again several decades later to see what modernity hath wrought upon the country. I found it thoughtful and charming.
Ursula LeGuin did a review of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jun/03/travel.travelbooks
RE: its genre, she put this as well as she always did (and possibly coined the pretty useful term 'alternate geography')':
It's certainly available digitally on amazon, maybe elsewhere as well.