Science Fiction by women and about women

Right now, I'm in the middle of traveling through the guts of a Peter Straub book, Lost Boy, Lost Girl. The writing is some of the most imaginative I've seen so far in a book included in the 'horror' genre, but after I finish it, I REALLY want to switch up (because I've been reading a lot of horror lately), and settle into a good, meaty scifi story, preferably dystopian. I love the horror and scifi genres, have for over fifteen years, but I notice that they still tend to be a somewhat (well, more than somewhat) male-dominated genre.



So I was really happy to come across this list of science fiction tales by female authors, because as I said in a previous post of mine on women in speculative fiction--I love seeing what ideas women bring to the genre! I love seeing women front and center. The future belongs to all of us, so all of us should be well-represented, ya' know? Here is a list that includes books written by female authors of different cultures, backgrounds, and races. It's an excellent beginners' compilation showcasing some of the best and brightest of the women in the genre, but also demonstrating the breadth and complexity that can be found in a scifi book. Spanning from Europe to Africa to China, they tell very diverse stories but the connective tissue is the exploration of women's experiences within circumstances that are often completely beyond their control. Which is, interestingly, reflective of the situation many women find themselves in in real life, minus the fantastical scenarios.





11 Sci-Fi Books Every Woman Should Read by Crystal Paul

An author who was one of the few women of color in speculative fiction was Octavia Butler. Her writing came along at a time where narratives of Black women in the genre were pretty scarce.

I still have so many of her novels on my ginormous 'to-read' list! One of the novels on the list which I want to read immediately is Parable of the Sower. This book centers around a young woman with a spectacular ability to identify with the misery and pain of others like it was hers. The story is set in a dismal Los Angeles (only nine years from now, actually) where the privileged live behind walled communities and the rest...well the rest have no money, no work, no home and are ANGRY rampagers.

First of all, this is the kind of unique, socially conscious perspective I was talking about a few posts back, about how and why I love exploring the female voice in scifi literature. The protagonist Lauren Olamina, seems intruiging--a young Black woman featured in the kind of story that you don't often see revolving around the power and brilliance of women of color. Lauren's belief is that "God is change" and leads a form of spirituality around this conviction called Earthseed. This is right in the midst of violence and upheaval in this nightmare L.A. born out of economic and government collapse. Octavia Butler was a trailblazer in bringing the narratives of people of color to scifi in a fresh and highly original way. Butler's imagination soared in a genre where it was greatly needed. This is probably number one on my 'to-read list' now. When I finish it, I'll ultimately post a review both here and at Goodreads.

During the course of my journey as a reader and aspiring writer of speculative fiction, I've often tried to find stories that reflect the experiences of women, especially women of color, in a way that is exciting, unique, and outside-the-box. Along with Octavia Butler, I'm also interested in further exploring the work of author Alaya Dawn Johnson. 

She published a young adult novel I MUST READ called Love is the Drug about a young woman of color from a well-to-do family in Washington, D.C., who is drugged and ensnared in government intrigue in the middle of a flu pandemic sweeping the globe. Seriously. The plot sounds like a summer blockbuster waiting to happen.

When I first started becoming interested in writing speculative fiction, one of Alaya Johnson's short stories was one of my early inspirations...Shard of Glass and the biracial girl who is at the center of a desperate and supernaturally-based escape from danger with her mother, was one of the works of fiction I read that actually gave me a good amount of encouragement as a mixed-race aspiring writer in the genre. I believe what a female writer of color with creativity, consciousness and most importantly--PASSION--can accomplish through their writing in the genre is virtually limitless. I recommend any aspiring scifi/speculative fiction writer of color to read this story. The plot is thrillingly crafted and the twist at the end is superbly written. Her name isn't on the Buzzfeed list above--I just HAD to mention her work and how powerful I felt her writing was. You can read the story here.


Along with this Buzzfeed list and those like it, I also recommend checking out the lists compiled over at my main literary hang-out, Goodreads, for more titles both featuring female characters and/or written by women. I'm always on the hunt for more! 

Happy reading!

Women Writers & SciFi

As a reader and a writer who loves to explore the world of speculative fiction, the bizarre and the unbelievable, I think that stories within the genre are often specifically shaped and influenced by the gender of the author.

What I mean by that is, that female scifi writers frequently bring a unique 'vision' to the science fiction universe. As women who live in a society which contain many historical and social imbalances, we are often forced to navigate through life observing the important areas OF life (work, politics, relationships, so on...) through the eyes of people who are not automatically deemed 'insiders'. This perspective on life becomes even deeper and more complex, when it comes to the experiences of women from different cultures, racial communities, nationalities and lifestyles.

Science fiction is a genre with NO limits. Anything you can imagine can have a form of legitimacy within the pages. The sheer freedom of this storytelling can bring out the best in writers, unlock their hopes, their fears, their anxieties, and their utmost creativity. All of the constraints, categorizations and limitations which are found in contemporary society, can be thrown off like the shackles they are when it comes to envisioning the future. I think this is why there is such a unique narrative female scifi authors bring to their storytelling.

The science fiction novel which was one of the books that convinced me to embark on my own writing journey was the penultimate scifi work from a female perspective, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

I traveled to this nightmare world of misogyny, oppression, and injustice, The Republic of Gilead. I followed the suffering and ultimate victory of the protagonist, Offred, used as a 'breeder' and denied as a human being with rights. Before I read Atwood's work, it didn't necessarily occur to me that science fiction can be used as an expression of protest. But the themes in The Handmaid's Tale such as violence against women, hypocrisy and sexual exploitation could all be found, in different contexts, in our own world. Her novel made a statement on present injustices and transformed them into a parallel universe, the worst qualities of humanity that could be taken to the final level if freedom was allowed to be eradicated and fear allowed to dominate a population.

To me, science fiction can be political and significant literature--and the visions of those writers who have been historically marginalized have the capability of bringing a level to the writing that is multi-layered and profoundly complex. A quality of creativity that pierces through the surface.

This is definitely NOT me saying that I don't love, admire, and enjoy the science fiction of male authors in the genre. Far from it! Rod Serling and Richard Matheson, just two examples out of many, are creators I've viewed as two of the greatest writers of fantasy and scifi of the 20th century. Their exploration of the human spirit and the darkness and catastrophe which often follows behind, was writing on the highest level.

What I'm saying is that our experiences shape our creativity. The way the world reacts to who we are influences the way we see the world in return...and our destinies.

Women in science fiction can have a powerful voice because of our place in a society that has traditionally assigned varying levels of 'worth' to a woman, a society that has been both greatly unjust and greatly transformed. How we use this voice is of the highest importance not just for modern readers and writers but for the continuing transformation of our society and for the benefit of the women who will come after us.

Have women writers been discriminated against? Such things are hard to quantify or prove, although most women in the field can cite occasional instances of sexism (the editor who declares that sf by women doesn't sell; the disgruntled author who scents a feminist conspiracy when his novel fails to win awards; the claim from an old-time fan that the values of Hard SF are being destroyed by female editors with an innately feminine preference for fantasy). More recently, a number of women writers of Hard SF have talked online about the difficulties of being accepted as a woman writing in this area, and the perceived benefits (to publishers at least) of using a gender-neutral name in this subgenre.

On the whole the "Old Boy Network" of sf has been largely receptive to any women who care to join, even if various generations of male writers and editors have expressed surprise at sf's attraction to women writers and readers. Even after 40 years, there are still significant segments of the sf community that remain oblivious or indifferent to the work of women writers. Whether this stems from ignorance or implicit bias against women's writing, the result is the same: a view of the history and contemporary state of sf that fails to acknowledge the contributions of women in the field.

- See more at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/women_sf_writers