Space Station Mir

For my Utopian Science Fiction class, we just finished reading Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. We have also recently read The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Triton by Samuel R. Delaney, and The Female Man by Joanna Russ. The following post looks at the use of language and gender in the utopian society (Mattapoisett) in Woman on the Edge of Time and compares to the other books. Connie, an older Mexican-American woman in a mental hospital, is the protagonist from our time (the 1960s) and Luciente is a woman from the future who is able to mentally link with her and allow her to see her time. In class, we discussed terms having to do with feeling such as "bottomed" (sad), "feathered" (happy), and "bumped" (frustrated/angry). We observed that these terms feel more physical in nature, rather than abstract like our current terms and what this means about the difference between our society and Mattapoisett. If we accept the premise that these ...

14. Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen Release Date: May 7, 2013 Every Boy Should Have a Man is a classic in the vein of Voltaire and Swift. A quick read in simple language, this account of a world where giants keep men as pets and for food has many implications on issues ranging from animal rights to racism to environmentalism. There is nothing else quite like this being written right now. This is one of those books that will appeal on many levels to multiple people. Both children and adults could get something out of this. In the first half of the book, I couldn't help thinking my dog would get a kick out of it! What is the relationship between ownership and companionship? Can loyalty be commanded? What is consent and what is bestiality? Some of those latter questions might not have relevance to our world, but then again they might or might in the past or future. I wouldn't strictly define Every Boy Should Have a Man as science fiction, but it definitely ...

I have been doing more reading than the blog lets on, but I don't have enough time to dedicate to full reviews. Below, I've marked the books that I intend to review fully later on and provided brief reviews for the rest. 6. Shattered Pillars by Elizabeth Bear I received an ARC from the publisher and there will be a longer review to come. Briefly, Shattered Pillars moves further from alternate history and closer to fantasy than Range of Ghosts and is one of those rare second books in a trilogy that outshines the first. 7. The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory Gregory opens with a teaser from Katherine of Aragon's divorce trial, but this book isn't really about that-it's about Katherine's time as a Princess of England-first, as Arthur's wife and then as the princess dowager who tempted both Henry VII and Henry VIII. I don't agree with Gregory's take on the central controversy of Katherine's life, i.e. whether or not she was a virgin ...

Happy late Top Ten Tuesday! Top Ten Phrases That Instantly Make Me Pick Up a Book 1. Science fiction 2. A cross between Jane Austen and J.R.R. Tolkien-basically if it mentions a book or author I love (especially more than one), I will take a look. 3. Nineteenth century Britain/Victorian 4. Elizabethan/Renaissance/Tudor/Stuart 5. Strong heroine 6. Epic fantasy (although this tends to be overused) 7. Hugo/Nebula/Man Booker/Newberry award winner 8. Washington D.C./Boston/Chicago-a book set in a place that I'm familiar with 9. Venice/Rome/London-a book set in a place I really want to travel to 10. Weird/unusual/quirky-I look books (or at least the idea of books) that are different

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! It's been a little while for me. Books I Thought I'd Like More Than I Did 1. The Second Empress by Michelle Moran I wanted to like it better than I did, and the novel did have its strong points in the characters and history, it just wasn't as developed as it could have been and the writing could have been better. 2. At the Mercy of the Queen by Anne Clinard Barnhill I was really interested in the Anne Boleyn story from Madge Shelton's point of view, unfortunately the writing was so painful I couldn't get through it. Madge just kept babbling about herself in anachronistic language and her character was such a weak, whiny girl. 3. Neuromancer by William Gibson It won a Hugo and a Nebula and I'm generally a huge sci fi fan, but this world was just too hard to get into and I wasn't invested enough in the characters to try. 4. The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper I thought I would love this Arthurian legend-based kids' ...

In class (I got in!) we are reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. The subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia." I've read other books in the Hainish Cycle, and this one is both noticeably different and recognizably Le Guin. It's the first in chronological order, and the protagonist discovers the equations that will lead to the ansible-"an instantaneous communication device." In the rest of the cycle, this is the device that the protagonists use to record their observations of other worlds. Shevek is the only protagonist in the cycle (at least of those I've read) that is of the race that he observes. However, he is and is not. Shevek is from Anarres, a desert mining colony on the moon of Urras, a water-rich planet. On Anarres, the Odonians have built a two-hundred-year old anarchist commune, where nobody owns anything. On Urras, the larger powers are still "propertarian" (i.e. capitalist) and exploit their resources, using a money economy...

Grad school is subsuming my life, but I came across this definition in the reading for a class I'm hoping to take (*fingers crossed*) on Utopian Science Fiction: "SF is a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment." -Darko Suvin, "Metamorphoses of Science Fiction." That would seem to count a lot of fantasy novels as SF, which traditionally upsets the SF hardliners. However, it jives well with my view of the genre and its uses (and pleasures). Thoughts?

The fact that this is necessary irks me a little, but then another part of me thinks this is really cool. Maybe having different prizes is a way that we can appreciate differences-as long as we're clear that we're only getting a limited perspective. It's nice to see some of these authors getting attention (even though Hilary Mantel doesn't need it). Here's the Long List for the Women's Prize for Fiction, formerly the Orange Prize. Should we have an American prize for women writers? What do you think?