Sci Fi by Women

It has been over a year since my interest in science fiction by female authors was peaked. And honestly, I haven’t don as much with it as I would have liked to. Throughout my online exploration certain names tended to come up a lot. Atwood, Willis, Tepper, Tiptree, Norton, and Cherryh.  I know there are tons of other great writers, but these are the ones that came up the most and stuck in my brain. Yet, I failed in following through with this by mostly only reading books by Margaret Atwood, who was already one of my favorite authors.  I read D. A. which was  a really interesting novella by Connie Willis. But these names did stick in my mind, and when I found a book by them in a thrift store I tended to buy it. Also, Andre Norton’s name shows up on the young adult dystopian list a few times.

 

I feel that female authors bring a unique quality to the science fiction world. They often have more attention to the details of WRITING than often see in science fiction.  I continue to struggle with reading adult books, they tend to have so many pages and science fiction takes this to extreme. I always try and encourage myself to read in a more balanced way.  Lucky for me TJ from Dreams and Speculations has my back! In 2011 she is hosting an amazing book club featuring various science fiction novel by female authors.

 

 

There is an interesting assortment of book selected. I say interesting because I haven’t heard of most of them. I own 3 books from the book club list, one of which I have already read. But after checking out the list and having some great general discussion with TJ via Twitter, I decided to take advantage of a great sale at Better World Books to track down a few more titles. The best part about this book club is that you can participate for one month or twelve. It isn’t particularly rigid, so you don’t even have to decide ahead of time which books you will want to read. After my new books arrive, I will have the opportunity to read at least 6 books for the book club, but I never know when life will get in the way. I am sure when I do participate it will be a lot of fun.  Hope to see you there.

 

The books:

January - Dust by Elizabeth Bear
February - The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin*
March - Darkship Thieves by Sarah Hoyt
April - The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis*
May - Mappa Mundi by Justina Robson
June - Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler
July - Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
August - China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh*
September - Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon*
October - Farthing by Jo Walton*
November - The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood*
December - City of Pearl by Karen Traviss

 

The books marked with * are the ones I already owned or recently purchased. I still think there are one or two more books I would like to buy.  Have you read any of these?  What did you think?