Recommend: Classic horror stories by women authors

This month we asked authors, artists, editors, and other friends of TFF to recommend their favourite classic horror stories by women authors. (By “classic” we really mean pre-1920s or by an author who died pre-1940s. These have the advantage of being in the Public Domain, so anyone can read, share and even adapt these stories!) Here are a few suggestions to get us started, but we’d really like to learn about more such stories and authors in the comments…

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Jessica Campbell (faculty page)

Vernon Lee’s “Amour Dure” (from Hauntings, 1889) is a gothic ghost story about a young scholar who travels to Italy and becomes obsessed with the alluring mysteries of the past. Classic! While researching the archives of a castle, he becomes fascinated with a sixteenth-century femme fatale figure who led multiple men to their deaths, and pretty soon he is convinced that he is actually communicating with her, through letters and in person. She signs her letters with a very emo motto: “Amour Dure—Dure Amour,” or “Love Lasts—Cruel Love.” Let’s just say things don’t end well.

Vernon Lee (1856-1935) was way ahead of her time. She lived all over Europe, dressed like a man, and was a pacifist, a feminist, and a lesbian. Her stories will seem long to readers today, but the lush prose and gothic drama are worth it. See also her excellent titles, like “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”!

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Maureen Kincaid Speller (Paper Knife)

E. Nesbit wrote amazing supernatural stories, among them “The Violet Car” (in Fear, 1910 [audiobook]). A young woman goes to a remote farmhouse as nurse to an older woman. Her husband believes she is deranged because she does not hear, see or smell the things he does. She believes he is deranged because she doesn’t see the things he does. The nurse agrees with her. To begin with.

This is one of the earliest ghost stories to feature a car; it is an indicator of modernity, as is Nesbit’s discussion of whether ‘ghosts’ are in the mind or corporeal, signalling that the ghost story is moving into new territory, even as it looks back to older traditions. Nesbit offers several possible explanations of the haunting but no certainty. The ghost car may be a manifestation of the husband’s guilt for sending the lost driver over a cliff, punishing him for killing the couple’s daughter in an earlier accident, but we’re left with a modern young woman who now doubts the thing she saw with her own eyes. It is masterly storytelling.

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Aliya Whiteley (website)

There’s a moment in “Was it an Illusion?” by Amelia B. Edwards (1881 [online]) when we change from past to present tense, and that feeling of quiet observation is replaced by being right inside the story. It only lasts for a paragraph and a half, but it always works its magic on me; suddenly I’m part of the action, and I hold my breath as something ghastly is revealed. I love the way that the story builds to that crescendo, and then falls back from it.

It’s a tale of a school inspector who sees odd things: a walking figure who disappears, and then a shadow that shouldn’t exist. The strangeness of it all creeps up, and even the narrator is not sure how to make sense of the experience. Rambling, occasionally wandering off into other associations, it lulls me with its classic, slower rhythm—and then it changes tense, and I’m gripped all over again.

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Valeria Vitale (TFF bio; City of a Thousand Names)

Recently I have been spending a lot of (delightful) time reading ghost stories written by women, especially from the “golden age” of Gothic literature. Although the list of authors is very long, their tales are still often dominated by male POVs. A refreshing exception is Charlotte Riddell. Her “Nut Bush Farm” (in Weird Stories, 1882) is not only a captivating supernatural story, but also features a variety of female characters (although not in the leading role), often challenging both gender stereotypes and literary clichés. In Riddell’s stories you may meet single women that found perfect happiness in the management of their farm; or criminals able to shoot a gun and put up a proper fist fight (as in “The Open Door”). But even when they are not extraordinary, Riddell’s women become remarkable just by being visible, actively opposing the consuetude in the genre of erasing women from the scene or making them bidimensional cutouts.

Besides being pleased by how Riddell populates her stories with well-written female characters, I also enjoy her combination of supernatural horror and traditional mystery. Her ghosts are often flagging some unsolved crime, and so the protagonists have to become cold-case detectives and investigate what happened. With a little help from the ghost themselves, of course!

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Maria Grech Ganado (profile; interview)

Christina Rossetti’s maternal uncle, John William Polidori, published the first English vampire short story in 1819, so the paranormal was probably in her blood. Revived by feminist criticism, “Goblin Market” (in Goblin Market and other poems, 1862), open to diverse interpretations, is today considered her masterpiece. Fantastic, ambiguous, symbolic, erotic, religious, with themes of temptation, fallen womanhood, addiction, sisterly love and redemptive sacrifice, Goblin Market’s vocabulary, even more than its allegoric form, suggests both Christian and sexual readings. Various kinds of fruit with sexual undertones, more enticing than one apple, are offered by different types of savage goblins more repulsive than a serpent. Rossetti probably found the market concept itself redolent even of Victorian marriage, let alone the horrible plight of prostitutes she herself did charity work with.

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Andrea Gibertoni (Miskatonic Bookshop)

The story I’d like to recommend is “The Villa Lucienne” by Ella D’Arcy, first published in 1896 in The Yellow Book Quarterly, one of the most prestigious British literary magazines of the nineteenth century. The Villa Lucienne is a deeply unsettling tale featuring an all female group of characters that includes women of different ages, from a little girl to an old lady. While visiting the South of France, the women start looking for a house to rent during their stay, and are struck by the malevolent aura of an old villa. Not only does the place look bleak and decayed, but it also seems to have been abandoned in a suspicious hurry. It is a short story, where the characters feel haunted by eerie and malignant vibes. The final, dreadful twist will be revealed to the readers through the young daughter of the tenant.

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These all sound great, and I look forward to reading them. What other horror stories by women from this period can you recommend we look at? Please leave suggestions in the comments.

Speculative and Dark Fiction in Italy

We open our survey of Mediterranean dark literature with a guest post about the Italian scene, signed by Alessandra Cristallini and Andrea Gibertoni. Pronti al viaggio?

It hasn’t always been easy for Italian SFF authors to be successful: for decades the common opinion was that the country “of the sea and the sun” wasn’t able to produce dark literature, or that the Italians were just not very good at writing SFF at all. And yet, there’s a thriving SFF scene. Some of the best Italian authors have already been translated abroad: this is the case of Dario Tonani, one of the most popular Italian sci-fi writers. He has published several novels and short stories, and some of his works have been translated into English and Japanese. His most famous work is the universe of Mondo9, a desert planet full of dangers like poisonous sands and half-animal half-mechanical creatures where giant ships roam the sands. Always in the sci-fi scene, we find Francesco Verso, winner of several awards, the mind behind Future Fiction publishing house and much more. Some of his short stories have been translated into English, and his cyberpunk novel Nexhuman has been translated in English and Portuguese. Nexhuman is the story of an obsessions that consumes Peter Payne through all his life, the obsession for a perfect nexhuman woman torn into pieces. If you want to have a taste of Clelia Farris, one of the most popular female authors in this field don’t forget to check out this collection of short SF from around the world published by Future Fiction: it includes her short story Creative Surgery translated by Jennifer Delare.

Many works that have not been translated are definitely worth being taken into consideration. Just to mention a few:

•  Dimenticami Trovami Sognami (Forget me, Find me, Dream me) by Andrea Viscusi, where a young man takes part in a science experiment with unexpected results. Published by Zona 42;
• Senza Un Cemento di Sangue (Without a Cement of Blood) By Anna Ferruglio Dal Dan (who attended the Clarion workshop), a space opera that feels like an adult and cruel take on Star Wars. It’s a compliment. Published by Delos Books;
• Real Mars by Alessandro Vietti, winner of the Italia Award in 2017 tells us the story of a space mission made into a reality show for financing reasons. Published by Zona 42.

Moving from sci fi to dark fiction, we feel like we have to start from some names of the “old school”, authors that have been in the scene for the past decades, and have heavily influenced the newest generations of writers. Impossible not to mention the great Danilo Arona, active for the past 40 years and author of an astonishing amount of short stories, novels, essays and articles. He is a passionate expert of traditional folk tales of his region (Piemonte) and has a past of proper “ghost hunter”. The Roman Paolo Di Orazio, mind and body of the magazine Splatter (that, during the 80s caused scandal for the violence and crudeness of the printed images), is also a prolific and interesting author of several novels that could be labeled as splatterpunk. Eraldo Baldini is one of the few genre authors that has managed to be published by a major publishing house like the historic Einaudi. Creator of the so-called rural gothic, it brings together, very personally, modern topics with the folklore and traditions of Italian rural areas, where the nights are still populated by archaic creatures and nightmares.  Nicola Lombardi, recognisable by his very elegant style, has been writing novels and short stories since 1989. His recent La Cisterna (The Tank, Dunwich 2015) was shortlisted for the last edition of the Bram Stoker Awards.

Some of the younger (and sometimes really young!) protagonist of the darker side of the Italian SFF seem to have learnt from the anglophone classics of the genre, but also to have added their own peculiar touches that make their work original and immediately recognisable. A very hot name is Luigi Musolino; only 30 years old, he has already won a flattering number of awards and is unanimously recognised as one of the best promises of Italian horror/weird. Piemontese like Arona, and passionate about local folk tales as well, he skillfully blends Italian popular tradition with atmospheres that reminds of Lovecraft and Barker. A completely different style characterises Pietro Gandolfi, prolific and talented author of “extreme horror” novels (inspired to Ketchum and Laymon, among others), and successful comic writer (The Noise, Cosmo editoriale). He prefers to set his stories in small, completely made up, American cities, creating a perfect, and quite convincing, personal microcosm.  Samuel Marolla, also comic writer for the prestigious Bonelli editore, is a brilliant narrator of metropolitan nightmares, usually set in Milano, his own city. Translated various times in English, his Black Tea has been the first Italian short story to be included into Apex’s Book of World SF. His two collections of stories Malarazza and La Mezzanotte del Secolo (Edizioni XII) are considered seminal works in the contemporary Italian horror.

Other honorable mentions are:
Alessandro Manzetti–the first Italian writer to win the Bram Stoker Award (2016) with his poetry collection Eden Underground–, Barbara Baraldi–author of novels and script writer for the iconic horror comic Dylan Dog–, Daniele Picciuti, Claudio Vergnani, Fabio Lastrucci, Maico Morellini (sci fi author who likes to explore, quite succesfully, much darker literary lands).
Moving from authors to publishing houses, in the last years, a number of brave and fierce PH (mostly small and independent) have been working to revive SFF literature in Italy, both translating foreign authors and publishing (or republishing) the best Italian voices. Besides the already mentioned Future Fiction, there is the Milanese Hypnos, founded in 2010 by Andrea Vaccaro, publishing for the first time in Italian classic authors like Hodgson, Chambers,  Aickman, Jean Ray. It is also thank to his work that the weird genre has been introduced in our country.

But many other names have contributed to carry the bloody ensign of dark fiction in Italy. Among them:
Dunwich edizioni, Nero Press, Vincent Books (PH emiliana offering names such as Arona, Di Orazio and Gandolfi), Elara (the first in Italy to publish Thomas Ligotti), Cut Up, Independent Legions, the amazing (and much missed) Edizioni XII and the very young people at Cliquot, who have just published, for the first time, a collection of horror story by Fritz Leiber.
The scene we have described so far appears to be dominated by male authors. The problem is that there are few women in the Italian fandom and among the authors. Since its creation in 1989 there has been only one female winner for Italy’s most prestigious sci-fi book award, the Urania Award: Nicoletta Vallorani with Il Cuore Finto di DR, which has been translated into French. It goes slightly better for the Robot Award, which has seen two female winners (Morena Medri and Emanuela Valentini) in its 12 editions so far. Another exception is Alda Teodorani, true dark lady of the Italian dark scene, influential member of the Neo Noir movement that animated Rome at the beginning of the 90s. She has written several stories, novels, poems, and has collaborated with cinema directors like Pupi Avati. She is still an important figure in Italian SFF. Her example has encouraged a number of young women writers and readers to approach a genre that too often seems reserved to men.

A certain lack of female presence in the Italian SFF scene can be seen already in the attendance at conventions and literary events. The important con Stranimondi, for example, is mainly composed of middle-aged men so far. Last year all the women invited to speak at a panel devoted to women in sci-fi had something in common: at least one of their works had been published with the picture of a naked/half-naked woman on the cover, even if their stories featured none. It doesn’t seem very welcoming, but there’s great determination behind many women in Italian SFF. This situation is probably due to sheer numbers as well: to give an example, this year Urania has created another award, specifically for short stories, and it has been revealed that of the 164 people who have sent a story only 20 are women. Statistics are against us, at least for now… but this doesn’t justify the naked women on the covers.

That being said, if you get the chance to attend Stranimondi do it, it’s definitely worth it: it has had only two editions so far (the third one will be held in October 2017 in Milan), but it has already established its importance in the field. It may be small compared to the biggest cons that are held abroad, but if you want to see what the Italian SFF/speculative fiction scene has to offer, that is the place to be. You can find out some of the most interesting independent publishers by looking at the list of publishers which will be present at Stranimondi. There you’ll see other publishers which also aim to publish works translated into English, like Acheron books.

We have no doubts that the internet is helping in keeping the local SFF community alive, and the more we look at the local scene the more we expect—no, we demand—an exciting future for it. We managed to convince some of the most reluctant readers, the Italians themselves, that Italian authors can write good sci-fi, crime, horror and weird so the future holds something promising indeed. Well, if global warming doesn’t kill us all first.

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Many thanks again to our awesome contributors Alessandra and Andrea!

Alessandra Cristallini is the mind behind the blog Fragments of a Hologram Dystopia (bilingual page / English only page), a sci-fi blog where she collects pictures and posts short stories and reviews. She is a translator and has published two short stories for the charity event Penny Steampunk. She loves cats, tea and untranslatable grammar jokes.

Andrea Gibertoni born in 1975 in Reggio Emilia, where he still lives, makes ends meet with odd jobs until, on the threshold of his 40s, decides with his wife Giulia to open Miskatonic University: a bookshop dedicated to all sorts of speculative fiction. His shop has became a reference for all the Italian SFF lovers, and organises a number of event, exhibitions and launches. You can find more info at https://www.facebook.com/miskatonicuniversityre/ or drop Andrea an email at miskatonicuniversity@gmail.com

The Present and Future Struggle for Teen Girls’ Self-Esteem

On the planet Soranen, the Sor people are a genetic mixture of the Ellarisor and Human species, both now presumed extinct. Teen twins Lerris and Graika, defying Soranen’s laws, dare to fly a mini-jet to the edge of the atmosphere. There they uncover a dangerous mystery that inspires them to seek the origins of their Human blood.

Guest post by Anne E. Johnson

The edict “write what you know” might not seem applicable to science fiction, particularly that which takes place in the far future and in another, unknown world. But I would argue this is one of the very purposes of science fiction. A purely imaginary setting somehow intensifies the realities we face in the mundane quotidian. I tried to demonstrate this in my YA novel, Space Surfers. One of its main characters represents my late sister, Allegra, and is meant to show what she might have become if she had lived.

The twin teen characters Gaika and Lerris have the blood of two species: Human and Ellarisor, neither of which are believed to exist anymore. One of the primary arcs of Space Surfers tracks how the two protagonists learn to relate to their heritage as they sort it out. Being part Human, they both go through some recognizable problems of adolescence. With Lerris, it’s the fear that his father will be disappointed in him, and the realization that he is, in fact, rather disappointed in his father. For Graika, the problem is more general, and oh, so common among girls: she doesn’t believe that she’s worth anything or that her natural gifts are something to be proud of.

That was Allegra, in a nutshell. She was smart, funny, musically talented, and unwilling to make those traits her focus once she felt the crush of teen peer pressure. She dated boys (and then men) who didn’t respect her, married one of them, and died of cancer at the age of 29. And the last months of her life, in her final brief bout of decent health, she told me a secret: she had a dream of getting divorced and opening her own greenhouse. But that dream never came close to being a reality.

So, when I wrote Graika’s character many years later, I gave her the chance Allegra never had. Space Surfers is in part about figuring out who you are, owning it, and being proud of it. There’s a specific parallel I was careful to draw between Graika and Allegra: each had adults in her life who supported her. It’s a different problem than that faced by girls with no backing at home. Just as my parents were both professional people who took it as given that their kids had brains and potential, so it is for Graika and Lerris. Their dad designs aircraft and their mom is a chemist. The father wants his son to be a pilot, but he also expects his daughter to become some sort of professional. Their mother’s fault is putting too much pressure on Graika to excel in the sciences. The result, similar to what happened to Allegra, is that Graika rebels by burying her intellect and trying to seem “normal.”

Anne E. Johnson

I won’t give too many spoilers, but I will say that Graika eventually finds her way. She doesn’t get all the answers, of course, because none of us has those, but at least by the end of the novel she’s uncovered a sense of self-worth and a way to move forward. She figures out what her best contributions to the world might be, regardless of what the well-meaning authorities in her life advise or expect. What goes along with that change is a willingness to let herself be loved, both by her family and romantically by someone whom she would never have considered before.

Although Space Surfers takes place hundreds of years in the future in a solar system I invented, I hope it resonates with young humans of our time and our planet, especially girls and women. Graika’s lack of love for herself and her dreams may well be a universal issue—no matter where you are in the universe. I just hope Allegra’s spirit is floating close enough to read over my shoulder.

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You can purchase Space Surfers directly from the publisher or on Amazon.

Learn more about Anne E. Johnson by visiting her website or following her on Facebook.

Recommend some non-straight/white/male/anglo SFF anthologies

When looking for new speculative fiction by or about people other than the generally over-represented straight, able-bodied, white, anglophone, rich, cis male, my search began with looking at themed anthologies in the area. Stories I liked, I looked for more by the authors; other magazines an anthologies they were in, novels by them, etc. By way of the beginnings of a reading list for others trying to do the same thing, I'll try to compile here a list of anthologies that specifically cater to SF/F fiction and/or criticism by, for or about women, quiltbag, people of color, etc. This is a very incomplete list; I'll add more as and when suggestions or corrections are made in the comments, via Twitter or email (the more intersectional the better).

• Jack Dann, Wandering Stars: an anthology of Jewish fantasy and science fiction. Harper, 1974. (Also More Wandering Stars, 1981)
• Pamela Sargent, Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women About Women. Random House, 1974. (Also More Women of Wonder, 1976 and The New Women of Wonder, 1978.)
• Virginia Kidd, Millennial Women. Delacorte Press, 1978.
• Camilla Decarnin, Eric Garber and Lyn Paleo, Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Lesbian and Gay Science Fiction and Fantasy. Alyson Publications, 1986.
• Janrae Frank, Jean Stein and Forrest J Ackerman, New Eves: Science Fiction about the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow. Longmeadow Press, 1984.
• Pamela Sargent, Women of Wonder, the Classic Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s. Mariner, 1995.
• Pamela Sargent, Women of Wonder, The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s. Mariner, 1995.
• Eric Garber and Jewelle Gomez, Swords of the Rainbow: Gay and Lesbian Fantasy Adventures. Alyson Publications, 1996.
• Lawrence Schimel, Things Invisible to See: Gay and Lesbian Tales of Magic Realism. Circlet Press, 1998.
• Helen Merrick and Tess Williams, Women of Other Worlds: Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism. University of Western Australia Press, 1999.
• Debbie Notkin, Flying Cups & Saucers: Gender Explorations In Science Fiction & Fantasy. Edgewood Press, 1999.
• Nicola Griffith, Bending The Landscape: Science Fiction v. 1: Original Gay and Lesbian Writing. Overlook Press, 2000. 
• Lee Martindale, Such A Pretty Face. Meisha Merlin, 2000.
• Sheree R. Thomas and Martin Simmons, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora. Warner Books, 2000.
• Connie Willis and Sheila Williams, A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and about Women. Warner Books, 2001.
• Andrea Bell and Yolanda Molina Gavilan, Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. Wesleyan University Press, 2003.
• Lucy Sussex and Judith Buckrich, She's Fantastical: The First Anthology of Australian Women's Speculative Fiction, Magical Realism, and Fantasy. Sybylla Co-operative Press, 2003.
• Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial visions of the future. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004.
• Sheree R. Thomas, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones. Aspect, 2004.
• Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel, The Future is Queer. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2007.
• Justine Larbalestier, Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
• Gene van Troyer and Grania Davis, Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy. Kurodahan Press, 2007. (See also Speculative Japan 2: The Man Who Watched the Sea, 2011 and Speculative Japan 3: Silver Bullet, 2012.) 
• Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad and Ahmed A. Khan, A Mosque Among the Stars. ZC Books, 2008. 
• Lynne Jamneck, Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures. Lethe Press, 2008.
• Catherine Lundoff, Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades. Lethe Press, 2008.
• Paolo Chikiamko, Ruin and Resolve: Pinoy SF for Charity. Rocket Kapre Books, 2009.
• Lavie Tidhar, The Apex Book of World SF. Apex Publications, 2009, and Apex Book of World SF 2, 2012 (ABWSF 3 forthcoming 2014).
• Connie Wilkins, Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories. Lethe Press, 2009.
• Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, The Dragon and the Stars. DAW Books, 2010.
• JoSelle Vanderhooft, Steam-Powered: Steampunk Lesbian Stories. Torquere Press, 2010. (Also Steam-Powered 2, 2011)
• Paolo Chikiamko, Alternative Alamat: Stories Inspired by Philippine Mythology. Rocket Kapre Books/Flipside, 2011. 
• Kay T. Holt and Bart R Leib, Fat Girl in a Strange Land. Crossed Genres Publications, 2011.
• Catherine Lundoff and JoSelle Vanderhooft, Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic. Lethe Press, 2011.
• Lee Martindale, Ladies of Trade Town. Harphaven, 2011.
• Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal. Aqueduct Press, 2011.
• Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti, Diverse Energies. Tu Books, 2012.
• Grace Dillon, Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction. University of Arizona Press, 2012.
• Kay T. Holt, Winter Well: Speculative Novellas About Older Women. Crossed Genres Publications, 2013.
• Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic. Small Beer Press, 2012.
• Michael M Jones, Scheherazade's Facade. Circlet Press, 2012.
• Hannah Kate, Wolf-Girls: Dark Tales of Teeth, Claws and Lycogyny. Hic Dragones, 2012.
• Jason Erik Lundberg, Fish Eats Lion: New Singaporean Speculative Fiction. Math Paper Press, 2012.
• Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington, The Future is Japanese. VIZ Media, 2012.
• Brit Mandelo, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction. Lethe Press, 2012.
• Alicia McCalla, Possibilities. ffpincolor books, 2012.
• Anil Menon and Vandana Singh, Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana. Zubaan Books, 2012.
• Radcliffe and Stacia Seaman, Women of the Dark Streets: Lesbian Paranormal. Bold Strokes Books, 2012.
• Charles Tan, Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology. Lethe Press, 2012.
• J.Y. Yang and Joyce Chng, The Ayam Curtain. Math Paper Press, 2012.
• Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt, The Other Half of the Sky. Candlemark and Gleam, 2013.
• Josie Brown, Daughters of Icarus: New Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy. Pink Narcissus Press, 2013.
• Milton Davis and Balogun Ojetade, Steamfunk! MVMedia, 2013.
• Milton Davis and Balogun Ojetade, Ki-Khanga: The Anthology. MVmedia, 2013.
• Ivor W. Hartmann, AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers. Storytime, 2013.
• Nisi Shawl, Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars. Carl Brandon Society, 2013.

Annual anthologies:

• Heiresses of Russ (various editors). Lethe Press, 2011-. Annual anthology of best lesbian speculative fiction from previous year.
• cf. Wilde Tales (annual anthology of gay SFF).
• Dean Francis Alfar and Nikki Alfar, Philippine Speculative Fiction. Kestrel. 2005-.
• Sword and Sorceress
• Warrior Wisewoman

Magazines/Journals:

• Expanded Horizons: http://expandedhorizons.net/magazine/
• Femspec: http://www.femspec.org/
• Icarus: The Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction: http://lethepressbooks.com/icarus.htm
• Indian SF: http://indiansf.wordpress.com/
• International Speculative Fiction: http://internationalsf.wordpress.com/
• Jungle Jim: http://www.junglejim.org/
• Luna Station Quarterly: http://lunastationquarterly.com/

 Publishers:

• Crossed Genres Publications (multiple themes, but all books and magazine also promote inclusiveness and underrepresented groups)
• Dagan Books (ditto)

Feminist Utopias: What’s Gender Got to Do With It?

In January, I posted to this blog on the subject of utopia, a perfect place. Is such a society possible?

Do certain conditions, such as the absence of crime, poverty, racism and other inequities make for the perfect place? Utopian narrative is a place to explore these questions, but these same narratives could be termed dystopian. Who decides what conditions are the most important, and how can these conditions be established and maintained without creating new modes of oppression?

One way to approach the inherent teetering between utopia/dystopia is to acknowledge and use that tipping point as a point of departure. In feminist utopian literature, narratives often complicate the easy answer, avoid closure, or look to examine multiple perspectives but provide no simple solution.

I hope I don’t have to explain or defend “feminist” here, but I welcome relevant dialogue.

Let’s just say by way of definition that feminist utopias are concerned with the search for equality in the ideal community. They consider both the existence of social stratification based on difference (sex, race, race, class) and the humanist ideal of sameness to be problematic. Gender inequalities are part of the exploration but not the totality. Feminist fiction tends to project its desires for perfect community and to investigate problematic elements of those desires. As such, some may seem neither utopian nor dystopian per se.

Three perfect examples are Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (she even subtitles it “An Ambiguous Utopia”), Starhawk’s The Fifth Sacred Thing, Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time. These works look at social inequalities and suggest structures or processes to enable more equitable ways of living, but they’re not easy.

In The Dispossessed, the protagonist Shevek is forced to travel from his anarchist/socialist world to a repressive capitalist one to share scientific ideas which are deemed disruptive and self-serving to the functioning of his community. In The Fifth Sacred Thing, factions within a radically democratic city disagree about how to peacefully resist attack from militaristic invaders. Piercy’s novel presents an alternate society that may or may not be the hallucination of a mentally ill narrator.

Compare these narratives to utopias such as Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, which projects a desire for the perfect human community or dystopias like Orwell’s 1984 which predict extreme, dim futures as cautionary tales. Their approach is humanist, focused on repression of citizenry, not issues specific to women's social roles and intersections of identity.

What are your thoughts on these intersections, and what other texts explore this?

What's useful about this kind of literary exploration?

Sex percentages of authors reviewed...

Having just read the post on Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs by Ladybusiness (read it for the stats and some analysis), I decided to tot up the TFF Reviews figures for last year. Just out of interest; this is an unscientific statistic, both because it's such a small sample, and because the count is open to interpretation (as I'll explain) and I'm hardly an impartial statistician. But for what it's worth...

Of the 51 reviews we posted in 2011:

• 31 (61%) were of works authored or edited by men (to the best of my knowledge);
• 18 (35%) were of works authored or edited by women;
• 2 (4%) were of works or collections the gender of whose author or editor I cannot immediately tell.

For the record: for magazines, anthologies and other edited work, I used the sex of the named editor if one was given (or if I happen to know the person who edits the zine). Also for the record: we have a mixed team of reviewers, almost equally divided between male and female (53% of reviews had a male byline, against 47% female). For what it's worth, our current list of 34 titles available contains 20 with male authors, 10 female, 4 ambiguous (named with initials or names inscrutible to me).

The numbers are not as good as I hoped they would be, although marginally better than the average in the survey. This makes me wonder: do we need a reviewers' Russ Pledge?

I read a lot of SFF by women personally, but TFF reviews small press and indie publications, so these titles pretty much by definition have to be offered to us by the publisher or author, and our reviewers have freedom to choose anything on the list. I'm reluctant to change these rules (but would be interested to hear people's opinions on this), but I will say here that (a) we're actively looking for more women reviewers, so if you're interested in reviewing, take a look at our guidelines and drop us an email; and (b) we'd actively like to add more indie/small press titles by women authors and editors to our list, so likewise, check the guidelines and drop us an email.

Signal boost: Heiresses of Russ 2012

Signal boosted for Sacchi Green:

Heiresses of Russ, the new annual anthology series created in honor of the late writer, academic, and feminist Joanna Russ, is now taking recommendations for the 2012 edition. We’re looking for lesbian-themed speculative fiction first published in 2011.

The 2011 edition, co-edited by Joselle Vanderhooft, is available now, including work by Ellen Kushner, Tanith Lee, Rachel Swirsky, and other outstanding writers. This year Steve Berman of Lethe Press has invited Connie Wilkins to co-edit the 2012 edition with him. Connie also edited Time Well Bent: Queer Alternative Histories for Lethe Press, and has edited seven anthologies under an alternate name in an alternate genre.

We're looking for the best lesbian-themed speculative fiction published in 2011, with a length limit of 2,000-10,000 words. Science fiction, fantasy, horror, slipstream, interstitital, just plain weird—we'll know it when we see it. We can’t succinctly define superlative writing, either, but we know it when we see it.

Recommendations from readers, authors, and publishers will be welcomed. We don't need the stories themselves just yet, but if we're interested and can't find copies on our own, we'll ask for manuscripts. Only work published in 2011 will be considered.

Our deadline for recommendations is March 15, 2012. The payment for these reprinted stories will be $25 each and two copies of the anthology. Recommendations and queries can be e-mailed to conniew@sff.net or sacchigreen@gmail.com.

If you can't think of any stories to recommend, go forth and read more!

F is for Feminist SF

I remember growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, looking out at the vital civil rights movement and imagining that I would one day live in a world where women were seen as equal partners in all things, a world where we didn’t suffer from a gender gap in terms of respect, power, airplay, or paychecks. I envisioned a world where gender wouldn’t matter, unless someone wanted to create a new baby. In contrast, I looked at stuff like Dick Tracey’s cool wrist communicator more as science-fantasy.

Yet today, videophones (ones that also check your e-mail, host videogames, live-stream TV and radio, and take better pictures than my single-purpose camera did back then) are commonplace, while equal pay for equal work is still a dream, and women and genderqueer people continue to suffer prejudice and disadvantages in nearly every legal and social aspect of life.

So, what does this have to do with science fiction and fantasy? Everything. As a race, homo sapiens is incredibly adaptive. With our technology and culture, we have found ways to survive, at least for a while, in every environment we’ve been to, even the vacuum of space. We have found ways to defeat terrible birth defects, viruses, bacteria, and injuries. We have even created more than a million ways to defeat boredom. But we have limits—we cannot create what we don’t dream first.

Over and over, I’ve seen our dreams made real in big and small ways. Not only do we, like Captain Kirk, have the ability to speak to our computers and be answered in plain English, but you can answer many cell phones by flipping them open just like his communicator. We can look inside a pregnant woman’s belly to see her baby-to-be has a heart condition and do surgery while the child is still in the womb. There are many, many examples of how, technologically, we are living in the future. But gender equality is not one of them.

Is it simply that it’s easier to create gadgets than change how people behave? I’m not convinced of that. People were changing human behavior long before the industrial revolution, after all. No, I think the problem lies elsewhere.

I look back at the literature I loved while I grew up, and I see many male authors, and not so many women. Of the women I do see, many, like Andre Norton and C. J. Cherryh were not published under names like Alice and Carolyn. I see male hero after male hero, and while there are a few fabulous female heroes, they remain (like female CEOs) in the distinct minority. Many, like Red Sonja, exist in the shadow of more famous males. To put it bluntly, I see a failure of vision regarding equality in gender even in the literature that I love and that helped me grow into an independent woman.

This isn’t just a matter of behavior in decades past. Less than two weeks ago, Charlie Stross asked, “what do you think is the most important novel of the past 10-and-a-bit years (published since January 1st 2000)?” and he states that although 55% of speculative fiction writers are female, less than 10% of the responses were novels by women. This prompted him to do another poll at http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/more-on-books.html asking only about female authors. One respondent admitted to not having read any female writers in the last ten years; a number of others just didn’t think to include them.

If we cannot knowingly respect female and male writers equally in the literature of the future and imagination, how can we expect more conservative parts of our society to provide equal economic opportunities?

In modern society, our writers and recording artists are our dreamers. I think it’s important to be aware that our visions of fictional futures and alternate worlds, both bright and dark, help shape the thoughts and dreams—and culture and technology—of our own present and future.

To me, writing as a feminist means imagining a world where all people—boys, girls, intersex, and genderqueer—have an equal chance to achieve their dreams and live the life they choose. It means imagining not just the goal, but the struggle to achieve that goal, and depicting one or the other in stories. Working for change isn’t easy, and we need role models for how to confront and undermine prejudice as much as we need visions of what a world without that prejudice might be like. (Besides, you need conflict to make a good story, and people who succeed against the odds make great heroes.)

My primary goal regarding my protagonists, however, is to write about interesting, believable, and likeable people regardless of their gender (or lack thereof). Because at the core, what feminism has always meant to me is that people are people, and gender is just one of the many things that, taken together, makes each of us unique.

The Russ Pledge: favourite science fiction by women

(Blog response to Nicola Griffiths: Taking the Russ Pledge.)

I've occasionally felt the need to answer the question, "Who are your favourite authors?" or "What are your favourite science/speculative fiction novels/stories?" I don't have a record of having answered this recently, but my impression is that a large proportion of my responses are women authors or books/stories authored by women. Here is my answer today, focusing (as per the Russ Pledge) on women who write scifi and speculative fiction (focusing a little more on science fiction than fantasy, but not shying away from the gray area between).

In no particular order (and with no claim to completeness):

• Octavia Butler's Fledgling (a vampire novel, but definitely shows a scifi mentality); 'Speech Sounds' is one of the best short stories about what it means to be human that I have ever read
• Nancy Kress, Beggars in Spain is a thrillingly creative social-sf novel, and stories like 'Inertia' are an unflinching look at biological engineering and how humans adapt
• Ekaterina Sedia's wonderful The Alchemy of Stone is probably considered fantasy, but it's really steampunk science fiction with an emphasis on human (and created) expertise and craftsmanship
• Tananarive Due: 'Like Daughter' (in the Dark Matter anthology) is a particularly heartbreaking story about cloning and the confusion between genetic and personal identity
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels (one of my earliest introductions to overtly strong women and alternative sexualities in future-of-humanity science fiction)
• Nisi Shawl: the stories in Filter House reinvented my idea of what speculative fiction should be (and do)
• Ursula Le Guin's Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusion etc.: powerful exploration of human settlements in an alien future and the real implications of science fictional technologies
• Roz Kaveney's short fiction, especially 'A Wolf to Man'
• Nalo Hopkinson: can anyone remind me the title of a short story I now can't find about a man and a woman who wear suits that allow them to feel each other's experiences and have sex?
• Joanna Russ, The Female Man, How to Suppress Women's Writing
• Julie Czerneda, Survival (haven't read the rest of the trilogy yet)
• Jennifer Maria Brissett, 'Nasmina's Black Box' (again, might look like fantasy, but a story about human creation--and destruction--and full of gadgets and dreams)
• Suzette Elgin, Native Tongue (real hard social-science fiction, with linguistics as the science)
• Vandana Singh: speculative fiction that avoids most of the Anglo-american clichés and boundaries of the genre
• Elizabeth Vonarburg, Chroniques du Pays des Mères, and the short story 'L'oiseau de cendres'; powerfully imagined, unromantic stuff
• Mary Rosenblum, 'Search Engine' (low-life cyberpunk political thriller)
• Therese Arkenberg, 'Drown or Die' (when we terraform another world, do we change it or ourselves?)