Mostly books
Jun. 27th, 2011 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseLife goes on apace. Had birthday dinner with mom Jeff & Colin at a very nice Vietnamese and Thai restaurant recommended by some friends. Writing proceeds apace. Baby proceeds apace (20 weeks and counting...).
There's a recent meme going about about SF writers who started their careers in the 1970s. Specifically, female SF writers.
The Original is simply:
Italicize the authors you've heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you've read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.
rachelmanija changed this slightly. New rules: Drop the authors you don't know to the bottom. For the remainder, discuss or rec at least one of their books with at least one sentence of explanation about why you do or don’t like it. Ask your readers to tell you about the authors you’ve never read.
My list feels embarrassingly small.
Eleanor Arnason - The only thing I know for sure I read by her was the short work the Grammarian's Five Daughters. Which i quite liked.
Octavia Butler - I only finally read anything by her in 2010, which, considering how often her name comes up, seems strange. That book was the Parable of the Sower, set in a future USA that has collapsed into economic disaster, and legal limbo (people live in walled enclosures under continual threat by destructive gangs) and seems to slowly be creeping into nigh-universal indentured servitude and company towns. The company town aspect felt scarily realistic, the sheer level of violence and anarchy felt overdone, but overall, the main character was fascinating, and her attempt to find answers, and inspire other people to join her in looking for them, seemed to me to raise a lot of powerful questions.
C. J. Cherryh - I've read mostly her fantasies The Rusalka series and others), not the SF for which she's best known. My impression overall is that she's a subtle writer who dislikes saying anything overtly, likes trying to give more alien perspectives, and the stories were a bit bleak, not helped by the fact that her characters get wet, cold, and get colds themselves, when they make long cross-country treks. I've been hesitant to read more by her, however well recommended, based on how difficult the reading can be, even though i know it's usually rewarding.
Candas Jane Dorsey - I know I read Black Wine. I remember almost nothing about it.
Diane Duane - Wrote some Star Trek novels with a good reputation. Is best known for her Young Wizards Series, starting with So you Want to Be a Wizard? The first two or three of this series are EXCELLENT young adult work.
Cynthia Felice - The only two of her books I've read were co-written with Connie Willis. Water Witch was a decent enough but obviously early novel. Promised Land was a rather better book; an SF romance set while colonizing a new planet.
Sheila Finch - Another one where I remember very little. I read the Garden of the Shaped, the first of an SF trilogy, and didn't think enough to pick up the others, but I don't recall why.
Monica Hughes - as a Canadian SF young adult writer, I read at least one of her books in Junior High. I can't identify which, now. It was set in a future Canada, with a lot of very standard "This is the future" tropes of the time (serial numbers appended to names, most of the environment gone, except one near-magically pristine area the characters flee to). Those didn't impress me, but the book overall seemed better than those bits suggest. I always meant to read her Isis books, which were her best known work at the time, and probably better than the sorts of things picked by schools (where setting it on our planet's future versus another world would be considered a plus) but I think I was distracted by other shiny books.
Diana Wynne Jones - Is probably the best children's writer out there. I tend to recommend Archer's Goon, Howl's Moving Castle, or the weird and poetic Fire and Hemlock for an older audience.
Katherine Kurtz - Strongly historical fantasy in an alternate Britain. I read the first trilogy and enjoyed it, tried some others and bounced a bit more. It's been suggested that this might be because she gets more depressing as she goes on. I can't recall. but I have thought of rereading the first ones, which start with Camber of Culdi.
Tanith Lee - Weird dark fantasy. I only own Nightshades and Red as Blood, two short fiction collections, because overall I've liked her short novels and her short stories better than her longer works. I'd recommend Red as Blood easily, though.
Megan Lindholm (AKA Robin Hobb) - I have a hard time believing these two authors are one and the same. her writing style has changed a lot. My favourite Lindholm book is probably Cloven Hooves, about a woman who befriended a satyr as a child, and how this carries down through her life. It's not urban fantasy in that it's strongly rural, mostly Alaska-set, but it's definitely set in the here-and-now (At least of the 80's/90's). I'm also fond of the book she co-wrote with Steven Brust, the Gypsy. Of Robin Hobb's work, I finished the Tawny Man Trilogy, which I liked enough to recommend to several other people, but also convinced me that the earlier Assassin trilogy worked better as backstory and I had no interest in reading it proper. I've been curious about the Ship trilogy, but it's on the to-read shelf.
Vonda N. McIntyre - The Sun and the Moon is the only one I read, but I liked it rather, and I've heard virtually nothing but raves about Dreamsnake.
Patricia A. McKillip - It's easiest to recommend her early works like the Riddle-master trilogy, as they tend to be more straightforward and less eerily poetic than the later ones, but I'm probably personally more fond of things like Winter Rose or The Tower at Stony Wood. (Since those two books respectively, take on the ideas in Tam Lin, and combine The Lady of Shalott with selkies, I guess my prejudices are showing)
Robin McKinley - I grew up on the Hero and the Crown, and I'd still rec that book for many people. If you like vampires but think they've gotten too easy or romantic, instead of creepy and haunting, Sunshine might be worth checking out. Usually, my current favourite is Deerskin
Janet Morris - Read her Dream dancer and sequels as a teen. Didn't really get them, but I was interested enough to keep going.
Rachel Pollack - Godmother Night is a very good lesbian take on the fairy tale Godfather Death.
Marta Randall -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
forodwaith recommended I try the Sword of Winter, a quick and clever mix of adventure and politics with, as she said, the main character reluctantly adopting a child who reads like a child. She was right. Very right.
Anne Rice - To be honest, I read half of Interview with the Vampire and lost interest.
Nancy Springer - Another one I kind of grew up on. her early work is fairly traditional High fantasy full of deeply loyal brothers or brotherly bonds, and women who are more trophies than they deserve to be. her more recent adult work is fairly feminist contemporary fantasy usually featuring middle-aged women or gay/bi men (Larque on the Wing's main character is a bit of both). Her YA fiction is Arthurian and/or horse based. The two things I'm personally most fond of are The Hex Witch of Seldom, a YA coming of age featuring a sensible farmgirl and a horse that's actually an Archetypal Figure trapped in animal body, that's hard to even try and summarize, and the Sea King trilogy, starting with Madbond, which is one of her last brotherly-bond fantasy stories, and vastly more original than many of the others, and which gives the women more agency.
Joan Vinge - I read Catspaw at about thirteen. I didn't completely understand it, but I loved it. I still do, along with The Snow Queen. The difference seems to be that I don't like most of the other books set around the Snow Queen, while I'm also fond of Psion and Dreamfall, the other Cat books.
Connie Willis - If you like frantic screwball comedies involving time travel and the Victorian era, Try To Say Nothing of the Dog. If you like serious tightly plotted eerie SFnal explorations of dreams (The actual process of dreaming, not the fluffly not dream-like dreams most SF/fantasy writers use, me included), try Lincoln's Dreams. if you're not sure whether you want to read her serious or silly, try almost any of her short fiction collections.
The ones I haven't read. i still italicized the ones I've at least heard of. Nancy Kress, Pat Murphy and Mary Gentle have at times been on my "I ought to try them" list, and I know brannie-bird at one point was reading Susan Schwartz.
Lynn Abbey
Moyra Caldecott
Jaygee Carr
Joy Chant
Suzy McKee Charnas
Jo Clayton
Phyllis Eisenstein
Sally Gearhart
Mary Gentle
Dian Girard
Eileen Gunn
Gwyneth Jones
Leigh Kennedy
Lee Killough
Nancy Kress
Elizabeth A. Lynn
Phillipa Maddern
Ardath Mayhar
Pat Murphy
Sam Nicholson (AKA Shirley Nikolaisen)
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Pamela Sargent
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Susan Shwartz
Lisa Tuttle
Élisabeth Vonarburg
Cherry Wilder
There's a recent meme going about about SF writers who started their careers in the 1970s. Specifically, female SF writers.
The Original is simply:
Italicize the authors you've heard of before reading this list of authors, bold the ones you've read at least one work by, underline the ones of whose work you own at least one example of.
rachelmanija changed this slightly. New rules: Drop the authors you don't know to the bottom. For the remainder, discuss or rec at least one of their books with at least one sentence of explanation about why you do or don’t like it. Ask your readers to tell you about the authors you’ve never read.My list feels embarrassingly small.
Eleanor Arnason - The only thing I know for sure I read by her was the short work the Grammarian's Five Daughters. Which i quite liked.
Octavia Butler - I only finally read anything by her in 2010, which, considering how often her name comes up, seems strange. That book was the Parable of the Sower, set in a future USA that has collapsed into economic disaster, and legal limbo (people live in walled enclosures under continual threat by destructive gangs) and seems to slowly be creeping into nigh-universal indentured servitude and company towns. The company town aspect felt scarily realistic, the sheer level of violence and anarchy felt overdone, but overall, the main character was fascinating, and her attempt to find answers, and inspire other people to join her in looking for them, seemed to me to raise a lot of powerful questions.
C. J. Cherryh - I've read mostly her fantasies The Rusalka series and others), not the SF for which she's best known. My impression overall is that she's a subtle writer who dislikes saying anything overtly, likes trying to give more alien perspectives, and the stories were a bit bleak, not helped by the fact that her characters get wet, cold, and get colds themselves, when they make long cross-country treks. I've been hesitant to read more by her, however well recommended, based on how difficult the reading can be, even though i know it's usually rewarding.
Candas Jane Dorsey - I know I read Black Wine. I remember almost nothing about it.
Diane Duane - Wrote some Star Trek novels with a good reputation. Is best known for her Young Wizards Series, starting with So you Want to Be a Wizard? The first two or three of this series are EXCELLENT young adult work.
Cynthia Felice - The only two of her books I've read were co-written with Connie Willis. Water Witch was a decent enough but obviously early novel. Promised Land was a rather better book; an SF romance set while colonizing a new planet.
Sheila Finch - Another one where I remember very little. I read the Garden of the Shaped, the first of an SF trilogy, and didn't think enough to pick up the others, but I don't recall why.
Monica Hughes - as a Canadian SF young adult writer, I read at least one of her books in Junior High. I can't identify which, now. It was set in a future Canada, with a lot of very standard "This is the future" tropes of the time (serial numbers appended to names, most of the environment gone, except one near-magically pristine area the characters flee to). Those didn't impress me, but the book overall seemed better than those bits suggest. I always meant to read her Isis books, which were her best known work at the time, and probably better than the sorts of things picked by schools (where setting it on our planet's future versus another world would be considered a plus) but I think I was distracted by other shiny books.
Diana Wynne Jones - Is probably the best children's writer out there. I tend to recommend Archer's Goon, Howl's Moving Castle, or the weird and poetic Fire and Hemlock for an older audience.
Katherine Kurtz - Strongly historical fantasy in an alternate Britain. I read the first trilogy and enjoyed it, tried some others and bounced a bit more. It's been suggested that this might be because she gets more depressing as she goes on. I can't recall. but I have thought of rereading the first ones, which start with Camber of Culdi.
Tanith Lee - Weird dark fantasy. I only own Nightshades and Red as Blood, two short fiction collections, because overall I've liked her short novels and her short stories better than her longer works. I'd recommend Red as Blood easily, though.
Megan Lindholm (AKA Robin Hobb) - I have a hard time believing these two authors are one and the same. her writing style has changed a lot. My favourite Lindholm book is probably Cloven Hooves, about a woman who befriended a satyr as a child, and how this carries down through her life. It's not urban fantasy in that it's strongly rural, mostly Alaska-set, but it's definitely set in the here-and-now (At least of the 80's/90's). I'm also fond of the book she co-wrote with Steven Brust, the Gypsy. Of Robin Hobb's work, I finished the Tawny Man Trilogy, which I liked enough to recommend to several other people, but also convinced me that the earlier Assassin trilogy worked better as backstory and I had no interest in reading it proper. I've been curious about the Ship trilogy, but it's on the to-read shelf.
Vonda N. McIntyre - The Sun and the Moon is the only one I read, but I liked it rather, and I've heard virtually nothing but raves about Dreamsnake.
Patricia A. McKillip - It's easiest to recommend her early works like the Riddle-master trilogy, as they tend to be more straightforward and less eerily poetic than the later ones, but I'm probably personally more fond of things like Winter Rose or The Tower at Stony Wood. (Since those two books respectively, take on the ideas in Tam Lin, and combine The Lady of Shalott with selkies, I guess my prejudices are showing)
Robin McKinley - I grew up on the Hero and the Crown, and I'd still rec that book for many people. If you like vampires but think they've gotten too easy or romantic, instead of creepy and haunting, Sunshine might be worth checking out. Usually, my current favourite is Deerskin
Janet Morris - Read her Dream dancer and sequels as a teen. Didn't really get them, but I was interested enough to keep going.
Rachel Pollack - Godmother Night is a very good lesbian take on the fairy tale Godfather Death.
Marta Randall -
forodwaith recommended I try the Sword of Winter, a quick and clever mix of adventure and politics with, as she said, the main character reluctantly adopting a child who reads like a child. She was right. Very right. Anne Rice - To be honest, I read half of Interview with the Vampire and lost interest.
Nancy Springer - Another one I kind of grew up on. her early work is fairly traditional High fantasy full of deeply loyal brothers or brotherly bonds, and women who are more trophies than they deserve to be. her more recent adult work is fairly feminist contemporary fantasy usually featuring middle-aged women or gay/bi men (Larque on the Wing's main character is a bit of both). Her YA fiction is Arthurian and/or horse based. The two things I'm personally most fond of are The Hex Witch of Seldom, a YA coming of age featuring a sensible farmgirl and a horse that's actually an Archetypal Figure trapped in animal body, that's hard to even try and summarize, and the Sea King trilogy, starting with Madbond, which is one of her last brotherly-bond fantasy stories, and vastly more original than many of the others, and which gives the women more agency.
Joan Vinge - I read Catspaw at about thirteen. I didn't completely understand it, but I loved it. I still do, along with The Snow Queen. The difference seems to be that I don't like most of the other books set around the Snow Queen, while I'm also fond of Psion and Dreamfall, the other Cat books.
Connie Willis - If you like frantic screwball comedies involving time travel and the Victorian era, Try To Say Nothing of the Dog. If you like serious tightly plotted eerie SFnal explorations of dreams (The actual process of dreaming, not the fluffly not dream-like dreams most SF/fantasy writers use, me included), try Lincoln's Dreams. if you're not sure whether you want to read her serious or silly, try almost any of her short fiction collections.
The ones I haven't read. i still italicized the ones I've at least heard of. Nancy Kress, Pat Murphy and Mary Gentle have at times been on my "I ought to try them" list, and I know brannie-bird at one point was reading Susan Schwartz.
Lynn Abbey
Moyra Caldecott
Jaygee Carr
Joy Chant
Suzy McKee Charnas
Jo Clayton
Phyllis Eisenstein
Sally Gearhart
Mary Gentle
Dian Girard
Eileen Gunn
Gwyneth Jones
Leigh Kennedy
Lee Killough
Nancy Kress
Elizabeth A. Lynn
Phillipa Maddern
Ardath Mayhar
Pat Murphy
Sam Nicholson (AKA Shirley Nikolaisen)
Jessica Amanda Salmonson
Pamela Sargent
Sydney J. Van Scyoc
Susan Shwartz
Lisa Tuttle
Élisabeth Vonarburg
Cherry Wilder
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Date: 2011-06-28 01:36 am (UTC)