John Jude Palencar/Cover of Octavia Butler’s novel Dawn, from the Xenogenesis trilogy
Speculative fiction can conjure up images of a boys’ only club of rocket ships, dragons, stoic male heroes in armour, and a litany of damsels in distress. Obviously, like any generalization, this is inaccurate (and women love rocket ships and dragons too; damsels in distress less so). That’s not to say that there aren’t many readers and writers who would want their boys’ tales to be the only form of speculative fiction, and in a male-centric, patriarchal world, the market often skews to what they want. But to say that this is all that exists in the realms of imaginative non-realist fiction is to ignore the many, many women who’ve worked twice as hard to be just as good (or better) than their male contemporaries. So, in their honour, here are some women who’ve created rich worlds other than our own, and have driven speculative fiction to its farthest limits.
The usual caveats apply, as for all lists: this is in no way comprehensive (and includes only English-language writers), and is just a small selection among a vast number:
Kelly Link (author of Magic for Beginners, Get in Trouble): An award-winning writer of short stories who’s found massive crossover success among both the ‘genre’ and ‘litfic’ crowds with her beautifully crafted, uncategorizably fantastic(al) work, she also happens to be an editor, a wife, and a mother, as if to spite any misogynists who might want to gabble about careers and motherhood being incompatible.
(author of Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber): World Fantasy Award-winner Hopkinson is a co-founder of the Carl Brandon Society, a group active in raising awareness and dialogue around issues of racial, ethnic and cultural representation within genre fiction. She’s also directly played a part in diversifying science fiction and fantasy literature with her vivid novels, including the intoxicating Midnight Robber, which takes Caribbean culture and folklore and catapults it into a spacefaring future.
avia Butler and Ursula K. LeGuin: LeGuin and Butler need no introductions, having appeared on hundreds of online lists talking about women writing science-fiction, or in the case of the late Ms. Butler, hundreds of lists of ‘diverse’ science-fiction. They’ve become the easy token woman/woman of colour (to use the American turn of phrase) to toss out in articles about genre fiction, but that doesn’t devalue their immense contribution to science fiction and fantasy. Their books should be read, always. I’ve included only living writers on the list, but made an e
xception for Octavia Butler, because she was that important, and that good (Butler’s Xenogenesis/Lilith’s Brood trilogy and LeGuin’s The Dispossessed are good places to start).
