SF Mistressworks meme from eledonecirrhosa

[pellegrina]

Ian Sales announced at an Eastercon panel that he was releasing this list onto t'interweb, so I have grabbed it. This one is for women SF authors up to the end of the 20th Century. I'll post his separate list of 21st century women SF authors in a bit

Comments

[philmophlegm]

I have a few on that list sat and waiting to be read, but the only one I have read is Frankenstein. (I thought it was terrible, by the way.)

[daniel_saunders]

I've been meaning to read more books by female authors, but from this list I've only read Frankenstein (a bit dull) and the first Beggars in Spain novella (awful; another book about smug people with super-powers). Most of the rest I haven't heard of.

[pellegrina]

Yeah, I've only read one Nancy Kress but the characters were two-dimensional and the villain was the kind of cliché where you think "can she be doing this? nah, too obvious" and then she really did it, so I decided to pass on the rest of her oeuvre.

Well I've only read a couple

[the_marquis]

It seems
31 The Many-Coloured Land [Saga of the Exiles], Julian May (1981)
33 The Crystal Singer, Anne McCaffrey (1982)
80 Memory [Vorkosigan series], Lois McMaster Bujold (1996)

Although I'm surprised that earlier Bujolds weren't included.

[bunn]

'Witch World' strikes me as an odd representative of Andre Norton's work, it's not very sci fi and is quite trashy. I wonder if it's because there is a (somewhat cardboardy) matriarchy? I'd have gone for 'Forerunner Foray' which I think is head and shoulders her best book.

And 'The Dispossessed' rather than 'Left hand of Darkness' wouldn't have been my pick, though I know not everyone shares my passion for Gethen.

Having read Windhaven, I would need to be well paid to read anything else by dratted Lisa Tuttle...

I've definitely read 13 of these : if I've read the rest I can't remember them!

[philmophlegm]

Can I ask your opinion of a) Grass (which is on my to-be-read shelf) and b) Elizabeth Moon (one of whose books, can't remember which, is)?

[pellegrina]

a) I can't remember much about it other than being fairly well impressed by it, but luckily at that stage I was making comments on all the books I ready each year: "I bought this for my dissertation last year under the impression that there was library content, but then mislaid it before I could read it. Fascinating premise, but suffered from going all weird at the end as so many SF novels featuring weird native aliens and human settlers do."
b) I have enjoyed Elizabeth Moon, particularly the first three "Serrano Legacy" novels which had an interestingly different point-of-view character, but what made them different was written out by the end of book three and the remaining novels suffered from clichéed characterisation. I've read the first "Vatta's War" - again, the characters were a bit convenient and predictable and I found the socioeconomics a bit textbooky. If I've read any of her standalones I have forgotten them. I would like to read the Paksenarrion novels but preferably secondhand or borrowed, and as a trilogy not a doorstop