Women in SF and Fantasy

[sartorias]

Probably everyone here is aware of the discussion going on all over about a recent discussion of the "best" works of SF, and how few women were mentioned.

la_marquise_de began a list of women writers whose works she felt should be represented on that list, and encouraged others to do so

Comments

[merlinpole]

I got stuck early on in Mists of Avalon, and have never managed to read through it.

I think that MZB is one of those writers who work does not stand alone from the writer, that there are things in her writing which fail within the story context alone to be integral to the story, and some of them are dark things--the character Dyan Ardais and the ambivalence about him is one of the key examples. The themes in The Shatterer Chain and the images of women with their hands chained come I think seem to come more out of personal allegory space for her life, than a writer making up a universe and world and setting stories there based on non-personal history and relationships and ideas....

MZB was an author whose work I came to when I was I think in college, as opposed to running into Anne McCaffrey's work when it first came out from the Ballantine SF/F line, and Andre Norton, whose work I read starting when I was four or five.

[whswhs]

My Mythopoeic Society group read MIsts of Avalon when it first came out, and I resolved never to read it again. I just couldn't cope with that weird Calvinist "be glad to embrace the suffering to which the Divine has predestined you, as a mark that you are of the Elect" version of paganism. The piling up of ordeal on ordeal and wrong on wrong was like . . . well, like my decades later reading of Tess, which left me with a similar resolve.

[thistleingrey]

I've been thinking about the #YAsaves discussion on Twitter (which I've caught only tiny bits of, but is in part a response to a WSJ piece): basically, the notion that reading dark YA can help to keep the reader from exploring those dark things directly, unmediatedly. I think the Darkover books served thus a little for me, not that they're dark in the same way, but they taught me stuff, like "do not become the one girl whom everyone expects to save things" and "the unlikeliest things can be mythologized" (at the time I had no idea of R. W. Chambers and had barely met Lovecraft and Bierce, so I didn't know that the Hastur mythos was a transformative-work thing), not to mention "don't get in a fight unless you're willing to do it hand to hand." I was kind of a weird thinky adolescent, I guess! I agree with the remark that MZB's representations of things sometimes seemed too personal to be story; the poly interactions (Spell Sword, Forbidden Tower, et alia) seemed translated from something else, not inherent to the characters who enacted

[sartorias]

I think Darkover worked as well as it did because so many of us were working through many of the same things that Bradley was at the time.

[maryosmanski]

I guess my experience with Darkover was somewhat like yours.

There was a time when I thought the Darkover books were my absolute favorites and I read some of them over and over again. For more than 10 years I was pretty active in Darkover fandom and in writing for the various story zines. I sold several stories to her for the Darkover and Sword & Sorceress anthologies and the fantasy mafazine.

And then I went on to other things, not just in sf/f reading and writing, but in my personal life and teaching career as well. The last time I tried to read one of my favorite Darkover novels, I found that I just could not get into it or force myself to do so for old times sake. I had changed. My reading tastes had changed. Times had changed.

[sartorias]

*nodnodnod*

[anderyn]

I loved loved loved Perilous Gard and The Sherwood Ring when I finally discovered them. Which wasn't until I was in my late twenties, alas, when I found copies of them in the local remaindered book store. But oh how wonderful they were! I'm very sorry to hear that the author never wrote any more books, because I would have read them in a heartbeat (I rather knew I'd never found any more, but I was hoping I'd just missed a pseudonym or something). I also fell in love with Mara, Daughter of the Nile, but a lot earlier -- I think I read that in high school. What a wonderful book!

Alas, I still cannot stand The Mists of Avalon -- I seem to have imprinted very early on Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (I bought a copy in 3rd grade, at a book fair, as I recall) and I really really really REALLY resent Bradley co-opting the Matter of Britain in such a way. It's odd -- I can read nearly every other retelling and find something cool in it, but the Bradley book just really makes me cringe. And I loved a lot of Darkover books in my

[sartorias]

I think Pope's health slowed her down. Also, she had this odd tic--she'd contracted to write a third fantasy, but she lost interest in the story, and wanted to write a fourth, but felt that she must first finish that third. And so . . . neither got done.

[caprine]

I remember finding Mara, Daughter of the Nile in the public library when I was young. I had forgotten about it till now. Thanks for reminding me.

[sartorias]

Still reads pretty well!