The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays & Reviews

by Joanna Russ

In 1959, aged 22, Joanna Russ published her 1st sf story, "Nor Custom Stale," in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. In the 45 years since, Russ has continued to write some of the most popular, creative & important science fiction. She was a central figure, along with contemporaries Ursula K. Le Guin & James Tiptree, in revolutionizing the genre in the 60s & 70s, and her 1970 novel, The Female Man, is widely regarded as one of the most successful & influential depictions of a feminist utopia in the entire genre.
The Country You Have Never Seen (Science Fictions Texts & Studies) gathers Russ' most important essays & reviews, revealing the vital part she played over the years in the never-ending conversation among writers & fans about the roles, boundaries & potential of science fiction. Spanning her entire career, the collection shines a light on Russ's role in the development of new wave sf & feminist science fiction, while at the same time providing fascinating insight into her own development as a writer.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Feminism, Literary Criticism

311 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Joanna Russ (February 22, 1937 – April 29, 2011) was an American writer, academic and feminist. She is the author of a number of works of science fiction, fantasy and feminist literary criticism such as How to Suppress Women's Writing, as well as a contemporary novel, On Strike Against God, and one children's book, Kittatinny. She is best known for The Female Man, a novel combining utopian fiction and satire. [Wikipedia]

Reviews

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of Russ's reviews, unpublished essays, letters to editors, etc. Acute, incisive, penetrating: the sort of criticism that's worth reading even if you haven't read the books under discussion and don't intend to.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 5 out of 5]

My review of this book was published on Strange Horizons, October 22, 2007.

[Richard Diehm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Russ is not only one of the best US sci fi authors ever, but also one of the best sci fi critics ever. I may add more comments later but I'm about halfway through and my only complaint is that this only collects SOME of the reviews by Russ. She deserves multiple fat volumes containing all her reviews, all her essays, and at least 700 pages of her letters. Not to mention all her fiction. Library of America, are you reading this? I can dream, can't I?

Having finished I will add some scattered thoughts.

Russ is ruthlessly critical and I always love it. I'm someone that often gets accused of hating things I quite like (I think of it as that I love to hate the things I love) because I can't help but criticize. I find it constructive and it's clear Russ did as well. It also makes it especially interesting when she fawns over something.

This book could've done with a better index. It only provides one for works reviewed and even that is incomplete since I noticed a several reviews/authors that had missing entries in the index.

It was nice to see Russ actually self-criticized regarding some issues I've run across in her books. One off the top of my head is the treatment of male homosexuality in And Chaos Died...

Also I was really interested to see that Russ was comfortably a Marxist Feminist and even was an early adopter of the Marxist Feminist development of Social Reproduction Theory. As if I needed to be further impressed with her. I was hoping for good fiction recommendations (a small handful of which I got) but was surprised to find many more nonfiction recommendations, most intriguingly Elizabeth Fisher's "Women's Creation" which was apparently a feminist correction and updating and expanding of Engels Origin of Family/Property/State. Fisher committed suicide not long after and unfortunately the book seems to have been paid hardly any attention.

All this said this is like... the last Russ book I would recommend. So many of the essays and even some reviews are so highly contextual. I definitely felt like I was not getting a lot of the references at times. Her "defense of criticism" article here is a must read for sure but overall I think her best and most iconic essays are elsewhere.

I will also say one thing that occurred to me in this book is how *connected* Russ was. In a pre internet era a lot of this contains what would be the equivalent of comments on articles or posts on social media, including comment exchanges etc. She also engaged in writing erotic fanfics and interacted heavily with that community, she interacted with a host of specialized magazines related to feminism and LGBT interests, etc. Her letters (many of which are available online) further add to this feeling. Many of these writings have different tones based on the different audiences she was writing to. Of course this is probably true of many authors of that time but I think she might be notable for just how many different elements of the proto net zine world she had her fingers in. Heck, she was even part of a group where you sent a ruthlessly hateful review of one of your own books and then they let you write ruthlessly hateful takedowns of others' books. Anyway I really got the feeling that I was reading like the online posting history of Russ. Just thought all that was cool!

[l · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skimmed through.

[Farah Mendlesohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

No introduction
No explanation of selections
No contents page

And I’m sorry but much as I adore Russ’s fiction, my goodness she was a nasty and rather unhelpful book reviewer.