Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: Worlds of Difference

by Jane L. Donawerth (Editor), Carol A. Kolmerten (Editor), Lee Cullen Khanna (Contributor)

This collection speaks to common themes and strategies in women's writing about their different worlds, from Margaret Cavendish's seventeenth-century Blazing World of the North Pole to the "men-less" islands of the French writer Scudery to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utopias of Shelley and Gaskell, and science fiction pulps, finishing with the more contemporary feminist fictions of Le Guin, Wittig, Piercy, and Michison. It shows that these fictions historically speak to each other and together amount to a literary tradition of women's writing about a better place.

Genres: Feminism

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays by women about works by women.

Works covered at length:

The Blazing World and The Convent of Pleasure by Margaret Cavendish
Ariamène ou le Grand Cyrus and Mathilde by Madeleine du Scudéry
letters to Mme. de Motteville by Anne Marie Louise Monpensier
Histoire d'Hypolite, compte de Duglas and Le Prince Lutin by Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy
Millenium Hall by Sarah Robinson Scott
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
"The Harmonists" by Rebecca Harding Davis
Transcendental Wild Oats by Louisa May Alcott
The Herland Trilogy: Moving the Mountain, Herland, With Her in Ourland , "A Woman's Utopia," The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture , What Diantha Did , The Yellow Wallpaper , Women and Economics , "A Garden of Babies," Her Housekeeper , "Her Memories," "Maidstone Comfort," "Mrs. Hines' Money," "Aunt Mary's Pie Plant," "Forsythe & Forsythe," Bee Wise , and "A Council of War" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
A Manless World by Agnes Bond Yourell
A Sex Revolution by Lois Waisbrooker
Unveiling a Parallel by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones and Ella Merchant
Other Worlds by Lena Jane Fry
A Man from Mars by Carra Dupuy Henley
Yermah the Dorado by Fiona Wait Colbern
Al Modad by M. Louise Moore
Reinstern by Eloise O. Richburg
Arqtiq by Anna Adolph
Salome Shepard and A Woman for Mayor by Helen Winslow
Mildred Carver, USA by Martha Bensley Bruère
A New Aristocracy by Birch Arnold
San Salvador by Mary Agnes Tincker
Angel Island by Inez Haynes Gillmore
Five Generations Hence by Lillian B. Jones
A Woman of Yesterday by Caroline A. Mason
Beatrice by Alice Ilgenfritz Jones
As It May Be by Bessie Story Rogers
Among the Immortals by Mary A. Fisher
A Runaway World, "The Ape Cycle," The Menace of Mars , The Miracle of the Lily , "Fifth Dimension," Fate of the Poseidonia , and "The Diabolical Drug" by Clare Winger Harris
The Undersea Tube , "What the Sodium Lines Revealed," "The Prince of Liars," and "The Man from Space" by L. Taylor Hansen
"A Baby on Neptune" by Clare Winger Harris and Miles J. Breuer
"The Moon Woman" by Minna Irving
"Into the 28th Century" and The Brain of the Planet by Lilith Lorraine
Creatures of the Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis
Out of the Void , When the Sun Went Out , "Women With Wings," Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century , Men With Wings by Leslie F. Stone
"The Astounding Enemy" by Louise Rice and Tonjoroff-Roberts
Dr. Immortelle by Kathleen Ludwick
Solution Three by Naomi Mitchison
Bloodchild , Patternist series (particularly Clay's Ark ), Speech Sounds , The Evening and the Morning and the Night , Kindred , and Xenogenesis series by Octavia E. Butler
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Mizora: A Prophecy by Mary E. Bradley Lane
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five by Doris Lessing
The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge
The Left Hand of Darkness and Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin

When I attempted to post my full review, Goodreads said that I had 555 characters left, but then told me that I had 12,495 too many characters. For the full review, go to https://scottandrewhutchins.wordpress...