Anthology: Sisters of the Revolution
Apr. 16th, 2018 04:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaSisters of the Revolution, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, is a reprint anthology that brings together work from some of the most important feminist voices in science fiction. This is not hyperbole. Among the works collected in this PM Press publication are Joanna Russ’s When It Changed, James Tiptree Jr’s The Screwfly Solution, Octavia Butler’s The Evening and the Morning and the Night, and Ursula Le Guin’s Sur, as well as several other stories I’ve read and loved before from authors Eleanor Arnason, Vandana Singh, Nalo Hopkinson and Elisabeth Vonarburg. There were also a fair number of stories new to me, by authors both familiar and new. It’s an outstanding collection of writing by remarkable women.
In their introduction, Ann Vandemeer and Jeff Vandemeer write of this anthology as part of an ongoing conversation around feminist speculative fiction, neither a defining nor a definitive work. “We think of this anthology—the research, the thought behind it, and the actual publication—as a journey of discovery not complete within these pages. Every reader, we hope, will find some writer or story with which they were not previously familiar—and feel deeply some lack that needs to be remedied in the future, by some other anthology.”
As such, it is both deeply enjoyable in its right, and an encouragement to seek out further examples of the feminist vision in speculative fiction.
The stories contained in this collection examine many aspects of women’s lives and struggles. Woman as mother, woman as daughter, woman as leader, woman as revolutionary, woman as healer, woman as explorer, woman as hero. Women who defy the expectations of their society, women who choose to escape, women who try to do the right thing, women who rebel, women who kill, women alone, women betrayed, women who survive. I recommend it highly.
In their introduction, Ann Vandemeer and Jeff Vandemeer write of this anthology as part of an ongoing conversation around feminist speculative fiction, neither a defining nor a definitive work. “We think of this anthology—the research, the thought behind it, and the actual publication—as a journey of discovery not complete within these pages. Every reader, we hope, will find some writer or story with which they were not previously familiar—and feel deeply some lack that needs to be remedied in the future, by some other anthology.”
As such, it is both deeply enjoyable in its right, and an encouragement to seek out further examples of the feminist vision in speculative fiction.
The stories contained in this collection examine many aspects of women’s lives and struggles. Woman as mother, woman as daughter, woman as leader, woman as revolutionary, woman as healer, woman as explorer, woman as hero. Women who defy the expectations of their society, women who choose to escape, women who try to do the right thing, women who rebel, women who kill, women alone, women betrayed, women who survive. I recommend it highly.