Where have we traveled this past year, faithful friends and fellow travelers?
In August of last year, I joined this tour of the fantastic and fabulous map of our imagination, of the best places to go, where imagination knows no bounds, where boundaries blur in gray fogs, only to become clear in the light of day.
Starting with a lust for dragons, we discovered one of the pioneers of world creation and eco-speculative fiction, Joan D. Vinge and visited the realm of the Winter Queen on the planet Tiamat, located in the Hegemony system of interstellar space.
Next we were off to three locations where the land itself is metaphoric – the land of fairie, as explored by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, roamed with The Last Unicorn and Peter S. Beagle, and escaped the treacherous fairy queen in Ellen Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer.
November continued our journey further into gloom, leading us to the dying red sun of Darkover and the struggle to reconcile artist’s fatal flaws with their creations, with a look at Marion Zimmer Bradley and South Africa’s policy of reconciliation.
After all that despair, we were in need of comfort, particularly the tea and scones variety, so we visited Edith Nesbit’s worlds just in time for a merry socialist holiday season.
January we partied in New Orleans, both the real and the fictional version of Anne Rice and her love affair with vampires, witches, and the Catholic Church.
February brought us to the moist attics of V.C. Andrews (I can never pass up an opportunity to use the word “moist”…), followed by the endless universes of Andre Norton.
By then, we were all sick of the winter and ready for Spring Break in Shora and a look at female speculative fiction utopias.
May took us to the techni-colored hues of Oz, when we visited with the Princess Ozma and her transformation from male to female, in Just the Same, Only Different.
The summer started with another tour guide at the helm when we looked at the contributions of Diana Wynne Jones both to the lands of enchantment and to the creation of the map.
The last two months have seen us learn about the warning signs of feminist dystopias (July), and how to survive, at least in the (slightly more hopeful) YA versions, aided by a native tour guide.
So, where do we go from here? I know of a few lands I plan to lead us into adventuring, but I’d love to know where on the map you’d like to go, so please chime up in the comments! And let me leave you, as you pack carefully for the next venture into the exotic territories of speculative fiction, with a quick note from one of our most illustrious guides, the fabulous Ursula K. LeGuin.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
Ursula K. Le Guin – Bryn Mawr Commencement Address, 1986
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