July 11, 2017
This Month On Changing the Map As we’ve discussed in previous columns, the upside of using fantastic fiction as a forum for feminist thinking is that readers are so immersed in a strange world that they don’t realize they’re learning something important. The downside? That whatever an author might write about women and their struggles may seem dated and irrelevant…
June 13, 2017
This Month On Changing the Map This month we return to Justine Larbalestier’s excellent collection of feminist science fiction stories and essays, Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century. Three stories in her anthology perfectly illustrate one of the most compelling themes in fantastic feminist fiction of the 1970’s and 1980’s: sex, and how it affected women then,…
May 9, 2017
This Month On Changing the Map Last October, I woke to the news that much-loved feminist spec fic author Sheri S. Tepper had died. It hit me hard, not because her death was untimely (87? Hardly.), but because at one time she’d been my favorite author but I didn’t even know she was still alive. How could I lose track…
April 26, 2017
Holding Smoke (2016) Written by: Elle Cosimano Genre: Paranormal Thriller Pages: 322 (Hardcover) Publisher: Hyperion Why I Chose It: As much as I try to keep up on new Horror, a lot slides by me, including this Stoker-nominated YA novel. It caught my eye for its premise — a paranormal thriller set inside a prison facility. Now THAT’s a unique setting and…
April 11, 2017
This month we put Changing the Map into the capable hands of writer and reviewer Ronya F. McCool for her discussion of Octavia E. Butler’s groundbreaking novel, Kindred. Part slave narrative, part time travel story, read on to see what Ronya has to say about how Kindred changed the map. –Sharon When I was asked to write a review for…
March 14, 2017
This Month on Changing the Map Last year’s announcement that Hulu was remaking Margaret Atwood’s chilling tale of religious fundamentalism and female oppression couldn’t have been more timely. Her imagining of a takeover of the government and its impact on one powerless woman affected readers deeply when it was first published in 1986. Worryingly, elements of Atwood’s fantastical story are…
February 14, 2017
This Month On Changing the Map It’s not often that you pick up a nearly fifty-year-old novel only to find that it mirrors your current political climate with uncanny precision. It’s a bit like hearing a sermon at the precise moment you need it. You’re grateful for the enlightenment, but vaguely unsettled that the good lord or the universe knew…
January 10, 2017
This month on Changing the Map So if the turn of the twentieth century produced the First Wave of speculative feminist fiction (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Rokeya Hossain), and the late 1960’s ushered in the great Second Wave (Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia E. Butler, Margaret Atwood), what was happening in the middle of the century? Who were the speculative feminist writers…
December 13, 2016
In This Month’s Changing the Map Gentle readers, why are there so many more dystopias than utopias in fantastic fiction? We’ve seen a staggering resurgence of dystopic movies, books, and television shows, all portraying terrifying and depressing futures. Zombies, ecological disasters, oppressive political regimes, alien overlords… and that’s the short list. So what’s up? Do our inner cynics find it easier to…
November 10, 2016
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 I took the October death of novelist Sheri S. Tepper hard. You couldn’t call her passing at 87 early or unnatural. And although she never achieved the star status of her literary equals,…