November 14, 2017
What do you do when the world you love is tainted by the unforgivable sins of the creator? How do I talk about Darkover and its place on the speculative fiction map? Do I relegate Darkover, a world I loved (with some of the strongest females and female societies created) to the nether ends of the universe? Do I hope…
October 13, 2017
Lakes exist all over the horror map, but there is none as famous as…
September 12, 2017
Located on the edge of the fantasy map is a strange and perilous realm where those that venture are changed and altered, and where the landscape itself shifts treacherously underfoot — the land of Faerie. Don’t bother listening to Siri or Alexa for directions, even old-fashioned paper maps are of no use here. The true nature of Faerie, that magical…
August 8, 2017
It is 1983, and I am thirteen and hunting for dragons, on a winter Boulder, Colorado day with crystalline skies so clear that I know it is below freezing outside. But I brave the elements anyways, for I want dragons, and I have five dollars and some change earned from household chores. I take the RTD bus 204 downtown, and…
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 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…