I’m a nerd from a family of nerds, and I grew up reading a lot of science fiction. Specifically, I grew up reading a lot of my mother’s science fiction collection, which included a lot of brilliant writers, some of whose works are not as well-known today as they once were.
Since this is a pity, I’d like to introduce you to some of the books that affected me strongly growing up, and influenced me as a reader—and probably also as a writer.
Phyllis Eisenstein, Sorcerer’s Son (1979)
This is a delightful little book about two sorcerers, a demon, and their child. (Yes, it’s complicated.) One of the sorcerers has extremely powerful nature magic; she’s a woman with a gift for working with woven things, and she spends her time nerding out about botany, mostly. The demon is a decent-hearted sort who is bound by the second sorcerer. Because that other sorcerer is a nasty piece of work who gets his power from enslaving unwilling demons, and who assumes that everybody else is a nasty piece of work too, he lays a lot of complicated plots in order to defend himself from enemies that don’t exist until he creates them. This works out poorly for him in the long run, because his kid takes after his mother and the demon.
Diane Duane, The Door into Fire (1979)
Herewiss is a sorcerer who is one of the very few men in history to have been born with access to the blue Fire, the most powerful magic of all, which burns up the life force of its users. The problem is, that he can’t channel it to do anything useful because it breaks every sword he creates—and his lover, Prince Freelorn, has been trapped by evil forces in a tower and needs rescue. So off Herewiss goes, hoping he might figure out how to use his gifts in time to save his beloved. Along the way he meets Sunspark, my favorite semi-equine fire elemental personified star in fantasy. Queer and nontraditional relationships abound.
The second book in the series has really fantastic dragons.
Phyllis Ann Karr, The Idylls of the Queen (1982)
Sir Patrise has been murdered, and it’s up to Sir Kay and Sir Mordred to find Sir Lancelot so he can prove Queen Guenevere’s innocence, or she’ll be burned at the stake.
Neither of them much likes Sir Lancelot, unfortunately. And nobody has any idea where he’s wandered off to this time, as he’s not exactly the most reliable dude around…
I love this book so much, you guys.
Jo Clayton, Diadem from the Stars (1977)
There’s a girl in a profoundly misogynous society, whose mother was an offworlder. She gets her hands on a powerful alien artifact that she doesn’t know how to use, and makes her escape. This is a feminist revisioning of the planetary romance, and it shows the influence of Jack Vance and similar authors—the lone wanderer in a post-technology barbaric world that hovers somewhere between magic and superscience.
Definitely on the grimdark side, this might appeal to fans of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy.
Joy Chant, Red Moon and Black Mountain (1970)
On the face of it, this is a fairly standard portal fantasy story about three children who find themselves in a fantasy world and are chosen to save it. Initially published as adult fantasy, it would probably be considered YA now, because of the age of the protagonists. The strength of this book is not necessarily the plotting, which is a little bit Narnia Meets The Lord Of The Rings, but the glorious prose, the nuanced characterizations, and the very modern willingness to take moral ambiguity on the chin.
Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Tomoe Gozen (1981)
A historical fantasy set in Japan, a magical/fantastic biography of the real 12th-century female samurai of the same name, this book (the first in a trilogy) was the first non-Western fantasy I ever read. I was ten years old, and it completely blew my mind and made me realize that there were whole realms of human experience that didn’t get reflected in most of the books I was exposed to. I suspect that feeling, that sense of “here is something really and completely awesome that has been erased from my awareness” is one of the things that sent me looking for more diverse writers and stories.
Tomoe Gozen also appears in C. J. Cherryh’s 1988 novel The Paladin, which I also remember loving and really need to reread.
Suzy McKee Charnas, Motherlines (1978)
This is not an easy book to read on so many levels. It’s postapocalyptic, anthropological science fiction steeped in the despair and rage of women in the seventies, of feeling trapped by societal roles and needing to overthrow the whole shebang in order to win free. There was a whole subgenre of these books at the time, and this was my favorite of them. I also read this one inappropriately young, as it has some legendarily intense content.
I turned out okay!
It is full of gritty, awesome women, and so many lesbians. Recommended for fans of Richard Morgan’s THE STEEL REMAINS.
Vonda McIntyre, Dreamsnake (1978)
Another postapocalyptic SF novel about a young wanderer from the era when the only future so many of us could see was a nuclear one. The journeyman Healer Snake is out and about in the world when tragedy strikes, sending her on a quest that takes her through a number of remnant societies. This book is a solid adventure novel, fast-paced and full of incident, but it also deals strongly with thematic issues of class and education and personal responsibility and ethics. Includes a nonbinary character and nontraditional relationship structures.
A few notes:
I’ve limited this list to books that I read before high school, and read multiple times, and that I don’t generally hear widely discussed anymore. (Which is why several of my favorites weren’t mentioned here.) I also made the decision to limit it to women to narrow the field, and because I am a woman who often writes about women, and I suspect that in that, these authors influenced me strongly.
Also, it seems to me that women are less likely to be remembered, mentioned, and listed, and so their works are more likely to be forgotten after a few years.
This is a very white list, reflecting the demographics of the field at the time, and the sort of books that were available to my very young self: I didn’t encounter Octavia Butler and Tananarive Due until high school or college. I highly encourage readers to seek out their work, which is brilliant.
One thing I notice in compiling it is how queer some of these stories are. I think it’s fairly frequently forgotten that writers of SFF have been producing works about queer characters for generations—probably for the same reason that we forget that women writers have been producing SFF for as long as SFF has been a thing.
Elizabeth Bear was the recipient of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2005. She has won two Hugo Awards for her short fiction, a Sturgeon Award, and the Locus Award for Best First Novel. Bear lives in South Hadley, Massachusetts, with her husband, novelist Scott Lynch. Stone Mad, the sequel to her novel Karen Memory, is available now from Tor.com Publishing.
What a great list — just the covers alone! I vaguely remember a couple of those, but now I want to check them all out.
I think the only one I have not read was Sorceror’s Son
and I loved Jo Clayton’s Diadem series
great list
Did you ever happen upon Dorothy Bryant’s The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You?
One of my happiest times was reading Tomoe Gozen, on a mattress on the balcony of my Brookline apartment, on a warm spring evening, with a bowl of sweet cream ice cream doused in bourbon. It’s a very specific memory for me, when everything fell perfectly in alignment.
Red Moon, Black Mountain is probably the most commonly mentioned “out of print, kind of a Tolkien/Lewis knockoff but secretly kinda brilliant” book I’ve ever seen. About once a month it pops up on someone’s list and I go looking for it, can’t find a copy, and forget about it till it pops up again.
How is this perpetual “one you forgot about” so, well, forgotten about?
Vonda McIntyre’s Dreamsnake was/is also a favorite of mine, many times re-read. Another person who didn’t forget it: Ursula Le Guin, who also read it multiple times. You can see the influence in Tenahu.
A great list that raised some good memories. Eisenstein, especially, was and remains great, but is maybe under-appreciated. I love her Alaric stories, but anything she does is good.
I think I vaguely remember the Door into Fire and the Dream Snake but none of the others. Sorcerer’s Son, Tomoe Gozen, and Red Moon Black Mountain. I’ll have to see if I can hunt down. I found The book of elementals : the saga of the sorcerer’s son, volumes I and II / Phyllis Eisenstein. as a link+ item ordered through my local library and same with Red Moon. I could only find a mention of the historical Japanese warrior but ordered the e-book it’s mentioned in the title is Rejected princesses [electronic resource] : tales of history’s boldest heroines, hellions, and heretics. I couldn’t resist it. I’m going to need a longer vacation.
Just looked up “Red Moon and Black Mountain”, I find it’s very easy to get in German and as I haven’t read anything by Joy Chant so far I’ll probably gonna order it.
Afterall I do read a lot of old YA and MG novels these days (seems I’ve finally gotten old enough for that).
I adore anything Diane Duane writes, and that trilogy is probably my favorite of her stuff.
As for forgotten women, I offer up HM Hoover and Zenna Henderson. Also Doris Egan’s Gate of Ivory trilogy, though I think they spill into the 1990s.
I’ve actually read … almost all of these. Still remember most of the ones I read with great passion.
Must find The Idylls of the King somewhere.
All of those titles are great. You make me very nostalgic. I also recommend Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein. The sequel to Sorcerer’s Son The Crystal Palace is good, too. There was supposed to be a third volume but it has never been published. I wish it would be as I bet that it is also a fine read. Did you ever read Excalibur by Sanders Anne Laubenthal? It’s an Arthurian book that takes place in Alabama (really — and it works)
As a suggestion, don’t tell the entire plot of a book you are recommending because SPOILERS!
I had finished graduate school by this time period so I have nothing of a coming-of-age book to recommend.
Great list! I’m always happy to see Jo Clayton mentioned; ditto Joy Chant (and Sanders Anne Laubenthal, for that matter), although TBH I didn’t start reading them until a bit later in life.
My own list from my formative years would probably include Jane Gaskell, C.J. Cherryh and Louise Cooper.
@5: I found “Red Moon and Black Mountain” at the local library after hearing an author I liked mention it as an influence. The weirdest thing, though, was finding out that an extremely Orthodox rabbi who taught at my old Hebrew school had read “Dreamsnake.” He saw me reading it on the playground one day and asked me what I thought. Blew my mind!
Dreamsnake! I got everything I could find by McIntyre via interlibrary loan on the strength of that book. I’ve gotta go find Starfarers again because I loved it, but Stuff Happened and I lost a lot of books. I don’t think I ever got to the end of that series.
Dreamsnake was the first book I ever read that expressed what it means to have your hard work and capability reduced to dirt by the thoughtless assumptions of the powerful. I’m glad that Snake came out all right, but I so wanted a scene where she got to tell those nitwits off.
What a great list! I love Joy Chant and am happy for the shout out!
Plus, the collection of covers alone is a treat!
Thanks for some great memories (I read four of them back-in-the-day … and I’m shocked by how long ago that is now!), and some missed treasures for me to check out.
Have I got a storybundle for you…
This is what, the 3rd or 4th time Phyllis Eisenstein’s books have come up in the last few months? I wish there was some large publisher available who could bring her books back into print…
The only ones I’ve read are Red Moon and Black Mountain and Dreamsnake but I loved Dreamsnake and have reread it several times over the years.
I don’t get the ‘female SF and Fantasy writers are less read’ thing. I’d guess sales would support that, but my life experience doesn’t support that at all. This is coming from a 56 year old Canadian guy. In junior and senior high 1978-1980 all of my male and female friends were reading SF and fantasy. If I go through author lists I can check off most of the popular female writers of the time and my having read most of their series. Same would go for my friendsd, at times it seemed that we read more women than men. Jo Clayton was certainly one I was all over, as was my posse.
Doris Egan!!!!! One of my all time favorites. Brilliant anthropological science fiction/fantasy that started with Gate of Ivory in 1989.
my other permanent favorite from the time was Janet Kagan. Even Uhuru’s Song, within a Star Wars context that I disliked, was powerful enough to be on my read often list.
Others that perhaps should be on the list for dystopias: Suzanne Elgin’s Native Tongue is seriously thought provoking and creative, though I found the sequels increasingly appalling and prefer her shorter fiction… the early Sherri Tepper books were much more readable to me at that age than Charnas was. I enjoyed Marvin Manyshaped. Grass gave me nightmares, but was truly powerful.
Octavia Butler’s books were even more powerful to me than Vonda Mackintyre, whose books after Dreamsnake disappointed. Butler’s Patternmaster books, and the stand alone Survivor (an unsettling favorite) aren’t much discussed now, but maybe should be.. Survivor involves an interesting take on addiction, adoption, and heritage.
Patricia Wrede’s work was excellently fun. Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks came out in the 1980s and was probably the best urban fantasy of the era. If you like Seanan McGuire, go back and read it. Tanya Huff’s gate of darkness also came out in the late 1980s and I loved it.
I also admit that even though historical fiction, not fantasy, Gillian Bradshaw’s Beacon at Alexandria was a work I read over and over and over.
Sorcerer’s Son and The Crystal Palace are two of my absolute favorites and on my shelf of beloved books I re-read again and again. Oh how I wish that someone would re-print her books and publish the third book, The City in Stone, which was completed but never published.
Tomoe Gozen reminds me of “Cyrus the Great”. Another fantasy biography from the era.
As a teenager, I didn’t notice that the Diadem books were “on the grimdark side”. I enjoyed the main character, her mysterious heritage, her travels, her acceptance of all the different cultures she encountered, her interactions with her baby boy, the different personalities in the titular diadem and the fact that most of them were female. Come to think of it, there was quite a lot of violence, and many planets were owned by companies.
I had no idea that Diane Duane had published anything prior to The Wounded Sky. I used to think that she was one of the writers who started with Star Trek tie-in fiction.
@22/Vik: My favourite bit in Uhura’s Song is the scientifically advanced nomadic civilisation, who never settled down or built cities. That’s an idea I would like to see again somewhere. But it isn’t Star Wars, it’s Star Trek.
Now I’m wondering how parallel the rest of our early reading lists were! Though the publication dates mean that these were college or post-college reading for me, except for the Chant. Which…this is a tribute to the deep roots of my TBR list, I’ve owned the Chant and Clayton since my college days but somehow never managed to read them? In the case of the diadem series, it was because I acquired them as an existing series and was daunted at the thought of plunging in.
@12, @23: According to https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2745.Phyllis_Eisenstein, The City in Stone HAS been published!
More “consistently written out of history,” and “actively steered away from certain genres.” Something I’ve been noticing recently is how when I get ebook bundle offers in email, unless the theme explicitly includes women the odds are the books included will be predominantly by men.
@heather Rose Jones — If you limit yourself to the original Diadem series (the 9 books from Diadem from the Stars through Quester’s Endgame) it’s not too much of a commitment — most of the books are right around 200 pages or less. Of course, then there are two follow-up trilogies that follow the main character on other adventures …
Herewiss was forging swords, not suns. Autocorrect error?
And Uhura’s Song was presumably Star Trek and not Star Wars?
Great list, and I agree with so much of it! Thank you!
But no one seems to have caught that Phyllis Ann Karr spells her last name with a K, not a C. I don’t like being the spelling police, but that will actually make a difference in whether people can find her books.
I also loved the Joy Chant. Did you know that she wrote 3 other books as well? Of her 4 books 2 won Mythopoeic Fantasy awards and one was shortlisted for it. The other was an Arthurian retelling. Does anyone have any idea why she didn’t write more? The other titles are
The Gray Mane of Morning
When Voiha Wakes
The High Kings.
MKK
@30/31: Fixed! Sorry for the odd autocorrect issues!
@30
Most ambitious crossover event in history…
:)
I’ve been amalgamating mine and my mother’s personal libraries, which has brought a lot of old favorites back into the light. Diane Duane and Vonda McIntyre are among them, as well as TWO copies of Red Moon and Black Mountain! My mother gave me that one to read when I was sick as a child, and I’ve loved it ever since. I’ve also a copy of When Voiha Wakes, which I loved almost as much.
Some other great ones I’ve been happy to turn up: Meredith Ann Pierce’s Darkangel trilogy and The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, anything by Tanya Huff and Patricia Wrede…I could go on and on.
I’m now on the lookout for more of these titles here, as a number of them ring bells for me.
@22, yay! Doris Egan! I’m so glad people know about her! People seem to know the Ivory series, but not her SF book, “City of Diamond.” I recommend it! So many familiar and much-loved names coming up…Huff, Wrede…Emma Bull! I’ve gotta go take some notes!
That’s a neat list; I’ve read four of those, and (different) novels by two of the other writers; the only writers I haven’t read are Joy Chant and Jo Clayton (though I’ve certainly heard of them).
Tomoe Gozen also appears in C. J. Cherryh’s 1988 novel The Paladin, which I also remember loving and really need to reread.
Mmm, no, she doesn’t; The Paladin takes place in a secondary fantasy world vaguely influenced by Chinese history more than by Japanese history. (But I’d certainly recommend re-reading it!)
I recognize most of these authors, have some of these specific books. Nice to be reminded of them!
These are some of my favorites, too. In fact, I’m re-reading the Jo Clayton Diadem series for the umpteenth time, I just re-read the Joy Chant ones last year. The only one I’ve not read is the Idylls of the Queen. Ah, Door into Fire is one of my all-time favorites. I know if I ever met you we could spend a lot of time talking books and trading titles & authors, as well as a certain great Russian poet.
I was so lucky to be running the library for LASFS in the 70s and 80s and tended to purchase and read all the F&SF by women, and think I’ve read the entire list – my memory is not at all perfect. I have the Joy Chant (The High Kings is a real drag, I found it unreadable) and all the Jo Clayton is on my comfort read shelf, but most of the others I haven’t seen since the 80s
I’d have to add Katherine Kurtz and her Deyrni series. I’ve tried to find my old books of these at various points as I cannot figure out what happened to them. Parents must have included them in their “purge” of my childhood. :(
LOVED Tomoe Gozen and the Swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonsen. Sadly, I lost my copies of both, and neither are available on the Kindle (though the second book of the Tomoe Gozen saga, The Golden Naginata, is).
The one that I constantly read when really young was Sylvia Louise Engdahl. Looking back I think my Elementary School librarian even might have ordered more written by her for me specifically.
Interesting that all the authors appear to be female. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I however would like to add a few that should be, IMO, must-reads from the sci-fi of the day. Any of Michael Moorcock’s Hawkmoon, Eternal Champion, Corum or Eric books certainly fir the mold. I found that none of my college friends had read any of those, had not in fact even heard of them (I finished college while in my late 30s, my college friends all in their early 20s or even late teens in 1 case.) Considering the influence Moorcock had on other writers, role playing games and even fantasy as a whole, he deserves a mention.
Phyllis Eisenstein!
Loved her books, and still waiting for the next one to come out. Some recent stories in F&SF, too.
Great list. As are the additions other commentors mention. For other women authors of (and prior) to this time period writing heroic fantasy with strong leading female protagonists, I’d also offer Tanith Lee’s “The Birthgrave” et. al. and the Atlan pentalogy by Jane Gaskell beginning with “The Serpent.”
Read them all. My introduction to SF & F came earlier, with the works of Andre Norton. Loved Ordeal in Otherwhere.
@Susan What an awesome job (or hobby?)! Off subject but speaking of LA, I lived in Long Beach in the 90’s and the buyer must have been a fan- they had all of the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness by Hugh Cook which is a rare set of books! Yay, Cali!
I remember seeing (and reading) most of these on my parent’s bookshelves, too.
@Anne/43 — Yes! Sylvia Louise Engdahl! I read Enchantress from the Stars and its sequel (whose title escapes me, but whose sensory-deprivation-tank scene remains with me to this day) numerous times.
I’ve real all of these authors. For 2 of them (Salmonson & Charnas) I haven’t read these particular books. For most of them, I have every title on my “keep these” list. I’ll add 5 not mentioned in the comments: Anne Maxwell, Suzette Haden Elgin, Ellen Kushner, Lee Killough, M.B. (Marjorie B.) Kellog,
I’ve read 5 of the seven. “Dreamsnake” was out standing; “Red Moon and Black Mountain” was a change of pace for fantasy at the time; and the “Tomoe Gozen” trilogy is an excellent take on the true story.
10: Quil I’ll second Zenna Henderson. Her stories of ‘the people’ were superb. Though she was writing mostly short fiction in the 50’s and 60’s, which would be part of the reason she wasn’t mentioned. For the same reason I can see why Norton wasn’t mentioned, since she hasn’t been forgotten.
@Markov – Hobby for sure. Most of the books came from Change of Hobbit at the time.
As many women as there were writing F&SF, few men read them or only read 2-3 women authors and only after they had won Hugo’s. I tried to get convention planners to invite women as GOHs, but they could only name a couple and didn’t think they’d be good draws – despite MZB filling to overflowing any room they put her in. Susan
How about “The Gate to Women’s Country” by Sherri S Tepper? I totally loved the twist at the end.
James Tiptree, Jr. Irrepairable. Irreplaceable.
Interestingly timed. I finally Suzy McKee Charna’s collection and finished it a few days ago. Wow.
And I recall Sydney J. Van Scyoc with fondness.
@36: I second the love for Doris Egan’s Ivory series, and I also liked the stand-alone novel ‘City of Diamond’, which was published as by Jane Emerson.
Give me pre-new wave or give me death!!!!
I’ve read three of these, heard of most of the rest. I loved Idylls Of The Queen. She has written a few more short stories set in this particular universe, with Kay as the hero. I loved that she was no fan of Lancelot, though she didn’t much care for Arthur either. Alas, we don’t hear much of Phyllis Ann Karr these days. I believe she dropped out of fantasy and focused on crime fiction, because, as she said, in fantasy you can kill off a lot of characters and nobody cares and in crime fiction one character is killed and everybody cares. Fair enough, but I haven’t seen anything by her in years.
Tomoe Gozen was great and had a sequel, The Golden Naginata.
I hate to tell you, but Red Moon Black Mountain was *never* an adult book or even YA. The very cover you show is from the Puffin children’s book. I have it myself, it cost me 80c. Then some publisher discovered it and decided why should kids have all the fun and put it out with an adult cover which cost about five times what the children’s edition had. I agree, it does feel like Narnia meets LOTR(with a touch of Rosemary Sutcliff)though I was told by her librarianship professor that she hadn’t read LOTR when she wrote it, despite her Aragorn and Arwen characters. I suspect it’s out of print, but worth finding on AbeBooks if possible.
I would gladly see a much longer list of your favorite classic sci-fi.
I agree with #58! Excellent list, I read all except Tomoe Gozen. Dreamsnake & Door Into Fire are two I remember especially well. I still have them, I think. I’m in the (long, drawn-out, often procrastinated) throes of going through 50+ boxes of books that have been packed away for many years, maybe I’ll find them somewhere in there.
Very honored to have been remembered amidst such a fine batch of novels! Thanks ever.
I’m so grateful for this list! So many interesting titles! (even if my tbr weeps for the added weight *grin*)
Thank you for this list. There are some favorites of mine as well as some I didn’t know!
A few other authors from that time who seem to have dropped off the radar are Andre Norton, Jennifer Robson, Katherine Kurtz and Elizabeth Haydon… even Anne McCaffrey can be hard to find in non specialist book shops!
@ Kevin Grierson/42: Actually, all three Tomoe Gozen books are available as ebooks! :-)
The first volume was revised (I don’t know how much) and published as “The Disfavored Hero” in 1999, and the ebook also has this title.
I really enjoyed Sorcerer’s Son when I was a teenager. There is a sequel called The Crystal Palace which is also pretty good.
I’m older but started SF equally early, so these weren’t foundational in the same way for me, they came out when my tastes were fairly well-established; and then I didn’t find SF and fantasy lacking in representation of people like me, books offering it weren’t rare and special.
But Eisenstein, Duane, Salmonson, Chant, McIntyre, and Charnas I remember fondly, yes.