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Sunday, May 8, 2011

Delivering sf into the hands of alien creatures

The New York Times has published an obituary of Joanna Russ, by Margalit Fox. Fox characterizes Russ as " a writer who four decades ago helped deliver science fiction into the hands of the most alien creatures the genre had yet seen — women." Here's a taste of her article:

The science fiction writer has the privilege of remaking the world. Because of this, the genre, especially in the hands of disenfranchised writers, has become a powerful vehicle for political commentary. In the America in which she came of age, Ms. Russ was triply disenfranchised: as a woman, a lesbian and an author of genre fiction who earned her living amid the pomp of university English departments.

Some critics found her too polemical, but many praised her liquid prose style, intellectual ferocity and cheerfully unorthodox approach to constructing her fiction, which could include discursions into history and philosophy and sections of quasitheatrical dialogue. (She was originally trained as a dramatist.)

There was palpable anger in Ms. Russ’s work, but it was leavened by wit and humor....

Fox includes a quote from The Female Man to demonstrate Russ's wit. You can read the whole article here.

5 comments:

  1. The link to the article got screwed up. Try this one.

    Took the Times long enough to get this up, but it's not a bad obit, though a tad condescending about SF. And apparently the author was unwilling to explore the possibility that Russ's work has power and purpose beyond SF.

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  2. Thanks, Nancy. I've corrected the link. Once again, the blogspot software imp strikes again, replacing perfectly good links with garbage. & of course the "new, improved" version of the software no longer allows the user from checking that the links are intact during the preview. This is a prime example of why reasonable people hate "improvements."

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  3. And even when the improvements actually improve things, just dealing with them adds another level of complexity to the whole endeavor! I could spend a couple of months just dealing with the tech upgrades I ought to do.

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  4. The chief objection I have to the article is its resuscitation of the "Women weren't writing SF before the Sixties" myth. At this point, that claim is basically a ratfuck: its easy refutability enables those who like to deny the power of sexism. 'Cause if women were in fact publishing SF in previous decades, everything's all right then, innit?

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  5. Someone I revered and wish I'd had a chance to meet. Don't really know what more to say.

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