Earlier this week, Suzy McKee Charnas died. And so I’ve lost another friend and colleague, one who is also an Aqueduct author. The last time I saw Suzy in the flesh was at Vonda McIntyre’s memorial, when she and Molly Gloss and I embraced in a three-way hug, forhead-to-forehead-to forehead.
Suzy McKee Charnas first blazed onto the science fiction scene with her then outrageous novel, Walk to the End of the World, in 1974, followed by the splendid Motherlines—differently shocking to the sensibilities of the day—in 1978. William S Burroughs blurbed the first one, and Samuel R. Delany blurbed the second. I first read these in 1979 (which is when I discovered them at Tower Books in Seattle), cover to cover, without being able to put them down.
Walk to the End of the World was more familiar to my imagination, if you can believe that, than Motherlines, which imagined an all-women society that was nothing like that of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland and is likely more comfortable reading than Walk for most people today. And yet it was Motherlines that the publisher of Walk declined to publish. Looking back, the characterization on the cover of my paperback second edition of Walk might explain it: “The terrifying science fantasy about a world ruled by men.” What was I living in, in 1979, but a world ruled by men? Nothing strange about that!
Motherlines, though—the women in it were tough, assertive, and taking no shit from anybody—in a forthright way, without disguise, that few real women then could get away with. My mother, for instance, was the comptroller of a medium-sized business and basically called all the owner’s shots for him—but could only be admitted to a trade association meeting under the guise of being his “girl friday.” I’d been thinking of myself as tough and assertive, but when I read Motherlines, I found myself thinking that I wasn’t tough enough to live in that world. By the next time I read it—in 1995, in preparation for reading The Furies, the third book in Suzy’s Holdfast Chronicles—I had to laugh at that memory. Had I really been such a wimp?
This may sound like a merely personal reaction to Suzy’s first two novels, but I think it actually speaks to the sorts of questions that arise when reading her work. Her fiction, that is to say, touches places in our imaginations that provoke us to ask questions we take personally. That’s not always a comfortable response when reading fiction—but it’s something that happens concomitantly with immersive reading, making those questions seem almost inadvertent, an accident of personal circumstance.
The last book in the Holdfast Chronicles, The Conquerer’s Child, won the Otherwise Award the year I served on the jury. (I wrote an essay about it, which you can find at https://ltimmelduchamp.com/criticism/child.html. ) Suzy’s short fiction was also outstanding, and her feminist werewolf story “Boobs” won a Nebula, and her novella “Unicorn Tapestry” a Hugo Award. Probably Suzy’s best known work is The Vampire Tapestry. I’ve written about it and eight other of her books Aqueduct has produced e-book editions of for this blog (https://aqueductpress.blogspot.com/2020/10/e-book-editions-of-nine-books-by-suzy.html). Aqueduct also published Suzy’s novel Dorothea’s Dreams in our Heirloom Book series.
I first came to know Suzy through the fem-sf listserv to which we both belonged. But I first met her in the flesh a little later, during a Potlatch con in Seattle, at lunch with a group of people Nicola Griffith assembled. (I met her more often at Potlatches than at WisCon, actually.) My awe of her gradually morphed into deep respect. Probably the phrase “a very private person” applied to her more than to anyone I’ve ever known, and yet she was an easy conversationalist, not at all reticent. But then she liked herself and trusted her own judgment without ever being overbearing. She told me that she enjoyed reading her own writing after it had been published, which impressed me. (Many writers hate to read their published work. I don’t, but I always want to edit myself, which sometimes makes reading of my own work an act of regret.) This ability to appreciate one’s own work actually turns out to be true for quite a few writers. But I suspect it’s rarer for women writers. And it may be even rarer in writers with a strong critical sense, which Suzy certainly had.
A related quality, I think, was Suzy’s self-sufficiency. My appreciation of this made me think, in my late forties, that I wanted to be like her when I grew up. Suzy was also warm and generous, and gracious to students and fans. As a publisher and editor who worked with her, I would also say she was astonishingly easy to work with. And finally, I will add, also, Nisi Shawl’s characterization: “loving.”
Finally, she was a splendid example of a feminist with a sense of humor. That, combined with her scathing political opinions, goes a long way toward explaining how she came to write her first novel. It was inspired, she said, by reading a newspaper article on the US Government’s plan for preserving the government past a nuclear holocaust, which was devised by the Nixon Administration. The article noted that in the case of nuclear exchanges, all the top government officials and a few junior officials and secretaries were to be flown to a special, clandestine, secure bunker where they were to be sequestered, out of harm’s way, for the duration. Tant pis, of course, for their mates and families. (Or any ordinary citizens, for that matter.) Suzy imagined what would happen if such a collection of top officials survived with only a few secretaries on hand to serve them (and provide the means for reproduction). When I first heard her tell the story, in her own dry way, I thought: thus the classic feminist sfnal imagination. Suzy is our answer to Nixon.
Suzy made my world richer for her work and her presence. And I will miss her.
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