(urth) Female sf/f ...WAS: Book of the New Sun won the contest!

Craig Brewer cnbrewer at yahoo.com
Wed Aug 3 08:59:20 PDT 2011


I've become a fast fan of Catherine M. Valente. Her style is way too ornate for a lot of people (the usual assessment some of my friends have is that she's "trying too hard"), but I actually think she has an amazingly productive imagination. Not sure I'd call it Wolfean at all, but I haven't been disappointed. She does have lots of fun re-imagining old myths, though.

And I agree about Kress. Great stuff. Then there's Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson (who is unfairly undersold, methinks), Kelly Link (one of THE best short story writers in the last decade or so), Susanna Clarke deserves a mention (again, people put her down sometimes because her big book seems to start off like a riff on Harry Potter...which it isn't). And what about old(er) school stuff? Andre Norton, Connie Willis, Susan Cooper, Diana Wynn Jones (don't let the "young adult" label fool you), Cherryh, Tanith Lee. So much good stuff.

Sorry. I don't think this started as a "please recommend your favorite female writers" thread, but I just turned it into that. My bad. :)



________________________________
From: Ryan Dunn <ryan at liftingfaces.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 3, 2011 10:39 AM
Subject: Re: (urth) Book of the New Sun won the contest!


Nancy Kress is another very gifted female SF writer, I'm not sure if she was mentioned yet or not.

…ryan




On Aug 3, 2011, at 10:38 AM, Antonin Scriabin wrote:

Thanks for the link!  I look forward to exploring more about and by Lafferty.
>
>On the topic of women writers, has anyone read anything by Janny Wurts?  I hear good things about her large and ongoing Wars of Light and Shadow and have picked up the first two books, but have enough on my to-read pile that I can't start them.  A brief scan through shows that the prose is very dense, flowery, and "archaic" ... which is something I am more likely to enjoy than not, if done well.  My favorite female writers have all tended to be pretty far from the science fiction / fantasy genres (Jeannette Winterson and Joyce Carol Oates).
>
>
>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 10:32 AM, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>Since the topic has turned slightly to Lafferty, I'd be remiss in not mentioning I write the only blog on the net dedicated to him:
>>
>>
>>http://antsofgodarequeerfish.blogspot.com/
>>
>>
>>(It's been mentioned here before, but just in case present company didn't know that...)
>>
>>
>>-DOJP
>>
>>
>>
>>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>R. A. Lafferty is very good, but unfortunately I have only been able to find and read one of his novels (his first, Past Master).  I definitely will keep my eye out for more.  I had no idea "science fantasists" was a sub-genre, and one I enjoyed so much!
>>>
>>>-K
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 10:16 AM, Daniel Petersen <danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>Marc Aramini marcaramini at yahoo.com to Urth:My favorites were probably more likely to be labeled as science fantasists, Zelazny, Philip K Dick, R A Lafferty, Abraham Davidson, Cordwainer Smith, etc. I liked Theodore Sturgeon though.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>Nice list (including Bradbury) - throw in some Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, Michael Bishop, Le Guin, and, of course, Wolfe, and that's usually my kind of brew.  I still can't get past that 60s/70s 'New Wave' sort of anthropological s.f. period.  From the 80s I've enjoyed Dan Simmons, but I really haven't read much s.f. beyond that.  (Except Tim Powers, who spans 70s to now, and whom I'm increasingly becoming a genuine fan of).  I only went backwards in time from there - Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Arthur Machen, Lord Dunsany, Robert E. Howard, etc.  I'm really interested in delving into more contemporary stuff from the likes of Michael Swanwick, Wiliam Gibson, China Mieville, Charles Stross, Charles De Lint, John C. Wright, etc.  Still trying to fit it in whilst trying to read and write about the entire oeuvres of Lafferty and Wolfe! 
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>-DOJP
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>On Wed, Aug 3, 2011 at 2:50 AM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>--- On Tue, 8/2/11, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'd say a lot of the most admired male authors before the
>>>>>> 70s--Heinlein, Asimov,
>>>>>> Van Vogt (who I don't like), Anderson, Bradbury, Pohl,
>>>>>> Kornbluth--were extremely
>>>>>> didactic, with pragmatic, realistic purposes.  Clarke
>>>>>> might be an exception. 
>>>>>
>>>>>It's funny, you named all my least favorite authors there except Bradbury, his summoning of innocence and the gathering its subtle but mature sinister loss always interested me.  never liked most of those guys  . . . tedious to me for some reason.  I liked some of Clarke.  I don't think those guys were really artists (call me a snob).  Asimov I liked as a childrens author, and he had one or two works that surpassed his usual output.
>>>>>
>>>>>My favorites were probably more likely to be labeled as science fantasists, Zelazny, Philip K Dick, R A Lafferty, Abraham Davidson, Cordwainer Smith, etc. I liked Theodore Sturgeon though.
>>>>>
>>>>>Just personal opinion to some degree,  I suppose, like preferring Dostoyevsky to Tolstoy or Sterne to Richardson.
>>>>>
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