Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology

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30 March, 2023, published as “Pushing ThOur Boundaries” in The Berkeley Times, Knox Book Beat.    

     Sci Fi, fantasy, mythology and even folklore twists written as far back as the 1960s and 70s are part of Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, from Oakland’s PM Press.       

Published in 2015, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer skillfully selected a profound, exotic, global array of “feminist” women writers and stories for the anthology, from Octavia E. Butler’s brilliant 1987 “The Evening and the Morning and the Night” to Rachel Swirsky’s sexy, surreal and subtly philosophical 2008 “Detours on the Way to Nothing” and Vandana Singh’s triumphant 2003 “The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet,” seen through the eyes of her baffled, self-righteous husband and his unsuccessful attempts to dominate or even restrain her (and his own) transformation. 

     I use the VanderMeer’s term “feminist” in quotes, because, as they amply demonstrate, that term has blossomed and diversified as vastly their stories do since The Second Wave of the 1960s, far further than suffrage and legal rights: “Broadened the debate to include a wider range of issues: sexuality, family, domesticity, the workplace, reproductive rights, de facto inequalities, and official legal inequalities,” (Wikipedia) (2 March 2023  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism  17 March 2023). 

     The “bad old days” of violent masculism, colonization, rampant, rape-and-pillage commercial-industrialism and techno-social gentrification are “back at us” in the 2000s with some short-term gains and many, many long-term losses hidden from view and right out in the open. For some humans, it is only “that much easier” to become global, autocratic despots and slave-owners, consciously or automatically. For others, total hand-to-mouth mindless labor and/or disaster oppress and loom overhead. 

     The term “speculative fiction” as a genre label goes back at least to 1889, but Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land) related it to science fiction in an editorial in the Saturday Evening Post in 1947. Since then, authors like Judith Merrill, Harlan Ellison and Margaret Atwood used the term to re-form and push the boundaries of restrictive “science fiction.” Certainly, H.G. Wells’ 1895 The Time Machine and George Orwell’s 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-four’s political, social, gender and bio-engineering themes foreshadowed both age-old and pivotal questions of propaganda, war, ecological devastation and reproductive tyranny hammering down on us now.

     Some of these are rewrites of the Pygmalion and Galatea myth, others set in futures dystopian, utopian and questionable. Butler “began her story wondering how much of what we do is encouraged, discouraged, or otherwise guided by what we are genetically…biology, medicine and personal responsibility.” (p. 128) 

     In 1979, Tanith Lee turned “the traditional sword and sorcery tale” on its head in “Northern Chess;” and in “The Screwfly Solution,” (James Tiptree Jr./ Alice Bradley Sheldon 1977) “When It Changed,” (Joanna Russ 1972), “The Men Who Live in Trees” (Kelly Barnhill 2008), “Boys”” (Carol Emshwiller 2003) and “Fears” (Pamela Sargent 1984) the authors all posit places, societies and times that may or may not be Earth, future, past or contemporary. (photo Nichelle Nichols, NASA Recruiter, as Nyota Uhura in Star Trek: The Next Generation)

     They suggest condemnation, warnings and/or fleeting hope. There is a small, but very important, part of human life, mind, heart and spirit that is sexually and hormonally determined. It need not be entirely generalized nor delineated by government, religion or society. ThOur evolutionary pluses and minuses can be weighed, examined and balanced. “Speculative fiction” demonstrates amazing possibility, scope and flexibility through story, language and reframing, far beyond the distressed (and undressed) damsels on the covers of 1950s Fantastic magazines.  

     A wonderful and thought-provoking anthology, now available as an e-book, too.