S-F is not all for spotty teenagers and geeky nerds. The following novels are not girly, but will satisfy a thinking female reader interested in "what if" speculations.
The books included below vary a lot: some have strong female characters and an escapist plot, some deal with so-called gender issues, some approach are just examples of great speculative fiction: they all start with a “what if” question.
Mainstream?
- Margaret Atwood is a mainstream writer who writes s-f when it best fits what she wants to say. You might know her feminist classic The Handmaid's Tale , but the newer Oryx and Crake is an excellent example of speculative fiction: a fable of genetic engineering set in a future when experiments that we can recognise from the news resulted in a catastrophe.
- Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go deals with ethics of human cloning in an alternative world parallel to ours, and in current time. It's narrated by a female clone, specifically 'born' and raised to be an organ donor.
- Kurt Vonnegut is universally readable if rather manic and his Cat's Cradle is a masterpiece of a Vonnegutian mayhem, where a global catastrophe caused by the stupidity of army generals, observation of social mores, political farce and touching cynically-sentimental love story end to the end of the world. One of his best.
- Rare among the best s-f, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife is a beautiful romance in which the main male character suffers from a time tripping disease that makes him run into himself and meet his future wife when she is only six.
Genre?
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes is a heart-heart-rending moving story which examines ethics of science and the essence of what makes us ourselves in a tale of a learning-disabled cleaner whose intelligence is artificially raised to a genius level to then deteriorate at an astonishing rate.
- Ursula Le Guin, the grande dame of both s-f and fantasy writes thoughtful, humane novels and the “science” in her s-f is often often sociology or biology rather than physics. Left Hand of Darkness is a well known classic, a vision of a society with (roughly human) inhabitants who are neither male nor female, but can be either. Deals with gender issues, societal constructs, possibility of understanding between different cultures and limitations of friendship.
- By the same author, The Lathe of Heaven is a alternative-reality-time-twisting tale of a mane who can influence reality as he dreams. Funny, terrifying, full of human warmth, hope and with a gentle love story, this short novel is very much worth reading.
- Dreamsnake by Vonda N McIntyre might occasionally read as fantasy, but it's a post-apocalypse s-f, with a compelling central character, a healer who uses snakes to treat her patients. Beautiful and at times heartbreaking, it has a compelling vision of a society and interesting explorations of gender.
- The lurid cover of Joanna Russ's The Female Man might put you off, but the novel is a great, subversive feminist romp where four versions of the same woman exist in alternative worlds (including our own thirty years ago).
- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card tops many of the lists of best s-f novels, but the second instalment of the same series is better: Speaker for the Dead. It has alien cultures and biologies; examines the ability to communicate with The Other and explores ways in which that could be achieved, all on a wide political canvas.
Those who tentatively explore the speculative fantasy (or science fiction) world might be also inspired by a list of Top 10 s-f Books for Non-Fans.
The copyright of the article Top 10 Science-Fiction for the Female Reader in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction is owned by Magdalena Healey. Permission to republish Top 10 Science-Fiction for the Female Reader in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
 |
 |
