Ossining Review of Books

Five of My Favorite Books of Feminist Speculative Fiction

by Irene Herz

Irene Herz, the Library's website developer and sometime PC tutor, is the author of the children's book Hey, Don't Do That Prentice Hall, 1978.

  1. Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. Heartrending tale of a woman's time travel back to medieval England. Filled with wonderful historical detail.
  2. Sherri Tepper's The Family Tree A charming fable with an ecological lesson. Two parallel stories converge skillfully in an engaging story filled with wit and surprises.
  3. Mary Doria Russell The Sparrow Alternately hilarious and tragic, this first contact novel raises deep questions about faith, humanity and the power of love.
  4. Karen Traviss City of Pearl A twist on the traditional militaristic sci-fi thriller. Shan Frankland, kind of an interstellar cop, deals with the depredations, both intentional and not, of human settlers on a new world.
  5. Ursula LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness. Though it seems a bit dated now, this was a pioneering work of gender exploration through Science Fiction. LeGuin has a graceful, poetic writing style.