Women in SFF Today
Welcome to March! That makes today officially the first day of Women’s History month! I’m not the best at feminism (after all my main job is Stay At Home Mom, the most traditional of all jobs). But I feel like it’s still a good idea to take a step back now and then and note all the things that women have done. So I was pleased to see an article for Tor.com this morning titled “Fighting Erasure: Women SF Writers of the 1980’s part 1”. It’s from 2018 originally, but the facts of the matter haven’t changed. And yeah, talk about erasure! I hadn’t even heard of ANY of these women and I’ve been reading in the genre for a couple decades. So good on James Nicholl, remembering those who have been forgotten. Your Edgedancer ways make me happy.
But the next thought I had was “well, what’s going to happen to the women writing books today?” Will they even be remembered in a couple decades? Has book distribution gone far enough that we will remember women who are writing now when my kids are my age? So I thought I’d make a list. For myself, and maybe a little for posterity too I guess. It was easy to begin, since I’d already planned on focusing more on women authors this year. But looking through the lists of what came out last year… there are SO many women authors that I’ve never heard of before. Some of them are undoubtedly new authors that don’t have much following yet and may end up on an erasure list somewhere. But really, after scrolling through B&N’s website in the SFF genre there is a lot more parity than you would think. (Also more parity than you’d see on the shelves most of the time too I think, but that’s another story altogether.) So here is my list in no particular order. All of these have been published in 2019 or later. Some I have read, some I plan to read soon, and others… well, there is only so much time in a day and I’ll see where I get.
Naomi Novik A Deadly Education 2020. Fabulous beginning to a new series, next due fall 2021.
VE Schwab The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue 2020. So amazing. I’m working through her books this year but it’s hard because she keeps putting them out so fast!
Martha Wells Network Effect 2020, super fun Murderbot series. Next due out April 2021.
Susanna Clarke Piranesi 2020. I’m planning to get to this later this year, I hear it’s fantastic.
Erin Morgenstern The Starless Sea and The Night Circus, 2020 and 2013 respectively. Night Circus was fantastic, need to read Starless Sea this year.
Mary Robinette Kowall The Relentless Moon, book 3 of the Lady Astronaut series, I will read this summer. Also The Original audiobook with Brandon Sanderson last August was fantastic.
Seanan McGuire Across the Green Grass Fields 2021 from the Wayward Children series that I’m planning to start in just a couple weeks.
Arkady Martine A Memory Called Empire 2019 won the Hugo for best new author and this book is AMAZING! Seriously. The sequel A Desolation Called Peace comes out TOMORROW (March 2, 2021). I can’t wait for my preorder to come!
Alix E Harrow The Once and Future Witches 2020 may be the book I’ve picked up most at the bookstore but still haven’t bought. It looks amazing, the cover art is good. It should be out in paperback soon…
Tamsyn Muir Harrow the Ninth 2020 is the sequel to Gideon the Ninth 2019 and they are on my list for this year. Maybe for Halloween?
Andrea Steward The Boneshard Daughter 2020 this is her debut novel, and I am excited to read it.
Charlie Holmberg Spellbreaker 2020. I’m planning to start her Paper Magicians series the next couple of months. Since 2014 she’s put out 8 books, with number 9 out soon.
Faith Hunter Spells for the Dead 2020 is her latest, but she has a fantastic back catalogue that I haven’t even started yet dating back to the early 1990’s.
Mercedes Lackey Jolene or Sacred Ground, both 2020, are the latest in over 140 books published since 1985. She is one that’s not likely to be forgotten, but I haven’t read any of her books yet! (Despite seeing them on store shelves for my entire life.)
Patricia Biggs Smoke Bitten 2021, book 12 in the Mercy Thompson series of Urban Fantasy.
Nnedi Okorafor Remote Control 2021. I have picked this book up a couple times already this year without actually buying it; it looks fabulous! Also, I realized while looking up author info that we share the same birthday! Definitely going to have to pick up her books now!
M A Carrick (Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms) The Mask of Mirrors 2020. It looks good and also mysterious. And now I know it’s two authors writing together, which is always cool to see.
Anne Bishop The Queen’s Weapons 2021 is the latest of her novels. She has nearly 30 books starting from around the year 2000.
Sarah J Maas A Court of Silver Flames 2021. I hesitate to put her on this list, but it seems like she’s transitioned to adult fantasy instead of YA the last couple years (which is good for YA I guess, since I didn’t want my YA-aged readers getting into her books).
Laurel K Hamilton Rafael 2021 is the latest of her books. She’s most well known for her Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series in this genre, but she’s written in Romance and other genres as well.
H G Parry A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians 2020 is her second book, and it looks fantastic, calling to me from my tbr pile.
Ilona Andrews Blood Heir 2021 is actually a husband and wife couple writing together! And they do it pretty well, from what I can tell. I haven’t read any of their books, but they have several series starting from the early 2000’s.
Okay, so this is basically my list. These ladies are the queens of SFF right now, and doing it fabulously. I will now provide a list for Honorable Mentions, meaning I haven’t heard of them but they’re high on the list for B&N and so have some things definitely going for them. To be honest, I haven’t researched every single one of these and they could (okay, probably are) fantastic authors writing timely things for the current world through fiction. Here are the runners up (for this list today):
Charlaine Harris, Genevive Gornichec, R J Blaine, Lauren Dane, Amelia Hutchins, Everina Maxwell, Claire Holroyde, Paula Goodlett, Elizabeth Knox, Margarita Montimore.
I am *very* aware that this list is going to be incomplete. With all the different publishers and then Indie publishing as well these days, it is really hard to know what all is out there!! Please feel free to let me know what I’ve missed in the comments and I’ll do another one of these later this month. I LOVE adding good books to my reading lists, so please give me more books to add!!
Last note: it was warm enough to take a picture of books outside today! That makes me so happy I could dance. But I won’t, because nobody wants to see that!
