A Door Into Ocean
10 best books like A Door Into Ocean (Joan Slonczewski): Dreamsnake, The Fifth Sacred Thing, Native Tongue, The Gate to Women's Country, Wild Seed, Slow River, Ammonite, China Mountain Zhang, The Female Man, Beggars in Spain
Author | Vonda N. McIntyre |
ISBN | 0553296590 |
While this book gets docked a point or two for the cheesy 70s cover and the title, it deserves a place among the classics of the genre. I first read the Nebula-winning novella "Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand," in middle school, but I never realized that McIntyre had expanded it to novel length. It's a thoughtful...
Author | Starhawk |
ISBN | 0553373803 |
11/2015 I live in the sweetness of this book, whether I am reading it or not. There are times when I need this book the way I need air. This has been one of those times. I slipped into it the way Madrone slipped into Sara's pool, unable to resist, entirely yielding myself to the narrative. It's prose that speaks...
Author | Suzette Haden Elgin |
ISBN | 1876756055 |
Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property,...
Author | Sheri S. Tepper |
ISBN | 0006482708 |
Tepper's finest novel to date is set in a post-holocaust feminist dystopia that offers only two political alternatives: a repressive polygamist sect that is slowly self-destructing through inbreeding and the matriarchal dictatorship called Women's Country. Here, in a desperate effort to prevent...
Author | Octavia E. Butler |
ISBN | 0446676977 |
“Recently, however, I began to suspect that calling myself a science fiction critic without having read anything by Octavia Butler bordered on the fraudulent.”
“Books to Look For” - Orson Scott Card
I have to thank OSC for the above-mentioned article (from 1990) which piqued...
Author | Nicola Griffith |
ISBN | 0345395379 |
She awoke in an alley to the splash of rain. She was naked, a foot-long gash in her back was still bleeding, and her identity implant was gone. Lore Van Oesterling had been the daughter of one of the world's most powerful families...and now she was nobody, and she had to hide.
Then out of the rain...
Author | Nicola Griffith |
ISBN | 0345452380 |
Change or die. These are the only options available on the planet Jeep. Centuries earlier, a deadly virus shattered the original colony, killing the men and forever altering the few surviving women. Now, generations after the colony has lost touch with the rest of humanity, a company arrives to exploit...
Author | Maureen F. McHugh |
ISBN | 0312860986 |
With this groundbreaking novel, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. In its pages, we enter a post-revolution America, moving from the hyper-urbanized eastern seaboard to the Arctic bleakness of Baffin Island; from the new Imperial City to an...
Author | Joanna Russ |
ISBN | 0807063134 |
I've seen people argue, both here and elsewhere, that this book is outdated and no longer topical.
I'm really confused what rose-colored glasses they're wearing, because as far as I can tell, the majority of this book is still far too true. I've been in these places far, far too often to write...
Author | Nancy Kress |
ISBN | 0060733489 |
In this future, some people need no sleep at all. Leisha Camden was genetically modified at birth to require no sleep, and her normal twin Alice is the control. Problems and envy between the sisters mirror those in the larger world, as society struggles to adjust to a growing pool of people who not only...
Author | Joan D. Vinge |
ISBN | 0446676640 |
This reissue of a modern classic of science fiction, the Hugo and Locus Award-winning and Nebula-nominated The Snow Queen, marks the first time the book has been reprinted in fifteen years.The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter...
Author | Kelley Eskridge |
ISBN | 0060086602 |
At times, Solitaire is a fascinating read! Sadly, at other times, reading this book is about as exciting as...well...playing a game of solitaire!
In the not-too-distant future, world peace has finally been achieved. As a symbol of this new era, all children born on the first second of the first...
Author | Octavia E. Butler |
ISBN | 0446603783 |
In this sequel to Dawn, Lilith Iyapo has given birth to what looks like a normal human boy named Akin. But Akin actually has five parents: a male and female human, a male and female Oankali, and a sexless Ooloi. The Oankali and Ooloi are part of an alien race that rescued humanity from a devastating nuclear...
Author | Octavia E. Butler |
ISBN | 0446603635 |
The last volume of the mind blowing, thought provoking Lilith’s Brood series (I prefer the original name Xenogenesis myself, it has a nice sci-fi ring to it).
Jodahs the protagonist of this book is another offspring of Lilith Iyapo. The least human of the series' central characters, especially...
Author | Pamela Sargent |
ISBN | 1932100369 |
I really enjoyed this book's exploration of daring feminist themes like "Wouldn't it be awful if the world was controlled by domineering man-hating lesbian separatists who forced all the men to live in primitive squalor? I bet they'd ostracize any woman who even wondered if men should be treated like...