Every year or two, someone writes another article about a genre that women have just now entered, which used to be the province of male writers. Usually it’s some form of science fiction. Lately it’s been fantasy, especially epic fantasy (which strikes me with fierce irony, because I remember when fantasy was pink and squishy and comfy and for girls). And in keeping with this week’s theme, space opera gets its regular turn in the barrel.
Women have always written space opera.
Ever heard of Leigh Brackett? C.L. Moore? Andre Norton, surely?
So why doesn’t everyone remember them?
Because that second X chromosome carries magical powers of invisibility. Women writers don’t get the reviews. Don’t get the promo. Don’t get the Serious Critical Attention. They’re ignored or dismissed as “not important.” They are, in a word, erased. X’ed out. Forgotten.
Remember Ardath Mayhar? Sheri Tepper? Elizabeth Moon, maybe? C.J. Cherryh, even?
But! the Very Serious People cry. We have women on our list! Look! Ursula K. Le Guin! Lois McMaster Bujold! Ann Leckie!
Very fine writers, those. Wonderful books. I love them. But here’s the thing.
It’s called the Smurfette Principle. In my head, which lives and dies by mashups, it’s like Highlander, but in shades of blue. There Can Be Only One.
The universe is entirely male. Everything is defined by that gender. Male is default. One female is allowed to exist. She is, by her existence, presumed to contain her entire gender. She’s there, she’s complete. No other female need apply.
This is so prevalent that even female writers will front-load their universes with males—I’ve been rereading Andre Norton right here at Tor.com, and she consistently defaults to male protagonists and male-dominated adventures. Her females are deliberately strong and subversive, but in speaking roles, they’re in the distinct minority. They’re also, almost without exception, not standard human women. Mostly they’re aliens. Maelen. Jaelithe. Half-Earthling, all-inept Kaththea. It’s a man’s universe, and women have to be downright alien to be seen or heard.
It doesn’t stop. When I was watching Rogue One, sure enough. Female protagonist, yay! But…where are the rest of the women? The crew of merry men are all, well, men. A couple of female pilots sneak in under the radar, but if they’re representative of the proportion of women to men in the Star Wars universe, there’s definitely a problem with the continuation of the species.
It never even occurred to the men writing and directing this film that they might even out the gender balance. They just went ahead and did what they always do. Even when they think they’re being feminist and edgy and liberated and all that good stuff. They gave us another Smurfette. She’s a great Smurfette, but she still reads blue.
That’s what happens with women writers. In each generation, one is chosen to be named on all the lists and cited by all the Serious People. Once she’s selected, the Serious People dust off their hands and say, “There. We have a female. That’s sorted.” And go right back to focusing on male writers and ignoring the rest of the females.
In recent years there’s been pushback so strong, and cultural shifts so compelling, that we’re finally seeing all or predominantly female major award lists, and recognition that half the species is, indeed, not-male (and that’s not even getting into gender-fluidity and non-binary persons). That’s an amazing development, and I hope a permanent one. But it still erases the women who came before.
As a species, we are mri.
Mri are the alien protagonists of C.J. Cherryh’s Faded Sun trilogy (DAW, 1978-9): The Faded Sun: Kesrith, The Faded Sun: Shon’jir, and The Faded Sun: Kutath. They’re interstellar mercenaries in black with swords, fierce, deadly, and nearly extinct, and their culture is powerfully matriarchal. As the story unfolds, we discover that this is but the latest of countless near-genocides of the species. Over and over, their employers have ended their wars and destroyed the warriors, driving the remnants out into the wastes of space.
And every time, the mri have consciously forgotten everything that went before, except for a gnomic verse. Here’s the first half of it:
From Dark beginning
To Dark at ending
Between them a Sun
But after comes Dark,
And in that Dark,
One ending.
The mri’s entire existence has become a process of forgetting. With each new incarnation and each new war, they remake themselves, then escape again into oblivion. The trilogy is about unwinding the Dark and finding their way back home on a long trail of blasted planets, till they finally reach the homeworld.
That’s women’s writing. Remembering anything written by a woman that is more than ten or twenty years old requires a conscious effort and a fair amount of digging and exhuming—unless of course she’s the Smurfette of her generation; then she’s the one holy she’pan who may remain in the collective memory.
It’s interesting to me that the creator of this rather striking (and perhaps inadvertent) analogy is a woman writing from behind initials—as women have tended to do, to slip under the radar of Those Who Will Not Read Books By Girls—and herself not nearly as well known as she was thirty years ago. She’s also another example of the woman writer whose representative of the human species is male; the strong and compelling female character, as usual, is alien.
Have we finally reached the homeworld? Maybe, for the current crop of women writers. But there are decades of blasted planets and long stretches of Dark behind them.
Here’s a place for remembrance. What are your favorite space operas written by women who are not Le Guin or Bujold or Leckie? Maybe if we all share, we’ll rescue a few more names from the Dark, and bring them home.
Top image: The Faded Sun Trilogy cover art by Gino D’Achille; Methuen Publishing, 1987.
Judith Tarr’s first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Her first space opera, Forgotten Suns, was published by Book View Café in 2015; a sequel is in the works. She’s written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, a blue-eyed spirit dog, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.
Agh.
Almost all of my favorite sci-fi is written by women, but only Bujold’s and Leckie’s is what I’d call space opera.
Mary Gentle’s Orthe is fucking excellent, as is Eleanor Arneson’s Ring of Swords, but both of them are in the same sort of ‘anthropology sci-fi’ sub-genre as The Left Hand of Darkness (and I liked them both more than Left Hand, to be honest). And my very favourite of C. J. Cherryh’s work, the Foreigner series: again, not what I’d call space opera. (The stuff Cherryh has done which is space opera didn’t grab me, sadly.)
Rebecca M. Meluch’s War Birds and The Queen’s Squadron
@1 We can definitely space opera broadly here. You listed some of my favorites, too.
@2 Meluch is wonderful. One of our finest.
Define. Stop that, autocorrect.
The Chanur saga is fundamentally female though, as contrast to the “other” species that are male-dominated, and focuses on strong women trying to decide if their men can indeed overcome their hormones and be fully functioning members of a spacefaring society.
also M. K. Wren’s Phoenix trilogy
Kate Elliott’s JARAN quartet, which I finally read in full and loved this spring!
McCaffrey did a bunch of space opera.
Elizabeth Bear, has a series coming up.
Czernida, with either romance or crunchy biology.
Tanya Huff does mil-SF space opera.
@5 Alien females. Again. I do love them however.
@6 Must put those on my to-read list, thank you.
@7 Yes! says she who read the first in draft. Great series by writer who more than deserves greater prominence.
Well, yes and no…
I’ve read every novel by every one of those authors you listed, except Ardath Mayhar, who I’ll admit I’d not heard of, and the last dozen or so Foreigner novels. And like @crane, most of my favorite SF authors are women (though unlike Crane, I love Cherryh’s space operas best).
So, yes, women are underrepresented as characters, and they’re probably underrepresented as authors but not hugely so.
And I recognized that cover as The Faded Sun, even though it’s not the one I have.
Jo Clayton! Her Diadem series (and its follow-ups) in particular, and maybe the Skeen books.
And Margaret Weis’ Star of the Guardians series probably needs to be listed somewhere.
Edited to add: Oh, and Emma Bull’s Falcon!
The Liaden Universe novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. 20 books, countless short stories. 25 yearsish and going strong.
I don’t normally care about the gender of author’s I enjoy, I only look at plot summaries at the back. If it interests me, then I read the novel. In any case here are some names of women authors in Space Opera who I trust for quality Space Opera:
C.J. Cherryh’s Mri novels were favourites of mine (as were her Fantasy novels). I will admit that I prefer Bujold’s fantasy novels to her Sci-Fi’s and I have Lecky’s novels but just haven’t been able to find the time to get into them.
I also recommend Tanya’ Huff’s Confederation novels and Julie Czerneda’s novels (especially In the Company of Others although her Trade Pact novels are great also).
More recent discoveries include:
S.K. Dunstall – the Linesmen novels are among an elite group to be included in what I describe as a Renaissance of Space Opera
Jacey Bedford – the Psi-Tech novels are also included in this category as some of the best Space Opera I’ve read in a long time.
Ann Aguire – I’ve only read the Dred chronicles but they were definitely entertaining.
@@@@@ 11
“And Margaret Weis’ Star of the Guardians series probably needs to be listed somewhere.”
Absolutely agree – Star of the Guardians is probably the best Space Opera out there.
Rosemary Edghill, writing under her original name, eluki bes shahar, with the Hellflower series (Hellflower, Darktraders, Archangel Blues; 1991-1993). Hard to top a series with characters named Butterfly St. Cyr and “Tiggy Stardust” (Valijon Starbringer).
I rather like Jen Foehner Wells’s Confluence series. Excellent space opera, imho.
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels perhaps? May not be on big enough scale since mostly on planet, but it involves the interactions of an intergalactic Terran and alien civilization with a lost colony.
Okay, I looked up Butterfly and Hellflower and the tone of the back-cover excerpt sold me immediately. Ordered that!
Cherryh of course utterly defines the genre, with her Alliance-Union encompassing nigh on a dozen real feeling species, and true Space Opera with Drama and Tragedy, not just lasers and whee.
Margaret Weis’ Star of the Guardians was a glorious retake on the star wars ideas, and the spinoffs were lightweight but fun.
Elizabeth Moon’s Serrano legacy was solid, and a good emergence from under McCaffrey’s shadow. Really need to pick up the Vatta War stuff at some point.
More recently I really enjoyed the Women in SF storybundle, which turned me on to Nancry Kress, Catharine Asaro, Vonda McIntyre and Cat Rambo. Others I already knew but not for SF, so that was a nice change.
Nnedi Okerofor’s Binti was a real surprise pleasure, a simple girl’s story which turned into a whole lot more.
And I have to put a vote in for your Forgotten Suns, which was really rather good. Hurry up with the next one! (Ha, no really, we will be waiting.)
Although just to prove your point, I did a google for “female authored space opera” just to jog my memory, and the last name on the list is Michael A Stackpole, so even Google doesn’t let you get 10/10.
i read your article and i realized that i thought C. J. Cherryh was a man. But that”s not something new for me because i used to think that Sydney Sheldon was a woman. What i am trying to say that being a non native peruser of Syfi genre i could never realize that author i am reading is male or female. As i was allowed to borrow only two books at a time from my library, my criteria of reading reduced to the size of a book. i read books that were either small enough to be read in one sitting or tomes long enough to last me till my next visit. As these large tomes mostly belonged to fantasy genre I got addicted to these imaginary worlds.
But as an outsider with deep appreciation of the genre i am unable to understand the difficulties faced by female authors to gain visibility. Though perhaps use of asexual acronyms like C. J. Cherryh or J. K. Rowling should have given me a hint. But being a male and a foriegner i am still unable to understand this deep set prejudice which can overshadow the merit of the book
My first SF was Andre Norton’s Catseye. I’m loving Becky Chambers’ new books, and hope for more from her.
Many great female authors listed above!
If we are going to talk about strong female protagonists, and not just a token character at that. How about Weber’s Honorverse! I haven’t counted, but I would bet at least 50 percent of the characters with central roles, even the central character, are female. And, they don’t take bull from anyone.
@9 – Yes, technically the Chanur were “alien”, but in the context of the books they served as the “human” relatable species while the humans were “alien”. Guess I’ve internalized that position more than I realized :)
I feel compelled to point out that a large number of the authors mentioned are actually available over at the Baen ebook store (Brackett, Norton, Moon, etc). They did an anthology last year–WOMEN OF FUTURES PAST–that’s built on the same premise as this article. It’s really great.
It seems to me the real question is: why aren’t these books more widely available (Baen ebook store notwithstanding)?
I’m not sure we can credit an anti-women writers’ conspiracy, particularly given that I can’t think of any SFF publisher staffed by moustache-twirling patriarchs. It should be noted that most writers–man and woman like–get forgotten about after 20 some years. Go flip through any ancient Analog or Amazing and you’ll see what I mean. I grant and gladly that the proportion of men to women maintained past that 20-year barrier could be far closer to half-and-half. But literary longevity/greatness is subject to Price’s Law, (That approximately the square root of a population [i.e. writers] has half the capital [in this case, renown]), so if there were more male writers historically, overall, which seems to be the case, for whatever reasons (and there are likely several, some shitty human ones, others comparably innocent), then the proportion must be made more evident in the case of those few writers to whom longevity and its consequential greatness can provide. If the proportion is 2-1 or 3-1 or 10-1, then I expect things might look more Smurfette-ish than half and half. Because we’re remembering approximately the square root of all women SF writers and the square root of all men SF writers, given that artistic domains are subject to Price’s Law. The solution, long-term, is simply “Publish More Women,” which is happening. And if the publishing houses can find a way to revitalize the chronically overlooked Brackett and all the others we have named (which is hard. I’ve been given to understand revitalizing any Golden/Silver Age writer is a challenge, given the material is usually not timeless enough to remain interesting, male or female-written), then all the better.
There’s room enough in the Library of All SFF for everyone, contrary to what some people believe: women, men, white people, black, Muslim writers, Christian, gay, straight, and every other category you can name. Science fiction is for everyone–even if that wasn’t always true, and maybe it wasn’t–but it must be true now. We must celebrate that, and find all in our history that is worth celebrating, both that which has until yet been overlooked and that which we all already hold dear. Bujold is most certainly my favorite woman SF writer (though I suppose mentioning that rather violates the prompt you give us here). She’s celebrated and rightly so, and deserving of her seat at the highest table in the canon of SFF. Leigh Brackett absolutely stands the test of time, though she is more in the Dark (The Sword of Rhiannon. My God). But I don’t think any attempt to conserve and revivify those parts of our canon long shadowed by ignominy can be rightly predicated on contempt for those writers–men and women alike–still standing in that Light. That is to say…there may be a finite number of seats at the highest table of regard, where sit Tolkien and LeGuin and the like, but the SFF community is growing all the time, and as the fanbase breaks across social class and category, so too will that table grow, and more tables will be set up. Once, it was possible for a single fan to know the entire field–as once it was possible for a scholar to know all of physical science–but our art has grown too large for one person to now encompass. I’m not sure we can ever make a LeGuin out of Leigh Brackett (though I love Brackett far more than LeGuin), but I don’t think the existence of the likes of a Leguin–or indeed of a Heinlein or Herbert–poses any threat to our Bracketts and Moons. We have only to keep the books alive and in print, and let the fans do the rest.
The feast is growing all the time, my friends, even if it isn’t infinite. I’m looking forward to reading your suggestions. Kindly pass the books.
@22 Would be interesting to count, in light of the studies which demonstrate that <20% of participation is perceived as parity, and <30% as dominating.
Also, male author. See what you did there? Changed the subject from authors to characters, shifted away from female writers, focused on male. It’s deeply ingrained.
@24 Nice historical overview. Manages to evade fact that women have historically been reviewed and promoted significantly less than men, and that women have also historically defaulted to male or androgynous bylines in order to get and stay published.
Which brings me to:
Guys. Please reread Russ’ “How to Suppress Women’s Writing” before posting on subjects other than “favorite female space opera writers I wish to remember.” Thank you.
(I know all of these are the same user but let me take the two posts as they came).
@26, I evaded no such thing. I declined to associate the phenomenon with a conspiracy to not publish women writers, it being in part a consequence of Price’s Law that these writers are not REprinted. I do not intend to diminish or dispute the trials faced by many of those writers, particularly earlier in history of the field. Indeed I thought I made my enthusiasm for reviving their backlists quite clear. The good news is that those obstacles to both publication and publicity are no longer extant. Regard any contemporary issue of PW (I have several on my desk: the ratio of M to F reviews in SFF at a random sampling is 3:8 in favor of women), or at any major award you care to name. This dragon of history is slain, and thank heavens for that. I’m afraid I lack a time machine to go back and correct the 20th Century, so the best I can do is…
@27, share my favorite women writers, past and present. Which is what the bloody article asked me to do, friend. If you have somehow misinterpreted my call for a wider readership generally as somehow exclusionary, I would recommend you visit an optician. All I said was, “Let’s not throw shade with all this light” which is kind of an important thing to keep in mind if you’re trying to be on the right side of things.
I grew up reading Andre Norton, and I didn’t discover until something like a couple years ago that they were female. For what it’s worth, I blame my innate obliviousness rather than some dark conspiracy… but looking back, it seems odd to me now that of all the books I voraciously consumed during my living-in-the-library phase, it was Norton’s and C.J. Cherryh’s books — which I enjoyed immensely, thank you — that did not have author photos in the back, or any short ‘about the author’ bios that I can remember.
Contrast: Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, Haldeman… and those are just the faces that I can conjure to mind immediately from repeated exposure.
Some female authors, though, did get their pictures taken. McCaffrey, at least, I remember, and… um…
This is kind of really disturbing me now.
Melissa Scott! Space Opera and Cyberpunk.
Don’t forget CS Friedman.
Though I had to resort to Wikipedia to make sure of her gender.
Anyone claiming female writers are finally breaking in to space opera doesn’t know a single thing about space opera.
No love for Zenna Henderson and the inimitable Tanith Lee?
The fact that the Explore the Cosmos article by Alan Brown published here today has exactly one woman on it and she has a cowriter is deeply ironic.
I love Tanith Lee unreservedly; but did she write any space opera-type stuff?
@35: I don’t recall any at novel length but some of her short fiction would probably fall under the heading and she also wrote two episodes of Blake’s 7.
ETA: Text I use because I don’t know the spoiler tag markup: The Birthgrave could be interpreted as having a space opera setting in the background.
Cool! I didn’t know about the Blake’s 7 stuff …
Don’t forget James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon) and Margaret St Clair (who practically invented the dark urban fantasy genre alongside Fritz Leiber).
@37: Her stories are Sarcophagus (S03E09) and Sand (S04E09). They’re among the best episodes of the entire series in my estimation and they are unmistakably her work.
@28 I wrote,the article.
Leigh Brackett is one of my all time favourite writers, but I can’t think of any stories she wrote that I would consider space opera necessarily (well, putting aside ESB that is). I would say instead that she is a top rank planetary romance writer. Now Edmond Hamilton on the other hand…
I think my favourite modern-ish writer of space opera is probably Catherine Asaro. Her Skolian Empire is a lot of fun.
This article caused me to remember Lynda Williams’ Oka Rel Saga, which I never managed to find the remaining books of, back before ebooks were endemic. I should go back and look for more of them!
@39: Thanks! I’m still back in S2 somewhere, so that’ll give me something else to look forward to.
@41: As I remember them, I think that The Starmen of Llyrdis and The Big Jump would both count.
Joan D. Vinge’s “The Snow Queen” was, many years ago, my introduction both to Science Fiction in general and to the space opera genre in particular. It won the Hugo in its year and it’s a remarkable book even to today’s standards; I always find it somewhat surprising that it is never mentioned when the subject is space opera and/or women in science fiction.
Octavia Butler’s Xenogensis / Lilith’s Brood trilogy. I would probably classify it as a ‘first contact’ SF series rather than true space opera but it does start on a spaceship :) on a personal note, this was my gateway SF series at the ripe old age of 33 when I’d (mostly) given up on ever liking written SF works.
Becky Chamber’s The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an enjoyable space opera from last year – the 2nd book comes out this year (or may already be out)
For YA, I enjoyed These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Megan Spooner (first book in a series but the only one I’ve read)
thank you for the article, and thanks to your readers for the many replies with other suggestions – I’m excited to delve into these!
How about the Ozark Trilogy and related works by Suzette Haden Elgin?
Stretching the definition of “space opera”, but here’s some books I hadn’t thought about in years: Sylvia Louise Engdahl’s Enchantress from the Stars and The Far Side of Evil (which is more space opera-esque than the first, I’d say).
And also Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet books.
side question: I bought Bujold’s Shards of Honor last year and I can’t get into it. for folks who have read it, does it pick up after the first few chapters, and is it worth it to soldier through?
@40, I’m not entirely certain where exactly we’re disagreeing. I’ve made no attempt to suppress anything, only raised a point which I felt worth raising. I had no notion you were the author, and I’m not certain how I was meant to know I was speaking with same. It seems to me that we’re oriented in about the same direction, I just don’t know if there’s some pernicious conspiracy behind the reality of women’s not being reprinted as much/at all (because, as I say, most writers PERIOD don’t get reprinted). The reprinting problem seems distal to the problem that–historically–there were fewer women writers, and that I expect the problem will vanish in the next few decades now that the root problem has been ameliorated. I make no excuses for the past treatment of women in the field, it wasn’t good. I am not particularly fond, however, of your misrepresentation of my remarks as suppressing women’s voices or of evading the ugliness of the world. I made an entirely separate point in my initial comment–as I agreed with the article’s statements regarding the matter you raised in @26. The lengths to which women writers have had to go to get and to stay published are a blight on both our genres (though they are simultaneously a credit to the authors in question. I should aspire to a tenth of their courage). I at no point denied this, and resent totally the statement made in @26 that I did so, as well as @27’s implication that I am in need of some retraining on the topic.
I don’t think we are at odds. I certainly do not mean to be. If I have been in some way unclear, I should be all too glad to correct my mistake for myself.
Ghosts of the Talisman and The Flame and the Moth by Vivian Mayne.
@49 It does, and it is. Although I would say if Shards is not working for you you might want to skip to Warrior’s Apprentice–which I think is the stronger starting place–and double back for the Shards/Barrayar books once you’re acquainted with the universe. Warrior’s Apprentice has a different lead character (Miles and not Cordelia), so you miss out there, but it might work better for you!
Hope that helps!
Australian author Maxine MacArthur’s Time Future and Time Past.
Perhaps more first contact, as someone put it, but Marjorie B Kellogg’s Lear’s Daughters duology, The Wave and the Flame, and Reign of Fire.
I second Melissa Scott’s ‘Silence’ trilogy.
Jean Johnson’s Theirs Not to Reason Why series (although I’ve not read them all yet).
Wen Spencer’s Endless Blue?
Gini Koch’s Alien/Kitty Kat series.
Nancy Kress? I only have one book of hers.
Sandra McDonald’s trilogy, starting with The Outback Stars.
Karen Traviss.
@50 There were not fewer women writers, that’s the thing. Review stats for women are much lower vs. men when the actual numbers of works published are at or near parity (true 50%, not 20% perceived as equal). There are regular rounds of “Women Never Wrote Before” articles, which give rise to counter-articles and long lists, and a year or two later, there it is again. This has been going on for as long as women have been writing. Joanna Russ talked about it in her 1983 book, based on an article published about ten years prior. I have yet to see an article on the theme of “Men Just Started Writing This Kind of SF That Women Have Been Writing Forever.” Men have always visibly written whatever the “never” of the year is.
There is a strong cultural impulse to suppress or diminish women’s work and to extol and elevate that of men. One sees it in all walks of life, from the work force to the arts to politics. It’s persistent and pervasive. The fact that so many women have felt obligated to choose bylines, particularly in the early days of the genre, that do not read female is indicative. They are still doing so and discussing the necessity of doing so. They also face constant resistance from their male colleagues who have not shared their experience, who explain and clarify and debate and argue and correct and change the subject. All of which Russ described over forty years ago.
The more things change…
Now. Any further favorite space opera written by women that you’d like to add to the memory-roll?
Oh, and Ilona Andrews’ (actually a wife-and-husband team) Innkeeper Chronicles.
I would love to see a study of hidden collaborators in SF–famous writers whose spouses or writing partners contributed significantly to the work published under their solo name.
For +1’s that may not have been known as female:
C.L. Moore (“Henry Kuttner and…”)
Sherwood Smith (and Dave Trowbridge, the Exordium series, which is grand, ramping, sweeping, gorgeous space opera)
@49 I personally love Shards of Honour – intelligent, grown-up, slightly romantic SF that’s still fun. I actually like it more than The Warrior’s Apprentice, but that’s a matter of taste. Shards starts pretty slow (and never becomes terribly action-packed), but I encourage you to give it a go.
Marlowe@24 and other posts: I don’t believe you’re intending to do this, but I do think you’re doing the discussion a disservice by saying “I don’t believe there’s a conspiracy of anti-women writers” and then suggesting there are totally innocent reasons women aren’t known about. Because I haven’t seen anyone saying that there’s a conspiracy. The real problem is, large numbers of people individually acting on their biases (sometimes in ways they’re not even aware of, because they’re not aware of the biases themselves, and there’s no reason women don’t also occasionally contribute) can do as much damage as a conspiracy. But the biases are in play, still, and we may be making progress on them but it won’t continue to happen by declaring the problem ‘solved’ and assuming we just need a few decades for the numbers to statistically even out.
@54, why yes, as it happens. She’s more recent (I want to say late 90s), but Susan R. Matthews’ name hasn’t come up in this thread that I’ve seen. It’s rather dark (I had to take a break. It’s really, really bleak stuff), but her work’s all the stronger for that darkness. I think I’ve seen a couple Sharon Lee mentions here and there, but no mention of Jody Lynn Nye, who did some space opera with McCaffrey and later under her own power. Her Imperium stuff’s about as light as Matthews’ work is dark, so there’s a nice balance. The others I might mention have been mentioned already: Moon, Moore, McCaffrey, Cherryh, Asaro.
Please don’t think my reticence indicative of any lack of enthusiasm for the cause, I find the “Women are Just Breaking into SFF” articles deeply offensive myself. I remember an article on Salon that treated the 2014 Hugos (or was it 2015? I forget which year Ancillary Justice was) as THE WATERSHED moment for women in SFF (I remember Damien Walter ran a not-dissimilar piece on The Guardian around the same time) which really bothered me as well because they seem to be pointed in the right direction (egalitarianism, shall we say), but the constant denialism of the role women have always paid distresses me deeply. I only pointed out the Price’s Law thing because it seems to me that we need to eliminate the total population–male and female–that gets forgotten about FIRST in order to figure out the proportion at which the proportion is occurring.
@49:
If you’ve never read the Vorkosigan Saga and are having trouble with Shards, skip to The Warrior’s Apprentice first. They are vastly different novels. I loved Shards, and that’s where I started, but its by no means required, if you’re not enjoying it. They are as different as Ender’s Game and Speaker For the Dead.
Janet Kagan- gone way too soon,
Hellspark- a great space opera
Mirabile- a linked story series
Other short work
@61 I miss her, too. She wrote so little, and it was all so very good.
If you like discussions on Leigh Brackett, CL Moore or Andre Norton — there’s a lot going on with the #PulpRevolution crowd that champions them. The reason they’re not talked about isn’t because they’re women — in this entire industry that’s dominated by women and men are actually discriminated against these days, which is incidentally why Sci-Fi is selling lower as men then don’t read (another story), but because they’re pulpy non “realistic” non “hard-scifi” stories. The Campbells and Asimovs of the world at the time poo-pooed that stuff, and that mentality continues to this day.
We talk about this stuff a lot over on the Castalia House blog. If you like these authors, should definitely get to reading!
Alis Rasmussen (Kate Elliott) – The Highroad trilogy
Ankaret Wells – Makers Mask and The Hawkwood War
@48, you make a fair point, and I admit it’s not one I have an answer readily available for. But I do have a question, if I may: What do you propose to do about it? There’s a lot of evidence, that the Implicit Association Test doesn’t work, which is to say that it doesn’t stand up to the DSM standards of validity. For one, people who take the test twice almost never get the same results, so it isn’t reliable as a tool for measurement, but there’s also no indication the results it produces are at all predictive of a person’s behavior, so it’s not even obvious the thing’s any more useful than a Rorschach test at measuring anything that’s real in any scientific sense, which is to say that we CERTAINLY don’t know enough to imagine we know how to retrain someone’s implicit biases in anything approaching the scientific sense. There’s a call right now to get the doctors who created the test, Mahzarin Banaji & Anthony Greenwald, to make a statement discouraging the test’s use in professional circles because it doesn’t meet the DSM IV standards for reliability and validity, AND because it’s not even clear the constructs the test claims to measure exist at anything resembling the level of something like the Big Five Personality Traits or IQ (which are about as scientifically verified as anything in psychometrics can be).
So what are you going to do? I think that maybe ALL we can do is continue to raise awareness about our favorite authors and for publishers to keep doing things like that Baen anthology I mentioned, Women of Futures Past, which is predicated specifically on dispelling the myth that women never wrote SF before 2015. I oriented my initial comment the way I did because I also feel that WHILE we’re doing that we need to keep an eye on ourselves and make sure our own ideology hasn’t gone pathological while we’re trying to make the world a better place. Like I said earlier on, we have to make sure we’re not casting any shadows while we’re spreading light. I just wanted to get in on the groundfloor and temporize because it’s never simple.
How about Mary Gentle’s ‘Golden Witchbreed’? Orthe is an utterly believable alien world.
I convinced my wife to read Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. Bam! A great entree for her series for someone not normally a space opera fan. A hero ro rival the sniper gran in Mad Max.
Julie E Czerneda. Not only does she do space, she focuses on her own expertise: biology.
Species Imperative series, The Trade Pact series, and a stand alone “In the Company of Others”….are all gritty and intricate. .
I grew up on the others you mentioned; handed to me by my Dad along with Anne McCaffrey. Czerneda is a newer author, but one worthy of mention here.
Species Imperative alone makes her noteworthy.
capriole @54:
There were not fewer women writers, that’s the thing. Review stats for women are much lower vs. men when the actual numbers of works published are at or near parity (true 50%, not 20% perceived as equal)
Do you have a reference for that?
I ask because the only thing approaching a study that I’m aware of is this article in The New Republic, from about six years ago.
In that article, they started off with recent observations about the low percentage of writers who were women (typically 20-30%) being reviewed (and also the low fraction of reviewers who were women) in places like The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, etc. They then looked at publisher’s catalogs from a number of prominent (and smaller) publishers in 2010, and found that typically 20-30% of the published authors were women (up to a maximum of 45% at one publisher, and as low as 10% at a couple of others). Their conclusion was:
Now, I get the impression that this article was focused primarily on “literary” fiction (with some nonfiction from publishers like e.g. Harvard University Press) more than anything else, so it’s not at all clear that this would necessarily apply to fields like science fiction (or mystery, or other genres). I’ll admit I would be surprised to learn that 50% of SF published thirty or fifty years ago was by women, as you’re sort of implying, so it would be nice to have a reference.
I haven’t seen any mention of media tie-in fiction, but surely Star Wars and Star Trek novels would count as a form of space opera, no? In which case for Star Trek novels up until a (completely arbitrary) cutoff date of 1985 you get writers like Sondra Marshak, Myrna Culbreath, Kathleen Sky, Vonda McIntyre, A.C. Crispin, Diane Duane, Melinda Snodgrass, Janet Kagan, Jean Lorrah, Barbara Hambly, and Della van Hise.
A quick look at Star Wars novels prior to 2000 shows Kathy Tyers, Vonda McIntyre, Barbara Hambly, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and A.C. Crispin.
Further examples could no doubt be adduced for other space-opera settings (Babylon 5, Stargate, etc., etc.)….
Someone with more time than me might find it interesting to look at the gender breakdown for different series/properties; I got the strong impression that early Star Trek novels had a higher female writer fraction than early Star Wars novels, but I haven’t bothered to do a proper count.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Star_Trek_novels
https://sites.google.com/site/sweupub/novels
Some of the absolute best sf writing I’ve ever seen is by women — possibly because they’ve always had to be that much better than the guys to get past the fear of girl cooties by slush pile readers, agents, editors, and publishers.
I don’t think that some of the women mentioned by the Ms Tarr necessarily wrote “space opera,” but I tend to find the taxonomy of the sf/f sub-genres to give me worse headaches than calculus of variations. Who among these women have I read? CL Moore, CJ Cherryh, Sherri Tepper, Octavia Butler, Anne McAfferey, Elizabeth Moon, Jo Clayton (I liked her Diadem series), Genevieve McMaster Bujold, Leigh Brackett.
Julian May’s Galactic Milieu / Saga of the Exiles series (she’s female).
So female writer with a lead badass female space pirate goes to the Mageworld books by Debra Doyle (and James Macdonald.)
I honestly cannot say how much these books meant to me while I was growing up, you tell me that a female can be an awesome kickass take names fight a whole galaxy AND she has the same name as me!?!?! I was hooked from the first chapter.
Julian May’s Galactic Milieu series.
Not much of a fan of space opera, but, everyone considered, Zenna Henderson was one of the greatest writers the field ever had.
capriole @56- David (and Leigh) Eddings is the only example I know of. I’m sure there are others.
Jacqueline Koyanagi’s Ascension is a wonderful, queer space opera!
@77 I purchased a collection of Zenna Henderson’s stories a few years ago. Now that I have retired, and my life is less busy, I look forward to re-aquainting myself to the stories. I remember them as being warm and very personal. In these days when our world feels so turbulent, I could use a story that gives me hope.
Seconding Nancy Kress. (also love Zenna Henderson, though I wouldn;t define her SF as space opera…)
Vinsentient I’m looking at my personalized autographed copy of Alpha Centauri or Die by Leigh Brackett which I think qualifies as Space opera. I’m also looking at my signed copy of The Starmen of Llyrdis that should also qualify.
PS. Met Leigh Brackett at a 2 day signing she had at the bookstore in Lancaster CA. 1976. First day she signed The Reavers of Skaith which had just come out. After that I asked if I could bring in my collection Saturday for her to sign. She said yes!! So I did! On Sat. she invited me to have coffee and cookies with her and her husband Edmond Hamilton at there home but to bring only one book for Edmond to sign since he hadn’t been well. I accepted her invitation and followed her instructions about only bringing one book for Edmond to autograph. It was a marvelous visit.
“vinsentient Leigh Brackett is one of my all time favourite writers, but I can’t think of any stories she wrote that I would consider space opera necessarily (well, putting aside ESB that is). I would say instead that she is a top rank planetary romance writer. Now Edmond Hamilton on the other hand…”
@44 SchuylerH and @82 Thomas Monaghan of course you are both correct. Well, I tend to think of The Big Jump as having stakes that are too personal but for sure The Starmen and Alpha Centauri or Die count. I have a headache from slapping my forehead so hard.
The first SF ever read was Andre Norton’s “Galactic Derelict” and I’d say I grew up reading her. For the rest I’ll name check Sheri Tepper and CS Friedman (love, love The Madness Season).
@82: I would be interested to hear more of what you talked about with her, if you don’t mind.
Leigh Brackett’s “The Veil of Astellar” is one of my all-time favorite stories. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving Universe has presented many great stories. I definitely enjoy Bujold. MZB’s Darkover series is mostly planetary romance or science fantasy, but occasionally it comes close to space opera.
Here are my additions to this list:
Anne McCaffery – the standalone novel Restoree; The Ship Who Sang series. Also the Sassinak series (okay, Planet Pirates series — I prefer calling it the Sassinak series) co-written with Elizabeth Moon and Jody Lyn Nye. Also, Nimisha’s Ship.
Elizabeth Moon – the Heris Serrano trilogy; also the Vata’s War series.
Jody Lyn Nye – the Imperium series; as well as co-authoring two Ship books with Anne McCaffery.
Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, Julian May, C.L. Moore, Lois McMaster Bujold, Julie Czerneda, Catherine Asaro, etc. — yeah, women have always written space opera. Glad to see more of them being recognized, as it’s a sub-genre that I love.
C.J. Cherryh’s RIMRUNNERS and SERPENT’S REACH are both space opera with super female protagonists. Among my favorites.
Pamela Sargent was a favorite of mine.
I love this thread! It makes me happy to remember so many of these fine authors and their books.
Has anyone mentioned S.L. Viehl yet? Her Stardoc novels are certainly space opera.
Despite the rantings of some quasi-fans, fans love good writing, diverse characters, and diverse voices. If I wanted all the heroes to be like me — after all, isn’t everybody who counts cis-male, right-handed, blue-eyed, brown-grey-haired, and tad under 174 cm tall? — I’d just write my own stories. I suspect all the fans — certainly a plurality of the voters for the Hugos — feel the same way.
Back to Ms Tarr’s topic: historically, women seem to have been given even shorter shrift by the sf/f publishing world than women authors were given in the contemporary main-stream world and, possibly, in other genres, such as mysteries (I never read westerns)
@87 I forgot Catherine Asaro! Her new book is out soon!
@91 Most of the names so far have been familiar, and I’ve read many, but S.L. Viehl is new to me. (booklovergrabbyhands) Thank you!
Three novels that changed my life were all written by excellent female authors.
Sheri Tepper – Grass
Joan Slonczewski – A Door Into Ocean
Octavia Butler – Xenogenisis
This is a great way to remember old favorites and add new possibilities. How about: Phyllis Gotlieb’s Lyhhrt Trilogy; Vonda McIntyre’s Starfarers series; Aliette de Bodard (novellas called Vietnamese space opera); Dana Stabenow’s trilogy that starts with Second Star.
Just reloaded the site to see answers to my comment and I saw it deleted. Please tell me why so I know which parts were found offensive or too polemic.
I was just mentioning the importance of Cherryh, how “Dreamsnake” is still neglected, and how it is still part of the same narrative we all know about the male white straight guy dominance. I forgot to add that the mentioned Joanna Russ essay is fantastic. I do it now.
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@75:
Unfortunately, no one names their kickass space opera or fantasy character Tony. So I have no idea what that’s like ;)
I’d like to add the collaboration of Debra Doyle and James D. McDonald, specifically the Mage World Series. Oh, and since we also are allowed to mention the Foreigner series by C.J. Cherryh I’ll pick another series which is mostly set on a planet, the Nuala trilogy by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel.
Mage Worlds is at least available via Kindle, and Kat Kimbriel is part of the BVC and has all her ebooks released there. There are female and male protagonists, so I’m not totally sure they fall completely under the criteria here, however.
Wonderful to see an article on women SciFi and Fantasy writers! Real women are very much like mri. C.J. Cherryh knew exactly what she was saying. I got a review on my female protagonist saying the reader wasn’t into strong female characters, or some such… but the rest of the anthology was great as usual. I believe I was the only female author in the bunch. I’ve wondered since what he would have written it if I’d used my initials instead of my real name. But I decided long ago to write it like it is. I just finished the Fitz and the Fool six book series by Robin Hobb. Superb! I believe she must be a genius. My take on the many male protags in SciFi and Fantasy? Women have so much gravitas, you don’t need many to balance out the men.
@85 Remember this was 40 years ago. What I know is at the time I had no knowledge of Leigh’s connection with Star Wars or her Western scripts. I asked her about her SF/F novels including her latest novel and I asked Edmond about his. I especially asked him about a continuation to his Starwolf series which was 3 books then. He said that at the time he didn’t see another book coming in the future. I asked him about his Captain Future books for which he told me he churned them out as fast as possible due to monetary reasons. Sadly Edmond died a year later and Leigh 2 years. Leigh’s passing surprised me but by that time I was already stationed in Italy.
I was 23 years old and in the US Air Force stationed in the Mojave desert (Edwards AFB) and Leigh was a very gracious lady to invite me into their house.
I’d like to nominate:
Doris Egan – Gate of Ivory trilogy
Karen Haber – War Minstrels books
Emily Devenport – Shade (and sequels)
I’ll second Susan Matthews and Janet Kagan, as well. The last two books I read were space opera (Sharon Lee for one and Elizabeth Moon for the other).
I find it appropriate that I came across this article the same day I picked up “Women of Wonder”, a collection of short SF stories “by women about women” ….published in 1974. In the introduction Pamela Sargent points to the lineage of women in SF, starting with arguably the first SF book ever written by Mary Shelley. The introduction reads a lot like this article in fact, and it’s a bit depressing that 40 years later we are still having this conversation. Anyway, the authors included in the book were Judith Merril, Katherine MacLean, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey, Sonya Dorman, Kit Reed, Kate Wilhelm, Carol Emshwiller, Ursula K Le Guin, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Joanna Russ, and Vonda McIntyre. I’m not sure how many of them are space opera specific, because I haven’t heard of most of them. Looking forward to reading from the list in the comments though, I love me some old ridiculous sci-fi from way back when, and new stuff too. I didn’t know Asaro wrote sci-fi, I read her Charmed Sphere books and liked them.
C. J. Cherryh’s Cyteen is a favorite along with Rimrunners.
I began reading Sci-Fi in 1954. I had been reading since age 4 and that year my dad gave me a subscription to Fantasy and Science Fiction. I was an avid reader and read four or five books every week and was a frequent visitor to the library and was given “special dispensation” and allowed to take out more books than the usual number. I was first on the list to get Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow and in that era (McCarthyism, the Cold War and nuclear threat, bomb shelters) it was so believable and thought provoking. I didn’t particular search for female authors but I often found I liked the books they wrote more than many of the male authors. I liked, and still do, “quirky” stories.
During the ’60s and ’70s I was active in the SCA and attended a couple of ‘cons’ in 1974 I attended the one ins San Francisco and met Marion Zimmer Bradley – I had been reading the Darkover books and I joined/subscribed to the publications. I still have several bulletins and the Darkover Concordance.
I’ve read all the books mentioned and many more. During all this time I have also been an avid reader of science articles, Science magazine, Scientific American and I watch everything on the Science channel. Currently watching Year Million.
Getting a completely accurate count of how many women were writing space opera (or any form of SF) in earlier years may be impossible because of the number of them who used male or ambiguous names for publication. The more successful authors get outed sooner or later, but less successful authors who get one or two books or a few stories published may not.
Wonderful seeing some old favorites get the nod — especially Cherryh, Clayton, Asaro, and Norton. For pure, escapist space opera, Sharon Green’s novels from the 1980s should be noted. And several authors were mentioned in a post about Star Trek and Star Wars novelists, but their own work deserves stronger kudos for being stellar (pardon the pun) sci-fi on their own. Two examples:
Vonda McIntyre’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel, Dreamsnake. (McIntyre wrote the Star Trek novelizations for “The Wrath of Khan”, “The Search for Spock,” and “The Voyage Home”, and also founded the Clarion West SF/F writers’ workshop in Seattle.)
Kathy Tyers won the Star Wars lottery because of her romantic space operas about Firebird Angelo. (SW Novels: The Truce at Bakura, and Balance Point)
Anne McCaffrey’s ‘Crystal Singer’ trilogy. Practically a literal space opera as several protagonists sing for their living and sing well!
@@@@@ 104
and there’s More Women of Wonder when you have finished the first one!
@102: It’s interesting to view this in light of their Tangent interview, which dates from several months before Reavers came out. In that interview, Brackett says she’s finished with Skaith after three books but has another untitled Stark story, set on a new world, in mind (I think this is related to the notes Haffner will publish in a forthcoming omnibus; they indicate that she was working on it up to 1977) while Hamilton says that he’s working on the start of a long novel but admits its “more of an excuse than anything else”. Thank you for the information: I still enjoy hearing about them.
Laura Ann Gilman, Retrievers series.
Also, what are these “reviewers” of which you speak? Often, I find their reviews “a tale told by an idiot, all fire and smoke and illuminating nothing.” Or at least I wildly disagree with them. Now authors, they seem to know a good book when they read it; I get some of my best leads from authors’ blog posts.
Lastly, Tess Gerritsen. OK, only “Gravity” is SF, but she tells a great story, and that is why I read fiction.
Another newer author, with two books currently available and more to come, is K.B. Wagers and her Indranan War series, beginning with Behind the Throne and followed up with After the Crown. So. Damn. Good. And FUN. And heartwrenching as well.
The trilogy by Karin Lowachee, with books Warchild, Burndive, and Cagebird. One of my very favorite space operas.
Adding: Melisa Michaels — her Skyrider series starting with “Skirmish.”
I love this list! Have added a few new names to my own TBR.
Andre Norton is my favorite, at least partly due to pure prejudice. I read The Last Planet in paperback when I was in third grade. That hooked me for the rest of my life. (And I’m now ancient.) Bujold is another favorite. I like all of her books except, perhaps oddly, her latest one (that I’ve read – there may be more since). Other female writers – some I love, others (including some popular ones) I just don’t get.
@117 Is that Gentlemen Jole and the Red Queen or the Penric novella? GJatRQ is decidedly non-standard for space opera and requires substantial calibration of expectations to enjoy. The marketing copy doesn’t help, since it completely misses the point of the book.
The Ozark Trilogy by Suzette Elgin is a favorite and under-noticed work.
All, all should read Aliette de Bodard’s <i>On A Red Station, Drifting</i> and her <a href=”http://aliettedebodard.com/bibliography/the-universe-of-xuya/”>Xuya universe</a> stories, many of which are available online at the link. I can’t think of very many space operas that I like as well as these. “Scattered Along The River Of Heaven” is a good starting point.
C.S. Friedman THIS ALIEN SHORE
Kind of surprised that nobody seems to have mentioned Diane Duane’s Star Trek novels, or Joan D. Vinge’s Psion books, and her Snow Queen series. Both are indubitably space opera writers.
@122 I thought about mentioning Diane Duane, but I guess I shied away as Star Trek is a licensed property. I always liked her High Noon series (buddy space cops; all within the solar system IIRC) more any way. In it she has devices that are recognizably modern day tablets; I think she even calls them pads (forgive me if I’m wrong, it’s probably been at least twenty years since I read them).
Elaine Lee, Starstruck.
It’s Space Opera, for real, rather more than what can be done with mere words. It’s a comic and stageplay, dense enough for multiple read and views (I’ve never seen the play). It has vivid female protagonists, villains, heroes, anti-heroes.
Madeleine l’Engle, the Wrinkle in Time books.Christian allegories, like CS Lewis, but much more skillful (oh gods, his That Hideous Stench, ..).
Do the Dragon Riders of Pern stories count as Space Opera? As a reader of SF for over 60 years, I enjoy any kind of intelligent SF no matter what sex wrote it. Tell me, what is the difference in a SF story written between a man or woman writer?
I love most of the author’s listed above but I have to say that Jennifer Foehner Wells’s Confluence series really hit it out of the ballpark. I loved her switch from a very realistic feel of NASA astronauts in a rather small space capsule to a full blown alien adventure. And Jane is a grand hero.
Skirting the exact sub-genre issue these I just extracted from my fave authors list. Leigh Brackett, Lois McMaster Bujold, CJ Cherryh, Diane Duane, Mary Gentle, Ursula K le Guin, Tanith Lee, Anne McCaffrey, Julian May, Andre Norton, Sheri S Tepper, Joan D Vinge, Marion Zimmer Bradley.
Andre Norton was the first of these that I read from the local library maybe 45 years ago and it was a matter of years before I realised that she was a woman — even the jacket copy didn’t include that information in editions published in the 1960s and early 70s. That surely was shameful. But there really was a belief that boys would not read books by women and the genre was firmly aimed at a male readership.
S. N. Lewitt.
Delia Marshall Turner (much more forgotten than your average forgotten author, only wrote two novels that I know of, and really excellent).
So many good books and authors above, and I’ve read nearly all. Norton was my first, read at the same time (teens) as Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Clement, Heinlein and Simak, courtesy of my high school library. I think that by college I was aware she was a female author. Not quite space opera but definitely science fiction, the author I most recently and with great surprise realized was female is Ansen Dibell. I have had her Kantmorie trilogy (Pursuit of the Screamer; Circle, Crescent, Star; Summerfair) since it was published in the late 70s, early 80s.
@33 I love Zenna Henderson’s The People. I still have those 2 paperbacks and reread them once a year. Also agree about Elizabeth Moon. If you haven’t read the Serrano Legacy or Vatta’s War series pick them up now! !! And while it’s not space opera her Deeds of Paksenarrion is also worth it. (it’s sword and sorcery) Should have notes cause other names have fallen out of my head since I started writing.
For me Space Opera on a grand scale started with the Chronicles of the Lensmen, by E.E. Doc Smith. Six books make the up the series “Triplanetary, First Lensmen, Galactic Patrol, Gray Lensmen, Second Stage Lensmen and Children of the Lens”. These books started in Astounding in the late 30’s and early 40’s.
Loved The Faded Sun: it led me to Cyteen, one of my all-time favorites.
A novel that doesn’t get mentioned often is Cecilia Holland’s Floating Worlds (1976): an unusual, character-driven story. Cecilia Holland was known for her historic novels (unfortunately, I haven’t read any), and Floating Worlds, although definitely science fiction, has the atmosphere of an epic-Mongol-space-opera.
K. D. Wentworth?
Eluki Bes Shahar and the Hellflower books-her concept of sentient Libraries is truly original-and Linda Nagata’s Nanotech Succession series-featuring a virus that turns it’s victims into religious fanatics (especially Vast)-these books are Modern Space Opera at its best.
Others I’ve read stuff by that I have called space opera
Eleanor Arnason
Pauline Ashwell
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Miriam Allen deFord
Aliette de Bodard
Marion de Pierres (whopping great series of it!)
Leanne Fraham
Sara Hoyt
Gwyneth Jones
Kay Kenyon
Lee Killough
Yoon Ha Lee
Katherine MacLean
Marta Randall
Selina Rosen
Mary Rosenblum
Vandana Singh
Paula R. Stiles
Lois Tilton
Genevieve Valentine
Connie Willis
Janny Wurts
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Sarah Zettel
@72 On the subject of licensed properties, for my money the very best Babylon 5 tie-in novels are “To Dream in the City of Sorrow” by Kathryn Drennan and the “Passing of the Technomages” series by Jeanne Cavelos. None are space opera, but they are good and authored by women.
One of the first YA science fiction novels I read (after already ingesting “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress,” “Dune,” and some Asimov) probably doesn’t remotely qualify as space opera, but it 1) is by a too-often forgotten female author, 2) features a female human protagonist (who arguably no longer is by the end), and 3) is a Women Were Writing That Then for diversity/ecological themes. I speak of “Keeper of the Isis Light” by Monica Hughes. Wow, did it make me think at about age 11. It didn’t hold up as well as I’d hoped to a recent reread, but it had a big influence then.
Older-
S.l. Viehl’s Stardoc series as well as Afterburn and shock ball-all excellent space operas.
Linnea Sinclair’s Dock 5 universe
Newer-
Rachel Bach’s series
Sara creasy Scarabeaus series
@33: I think I’ve read all of Zenna Henderson; I liked all of it, but it’s very domestic (or at least planetbound) — not exactly space opera. Ditto Elgin’s Ozark works, even after Coyote Jones is imported into the 4th from her other ~series.
@63 (taking it more seriously than it deserves): Modesitt said at the last World Fantasy Convention that his SF, which I’d consider realistic (if not “hard”) and sometimes operatic, doesn’t sell as well as his fantasy.
@86: Galactic Derelict wasn’t my first SF novel, but it was a long-time favorite. Sadly, the writing is very much of its time — not very good by current standards — but the story still stands out (including for being (one of?) the first to have a Native American protagonist). Meanwhile, K. B. Wagers (mentioned later) isn’t the first to be set in an Indian culture (see, e.g., RIver of Gods), but I think it’s the first space opera; I’m waiting very impatiently for the last volume of the trilogy (almost 6 months away).
I’ll second (third? fifth?) mentions of Elizabeth Moon and Debra Doyle. Marta Randall (just brought up) started out writing a family saga, but it expanded into space opera. Names I don’t see yet: Kristine Smith’s Jani Killian books — not huge scope but full of derring-do — and Karen Traviss’s Wess’Har books — they start out reading like close-focus borderline-MilSF but the scope (and timeframe) keeps widening.
THIS! “It doesn’t stop. When I was watching Rogue One, sure enough. Female protagonist, yay! But…where are the rest of the women? The crew of merry men are all, well, men. A couple of female pilots sneak in under the radar, but if they’re representative of the proportion of women to men in the Star Wars universe, there’s definitely a problem with the continuation of the species.”
This has been annoying me since I finally saw the movie a second time. I still love the movie and think it is great. However, you could keep the whole script the same and cast Jin as a male and would have essentially the same movie. So annoying!
Jo Clayton’s diadem series and Skeen trilogy!
I wanted to mention S L Viehl’s Stardoc series. I haven’t read it but it is on my wishlist. I loved her Darkyn fantasy series.
‘Midnight Robber’ by Nalo Hopkinson might qualify.
Judith Merril must count as grand master.
Élisabeth Vonarburg also, and you’ll find LOTS of women in her books who are not smurfettes. My favorite of hers is Reluctant Voyagers.
About hidden collaborators in SF, didn’t Catherine de Camp write some stories with L. Sprague?
Most of my favorites (Wren, Scott, Butler, Cherryh, Lee) have been listed.
I’d like to add Joan Slonczewski to the list, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Doris Egan, Cynthia Felice, H. M. Hoover, and Jean E. Karl whose “The Turning Place” was one of my favorite space opera story collections of my childhood.
& thank you to capriole for saying what always I want to say when I read those “women just started X” things… I hate how all these writers whose work was/is important to me seem to vanish as if never-were.
I remember feeling that Jo Clayton captured perfectly something about the spirit of adventure in her space opera that escapes a lot of other authors who are either too serious or too romantic when they write in the subgenre. (But I haven’t reread her books in many years.) That said, space opera-wise, I love C. J. Cherryh for the seriousness of her world-building and Lois McMaster Bujold for the fun of her stories.
Great article! I’ve been working up something for my blog on the Forgotten Triumvirate of SF Grand Mistresses — Andre Norton, C.J. Cherryh, and Anne McCaffrey. You have to be a complete sci-fi nerd to have heard of them, apparently (I work in a bookstore). Which is a tragedy. (Yes, anyone who reads Tor.com is a sci-fi/fantasy nerd. Which means I’m in good company.)
Katherine Kurtz! She’s the one who, you know, STARTED the whole genre of pseudo-medieval historical fantasy that Game of Thrones is part of with her Deryni series. But if you ask people to recommend books you might like if you like GoT … her books are nowhere on the list. And I’ve seen a list of “the best/most important” secondary-world historical fantasy, and GRRM was there and a whole lot of other men … but not Kurtz who STARTED the whole subgenre in the first place! That always gets me hopping mad.
For those who asked about gender balance in writing through the decades, here’s an interesting analysis:
https://pudding.cool/2017/06/best-sellers/
An interesting work that I read some *coughmany* years back, with some potential applicability although one must extrapolate for the problems facing writers in the book marketplace, is this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6657869-in-the-company-of-women
Gender essentialism and evolutionary just-so stories aside, when it got down to its real-world practicalities, which it quickly did, I recall liking it for its approach, much about analyzing and solving the problems in their varied contexts.
Ta, Smurfette.
A space opera I loved by a female author was The Outback Stars by Sandra McDonald. That’s the first in a trilogy. Moon, Rachel Bach, Bujold, Asaro, McCaffrey and many others mentioned here are also on my list of favorites. Thanks for all the recommendations!
Still holding up a light for her: Though I have read many, if not most, of the authors listsd, I was disappointed to not see Ann Crispin’s name anywhere. Until her last two novels (Storms of Destiny… her first fantasy novel and part of a trilogy she never got to finish, and the Pirates of the Caribbean prequel: “Price of Freedom) most of her work consisted of space operas. I won’t belabor her ability to see into the psyche and backstory of characters, but she had that knack. I hold a fond place for her as she taught me to write, even if our genres clashed. I imagine her work with Writer Beware saved many an aspiting author from going down a path to the leaches…the predators of the hopeful. Be grateful for her presence among us.
Depends on how narrowly you define space opera, but…Janet Kagan’s Hellspark. Joan Slonczewski’s Shora novels. Most of Cherryh’s SF novels. Sarah Zettel, especially Fool’s War. Doyle and Macdonald’s Mageworlds series. Sydney J. van Scyoc. Joan Vinge. C.S. Friedman. Kate Elliott. Katharine Kerr’s Polar City Blues. Susan Schwartz and someone else I can’t remember writing as Gordon R. Kendall. Paula Downing/P.K.McAllister. Mary Gentle’s Golden Witchbreed. A.C. Crispin. Vonda McIntyre. Tara K. Harper. K.D. Wentworth. Deborah J, Ross. Rosemary Kirstein.
K.B. Wagers Indrian War trilogy is fantastic space opera. Lots of fully realized characters across the genders.
Star Rider by Doris Piserchia? It’s psi space-travel, But planet-hopping & lost civilization artifact(s) are surely in it. Some of her others might count as well. (And they’re on iBooks! Frabjous day!)
More recently, MCA Hogarth’s SF setting should count, and her short stories in that setting have been around a while.
(And I’d toot my own horn, but any of my SF that might be space opera adjacent has been non-hunan protagonists, primarily in the era of the Pawprints zine — with newer ones in furry-oriented small press anthologies.)
Would Naomi Mitchison’s Memoir of a Spacewoman count as space opera?
Sheri Tepper, for Grass and, later, Raising the Stones.
In my reading life, there is a before- and an after-Grass.
I am honored to be in this august group.
As to why I went the initials route—before any of you can ask—you must know that it was 1979. I was nineteen years old, and Signet wanted to publish my science fiction novel.
What to call myself? Rebecca? That is my name, but it’s too romantic for science fiction, and Becky is either a child or your grandmother. I had little choice but to come out as R.M.Meluch.
And there it is.
And Lois and C.J. are fabulous writers and and buds of mine.