And it points out why I think women’s lib is one of the three or four most potent and influential movements to spring up in our country during these last decades of social upheaval.” It is, in the best and strongest sense of the word, a female liberation story, while never once speaking of, about, or to the subject. In his introduction to the story, he called out his fellow authors for their chauvinism and declared that “others may pillory me for this, but as far as I’m concerned, the best writers in SF today are the women.”Ībout the story itself, he wrote: “Joanna has here written a story that makes some extraordinarily sharp distinctions between the abilities and attitudes of the sexes, while erasing many others we think immutable. It first appeared in Again, Dangerous Visions, the second of two legendary science fiction anthologies edited by Harlan Ellison, who knew the story would be controversial among some of his readers. The story turns the tables on those many earlier tales and novels in which astronauts land (or crash) on a planet where all the inhabitants or all the rulers are women (usually portrayed as randy vixens or dominatrices) Russ re-imagines the idea from the women’s point of view. “When It Changed” and parts of The Female Man are set on the planet Whileaway.įifty years ago, in 1972, Joanna Russ’s Nebula Award–winning story “When It Changed” was published-and it caused quite a stir. First American edition of Russ’s The Female Man (Bantam, 1975) with a cover illustration by American artist Morgan Kane (1916–2014). This ebook includes the Nebula Award–winning bonus short story 'When It Changed,' set in the world of The Female Man.From The Future Is Female! More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women Photograph of Joanna Russ, 1984, by Ileen Weber (Wikipedia). leavened by wit and humor' ( The New York Times), Russ both employs and upends genre conventions to deliver a wickedly satiric and exhilarating version of when worlds collide and women get woke. When the four women begin traveling to one another's worlds, their preconceptions on gender and identity are forever challenged. Librarian Jeannine is waiting for marriage in a past where the Depression never ended, Janet lives on a utopian Earth with an all-female population, Joanna is a feminist in the 1970s, and Jael is a warrior with claws and teeth on an Earth where male and female societies are at war with each other. Widely acknowledged as Joanna Russ's masterpiece, The Female Man is the suspenseful, surprising, darkly witty, and boldly subversive chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael-all living in parallel worlds-meet. Four alternate selves from radically different realities come together in this 'dazzling' and 'trailblazing work' ( The Washington Post).

The Female Man by Joanna Russ