Joanna Russ Showed Us the Future
A new collection of her novels and stories is a showcase for a science fiction pioneer
Joanna Russ (1937-2011) was one of the great writers of the 20th century, but she is also one of those authors you either know intimately or have never heard of. She wrote prickly, violent stories about lesbian heroes who slay patriarchs, and adventure tales about bold women who swashbuckle across the multiverse. These tropes win fans and Oscars today, but Russ was publishing in the 1960s and ’70s, when women simply weren’t supposed to write like that.
Now a new collection of her most significant works, JOANNA RUSS: Novels & Stories (Library of America), offers a valuable introduction to a pioneer who defied categories.
Russ finished “The Female Man” in 1971, but it was so incendiary and downright weird that no publisher would touch it until 1975. Ten years later, it had sold half a million copies and polarized readers, feminist and anti-feminist alike.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/books/review/joanna-russ-novels-stories.html