Starring Joanna Russ

Abstract

490 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 47 (2020) the really real and relatively dismissive of the merely fictional, the most worthwhile sf worlds and worldviews, in his view, are those of hard sf; drawing on the theory of an infinite multiverse, he argues that the speculative project of imagining worlds and worldviews consistent with present scientific knowledge may function as a kind of secular prophecy, that is, the discovery and experiential realization through the medium of fiction of actual extraterrestrial worlds (see 91, 96, 101-102). In his concern to establish reason for faith in the existence of such worlds, one can again see how powerfully he is influenced by the Christian worldview his project so mournfully knows to be fiction.—Nathan Fredrickson, University of California, Santa Barbara Starring Joanna Russ. Gwyneth Jones. Joanna Russ. Urbana: U of Illinois P, MODERN MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION, 2019. ix+218 pp. $99 hc, $22 pbk, $14.95 ebk. This volume is one of fourteen so far in the University of Illinois Press series MODERN MASTERS OF SCIENCE FICTION edited by Gary K. Wolfe. The series is of reliably high quality and interest for sf scholars and readers, as one would expect from an editor of Wolfe’s caliber. He is also the editor of a number of the sf volumes in the LIBRARY OF AMERICA series: they too are of uniformly high quality. Indeed, the only problem with the Illinois series is reflected in its name, in its use of the word “Masters.” The series has only three volumes about women and only two by women. Judging by my own experience in attempting to write for the series, the problem may be finding scholars who are willing to undertake the projects, rather than any bias on the part of the editor or publisher. I was approached to write about Sheri Tepper, who very much deserves a volume, but found I just could not do it and bowed out. Nevertheless, I hope eventually to find volumes on her, Ursula K. Le Guin, Eleanor Arnason, Suzy McKee Charnas, Joan Slonczewski, Carol Emshwiller, Connie Willis, Nancy Kress, and many others. Then perhaps the title of the series might change as well—“Stars,” maybe? Meanwhile, along with the volumes on Lois McMaster (that word again) Bujold and Octavia Butler, here is one on the well-deserving Joanna Russ, a star of both fiction and criticism, who could hold her own in any list of “masters.” And the book is written by another writer deserving of a volume in the series, Gwyneth Jones, who also excels in both fiction and critical writing: see her ALEUTIAN series (1991-1997), as well as her Deconstructing the Starships: Essays and Reviews (1999). The volume is thorough and accurate, with a strong thesis that all Russ’s work, both fiction and non-fiction, is at heart autobiographical. The writing is surprisingly plain, however, and the content strongly dominated by description over analysis. Jones organizes her book in a roughly chronological manner, shaping each chapter around Russ’s engagement with aspects of feminism and experimentalism in fiction, as well as in reviewing and broader kinds of criticism. Each chapter also speculates on the ways in which Russ’s work reflects her childhood and adult experiences. The book ends with a very brief 491 BOOKS IN REVIEW Afterword, two interviews, a primary bibliography, a secondary bibliography placed after the endnotes, and a useful index. The first chapter, “Joanna Russ, Trans-Temp Agent,” sets up the autobiographical claim that after World War II, coinciding with her father becoming ill, he became a bully and her mother a “Squashed Woman” (Russ qtd. 2). Consequently, Joanna rebelled intellectually and became “one of those who spoke for a generation of angry young women, enfranchised but far from emancipated—first as one of twentieth-century sf’s greatest writers, critics, and apologists, later also as a radical feminist” (3). This is the core of the volume’s thesis, how Russ’s writing and worldview arose from her childhood experiences to become representative of a “female adolescent drama of disillusion ... unfolding all over America (and the whole Western world)” (3; emphasis in original). We learn of her precocious intellectual gifts...