Today I learned about the Russ Pledge from this week’s SF Signal Mind Meld post, which addressed the importance of it in science fiction today. In case you don’t know what it is, it was proposed by Nicola Griffith and it’s a very simple idea – it simply means making an effort to talk about female writers and their work.  The name comes from Joanna Russ, who wrote the book How to Suppress Women’s Writing.  This has been a hot […]

Song of Scarabaeus, a debut science fiction novel by Sara Creasy, was nominated for both the Philip K. Dick Award and the Aurealis Award for Best SF Novel.  Its sequel and the conclusion to the story, Children of Scarabeaus, was released earlier this year. When Edie has to leave lunch to look into a freight car that stopped working properly, she figures it’s all part of the job.  Instead, her guard is knocked out by a woman carrying a weapon […]

The Children of the Sky is Vernor Vinge’s sequel to his iconic book A Fire Upon the Deep, which was first released almost twenty years ago (that sentence makes me feel kind of old…alas).  Another Vinge book, A Deepness in the Sky, is set in the same universe but is largely unrelated to the other two, and there have been various other related works as well.  Children is the first direct sequel though, set in the ten years following the […]

The Fear Principle, the first book in the Fear series by B. A. Chepaitis, was first published in 1998 under the name Barbara Chepaitis.  The books in this science fiction series are being reprinted, and the first two of the four books were re-released recently.  The titles that come after The Fear Principle are as follows, respectively: The Fear of God, Learning Fear, and A Lunatic Fear. The Planetoids were developed in response to what became known as the “Killing […]

The Lens and the Looker is the first book in the Verona trilogy, a young adult series by Lory S. Kaufman.  Since the series takes place after a time of dystopia but isn’t quite a utopia, the author has been referring to it as post-dystopian fiction.  The first volume in the series will be released on March 16, and The Bronze and the Brimstone is scheduled for release on July 12 of this year.  The third book does not yet […]

Dust is the first book in the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy by Elizabeth Bear.  The second book in this science fiction series is called Chill, and both books are available in mass market paperback and as e-books.  Grail, the final volume, will be released on February 22.  The imminent conclusion combined with the fact that this book was the January selection for the Women of Science Fiction Book Club made this the perfect time to read Dust (which has unfortunately been […]