The Female Man
Joanna Russ · 1975
Four women (Joanna, Janet, Jeannine, Jael) from four parallel Earths at different stages of feminist revolution confront each other. Russ's 1975 novel explodes the realist contract of SF with formal radicalism. It remains the most important feminist SF novel ever written.
The case against
Russ stops the novel cold, repeatedly, to lecture you in her own voice, and she would tell you that's the point. The four Js take real work to keep apart, the men exist as targets, and the rage that powers the book also locks every scene at the same temperature. You are reading a brilliant pamphlet wearing fiction's clothes.
Science Fiction & Fantasy · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
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