Canon by Format and Title

Canon by Format and Title - by Cynthia Ward. This was a list assembled by Cynthia Ward for The Internet Review of Science Fiction. (cf. "Feminist SF: Futures for Humankind"). It is organized by format (novel, short form, anthology) and title. Authors marked with an asterisk (*) are essential feminist SF authors, and most or all their SF is relevant.

Essential Novels

• Ammonite by Nicola Griffith - An offworld anthropologist must discover how the women of planet GP continue to reproduce after a virus kills all the men.
• Benefits by Zoe Fairbairns - Men use near-future reproductive technology to control women.
• Black Wine by Candas Jane Dorsey - A challenging saga of mothers and daughters.
• The Book of Ash by Mary Gentle - The complex story of an alternate-history Joan of Arc. Published in the U.S. as four books, A Secret History et seq.
• The Disappearance by Philip Wylie - The opposite sex vanishes.
• Divine Endurance by Gwyneth Jones - A female android wanders a matriarchal post-apocalyptic land.
• Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre - Nuclear holocaust alters male-female relations.
• Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg - (a.k.a. Daughters of Egalia) Biological differences between men and women prove female superiority.
• The Female Man by Joanna Russ - The battle of the sexes becomes literal war.
• The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper - Men and women must live apart to ensure human survival.
• The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - A near-future theocracy systematically dehumanizes women.
• Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman - Three male explorers discover an isolated all-female society.
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin - On the planet Gethen, gender does not exist...most of the time.
• Mizora by Mary E. Bradley Lane - A race of technologically advanced superwomen inhabits the hollow Earth.
• Native Tongue et seq. by Suzette Haden Elgin - Oppressed women invent their own language.
• Parable of the Sower et seq. by Octavia E. Butler - As America descends into barbarism, a woman founds a new religion.
• Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler - A mysterious woman polarizes reactions in nineteenth-century America.
• The Shattered Chain et seq. by Marion Zimmer Bradley - The first novel focusing on the Renunciates, or Free Amazons of Darkover (collected with its sequels in The Saga of the Renunciates).
• Triton by Samuel R. Delany - (a.k.a Trouble on Triton) In a future of dazzling diversity, one man becomes a woman.
• Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon - The only way to end the war between the sexes is to replace both men and women with a new sex.
• Walk to the End of the World et seq. by Suzy McKee Charnas - Enslavement of women leads to war—and more shocking acts.
• A Woman of the Iron People by Eleanor Arnason - Humans encounter an alien race trapped by its own sexuality.
• Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy - A contemporary woman visits a future of true sexual equality.

Essential Short Fiction

• "All My Darling Daughters" by Connie Willis - New reproductive imperatives engender profound sexual alienation.
• "Baby You Were Great" by Kate Wilhelm - In this proto-cyberpunk classic, a woman is used and abused to broadcast emotion to the masses [available online].
• "A Birthday" by [Esther M. Friesner]] - Scary dystopia extracts a grim price for abortion.
• "Consider Her Ways" by John Wyndham - Men are extinct and society is perfect.
• "Even the Queen...." by Connie Willis - When menstruation is eliminated, women take over the world.
• "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A." by L. Timmel Duchamp - One woman's words are so powerful, a Constitutional Amendment is passed to silence her.
• "The Heat Death of the Universe" by Pamela Zoline - A housewife experiences entropy.
• "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" by James Tiptree, Jr. - Timewarped astronauts find themselves in a future in which they, being men, are obsolete.
• "My Lady Tongue" by Lucy Sussex - A near-future women-only community engenders prejudices of its own.
• "The Logistics of Carthage" by Mary Gentle - Those who write history stunt identity. Set in the world of The Book of Ash.
• "Motherhood, Etc." by L. Timmel Duchamp - Men respond to a woman with a crucial difference.
• "The Screwfly Solution" by James Tiptree, Jr. - Aliens interfere with the human reproductive drive, to deadly effect for both sexes. (First published under the byline Raccoona Sheldon.)
• "The View from Venus" by Karen Joy Fowler - Aliens observe male-female mating rituals.
• "When It Changed" by Joanna Russ - A lost extrasolar colony is rediscovered by Earthmen centuries after plague killed all the male colonists.
• "The Women Men Don't See" by James Tiptree, Jr. - Life with unknown aliens is better than life with men.

Essential Anthologies and Collections

• Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Debbie Notkin - Reprints many Tiptree Award winners and finalists.
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. - This indispensable collection contains several classic feminist-SF stories.
• Love's Body, Dancing in Time by L. Timmel Duchamp - Women find within themselves the freedom and power denied by society.
• The Start of the End of It All by Carol Emshwiller - Eighteen incisive stories about women, men, animals, and aliens.
• The Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women by Sally Miller Gearhart - In an estranged future, men and women live apart.
• Weird Women, Wired Women by Kit Reed - Collects twenty stories from thirty years of insightful science-fictional examination of women's roles and issues.
• Women of Wonder: The Classic Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: Science Fiction by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s edited by Pamela Sargent - This definitive two-volume historical overview collects short SF written by women.