John Joseph Adams asked what are your top ten SF-F books not written by white men? Actually, he asked it in two parts: a top-ten list of nonmen, followed by a top ten list of nonwhites. Like everyone else who’s responded so far, I can do a list of women easily; embarrassingly (and typically), of the SF-F authors whose race I actually know, almost all of them are white (the late Octavia Butler seems to be a common exception). I might be able to do a nonwhite list, but it’d be almost all comics creators.
Anyway, my top-ten-women list demonstrates a pretty strong pattern.
- The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
- Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
- Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link
- Tehanu, Ursula Le Guin
- The Homeward Bounders, Diana Wynne Jones
- A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L’Engle
- The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley
- Lioness Rampant, Tamora Pierce
- The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
- Tie: Deep Wizardry, Diane Duane, and The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Is it usually this obvious that my literary development halted in middle school?