Farewell, Joanna Russ

[filkertom]

Sadness. Author Joanna Russ has passed away at the age of 74. She's best known for the novel The Female Man, but she also wrote children's fiction, plays, and feminist essays.

Comments

[fair-witness.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow. I was just telling my husband last month the plot of "When It Changed" and what that story meant to me personally and to the SF genre.

[thistlethorn.livejournal.com]

I still remember When It Changed; I was about 17 years old when I read it.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

"When It Changed" - the answer so many of us wanted to give to the entire 'planet of the bimboes' genre.

Joanna Russ was also a proud essayist and supporter of K/S and slash before it was popular to do so - back when the prevailing attitude in fandom was that all that stuff was the stupid stories those sick bitches were writing for the sole purpose of ruining Star Trek fandom for "us" (dudes). I still have copies of her K/S essays.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

So sorry to hear this. I admired her writing at a time when I was younger and read fiction voraciously, something I hope to resume soon. She was a prof at the University of Colorado for a while, but somehow our paths never crossed.

On another note, has anyone on LJ noted the recent loss of folksinger Phoebe Snow?

[invader-tak-1.livejournal.com]

The Female Man was one of the most bigoted and hateful things I have EVER read.

Flame me to a crisp. But The stereotypes on that book would have had a conservative crucified.

I will have to see other books to have a more general opinion. But that was an evil book.