Birthdays, April 1, and Single-Gender Worlds

[eldritchhobbit]

Happy birthday to sarah531 and vg_ford, and happy early birthday to lothithil, captnofmyheart, and wildviolet4. May all of you enjoy many happy returns of the day!


To everyone, happy April 1st!




I have finally decided on my reading assignments for my summer course this year, which is a recent history of "single-gender worlds" in fiction. As usual, I didn't have nearly enough time for all the great texts I wanted to cover, but I think these will fuel some terrific discussions.



Here are the assigned readings:

Mizora: A World of Women by Mary E. Bradley Lane (1880-1881)
"Sultana's Dream" by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1905) (online here)
The Disappearance by Philip Wylie (1951)
Consider Her Ways by John Wyndham (1954)
"Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" by James Tiptree, Jr. (1967)
"When It Changed" by Joanna Russ (1972)
London Fields by Caroline Forbes (1985)
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold (1986)
The Gate to Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper (1988)
Epitaph Road by David Patneaude (2010)

Each student will do an independent essay on one of the following books and present it to the class:

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)
Swastika Night by Katharine Burdekin (1937)
Virgin Planet by Poul Anderson (1959)
Spartan Planet by A. Bertram Chandler (1968)
Sex and the High Command by John Boyd (1970)
Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women by Sally Miller Gearhart (1979)
Retreat! As It Was by Donna J. Young (1979)
Children of the Light by Susan B. Weston (1985)
A Door into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski (1986)
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith (1993)
Glory Season by David Brin (1993)
Califia's Daughters by Leigh Richards (2004)
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness (2008)
Nomansland by Lesley Hauge (2010)



You were a good man, Richie. Mostly, anyway.
Epitaph for Richard Stackhouse
(November 2, 2026 - August 13, 2067),
By Rose Mayes, his mostly steady squeeze,
December 8, 2068
- from Epitaph Road by David Patneaude