Russ, Joanna

(US, 1937– )

Joanna Russ has written science fiction and non-fiction on feminist issues. In her science fiction her female characters liberate themselves through acts of dramatic courage. Marriage is an institution Russ has frequently chosen to attack. She won a Nebula award for When It Changed (1972) and a Hugo award for Souls (1983). In her novel The Female Man (1975) Russ creates five concurrent realities; in one, women lose their fight for equality, but gain by becoming female men. In another world, women exist through men, and gain their freedom from social constraint through fantasizing. In one future world, women wage biological war on men, and in another, men are dismissed as simply aliens and women's needs are met with few constraints. Russ envisages a range of possibilities for women, where they can all be heroines.

Marge Piercy, Ursula Le Guin, Ian Watson. See SCIENCE FICTION  LM