Oh geez, I still have too much to choose from! Here are some selections from a combined list of "things I loved when I was twelve" and "things I love right now."
1. Carol Emshwiller - Carmen Dog I think this is the first thing I read that was explicitly called "feminist science fiction"; I read a lot of her short stories, later, which I found interesting without quite liking. There's something a little Philip K. Dick or Jorge Luis Borges about her, in the sense that her stories are frequently very open to interpretation or skepticism: are they aliens who are frightened away by cats? Are they aliens at all? Are they driven off? Are they still here? Who knows. And so I find reading a bunch of her short stories in a collection a bit like reading a bunch of Philip K. Dick all in a row: the first one is interesting, but by the fifth I'm doubting the existence of the table in front of me. Anyway! Carmen Dog is a novel about transformation: women are turning into animals, and animals are turning into women, and it's specifically about Pooch, an Irish setter, who is becoming a woman, and who idealizes Carmen. I found it just completely baffling and weird and kind of amazing when I was twelve (though I think I'd probably find a lot of gender essentialism in it now). (And I just found googling it that it's apparently part of what inspired the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Huh.)
2. Carol Emshwiller - The Start of the End of it All (short story collection) See above!
3. Emma Bull - Bone Dance This was the first post-apocalyptic novel I read, so it stuck with me; I loved Sparrow and I loved the worldbuilding and I loved the secondary characters and I loved that Sparrow did remixing and mashup in the post-apocalypse (not that I would've known to call it remix then). It's somewhat dated, and Emma Bull has said things about it that make me :/, but it's hard for me to stop loving it, because it's one of my earliest scifi experiences, and it's the reason I still love apocalypses.
4. Laura Esquivel - Like Water for Chocolate / Como agua para chocolate Because magical realism is amazing! Nobody I knew was into scifi when I was a kid, but my parents loved magical realism, and so I found my speculative fiction in Borges and Esquivel and Marquez and Carpentier. And Tita's magical cooking is amazing.
5. Yellow Submarine - movie This was one of my favorite movies for years.
6. The Dead Zone - tv What I love about the Dead Zone as a series is how much it does with a single concept: Johnny Smith sees the future or past when he touches people. That's it! They just keep coming up with new and clever ways to play with his new abilities, so that he gets multiple visions for a month when he gets a blood transfusion, or gets a confusing expanding series of visions when he tries to have sex, or gets visions of himself as a killer.
7. greensilver - Ooh La La (Dead Zone) Greensilver does such a great job of illustrating the concept of the Dead Zone and zooming Johnny in and out of vision after vision; it's basically a vid about his touch-ESP and about the way he's jumping from moment to moment and seeing himself as different people all the time. I saw this vid before I saw the show, and it's what convinced me to give it a try.
8. aycheb/hazel k. - Scarlet Ribbons (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) This is lovely and a bit sad and a bit creepy, because it's all about slayerhood on Buffy, and what it means to be a slayer, and what slayers were made for, and what they do with that.
9. futuransky - The Future Stops Here (fanvid) (Children of Men, V for Vendetta, 28 Days Later) I really, really love this vid: I have a thing for dystopias (as you could maybe guess), and futuransky takes three dystopic/apocalyptic films and threads them together to talk about the state power in dystopias, and the ways in which that power is particularly targeted at oppressed people - these are things that need to be repressed to make a beautiful future happen! - and the ways people try to escape from that power. I love it to pieces. (Note: this vid contains explicit images of violence, sexual violence, state-sanctioned violence, death, dead bodies.)
+5
1. crickets - O Death (Book of Eli) Great use of visuals, great combination of music and voiceover, great post-apocalypse. I loved the vid, and tried to watch the movie, but actually I enjoyed the vid more.
2. bironic - Afraid of Americans (Watchmen) I'm not actually much of a Watchmen fan, but I still love this vid to pieces. It really draws out the scary power of the superheroes, the creepiness of the canon, and "God is an American." Yes.
3. Martha - Lovely/Tatters (SG-1, The Sentinel, Angel: The Series) Martha does so much seriously creepy fanfic - she's great at suspense and at melding some Lovecraft in there really seamlessly - so it was hard for me to pick a series. But I keep coming back to "Lovely" and its sequel "Tatters," which are both really great at turning canon events into something slowly horrifying.
4. The Longest Journey - Ragnar Tørnquist and Didrik Tollefsen, designers (video game) I played this game for ages.
(Maybe two more to come! But I'm running out the door right now.)
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Date: 2011-08-21 04:49 pm (UTC)1. Carol Emshwiller - Carmen Dog
I think this is the first thing I read that was explicitly called "feminist science fiction"; I read a lot of her short stories, later, which I found interesting without quite liking. There's something a little Philip K. Dick or Jorge Luis Borges about her, in the sense that her stories are frequently very open to interpretation or skepticism: are they aliens who are frightened away by cats? Are they aliens at all? Are they driven off? Are they still here? Who knows. And so I find reading a bunch of her short stories in a collection a bit like reading a bunch of Philip K. Dick all in a row: the first one is interesting, but by the fifth I'm doubting the existence of the table in front of me. Anyway! Carmen Dog is a novel about transformation: women are turning into animals, and animals are turning into women, and it's specifically about Pooch, an Irish setter, who is becoming a woman, and who idealizes Carmen. I found it just completely baffling and weird and kind of amazing when I was twelve (though I think I'd probably find a lot of gender essentialism in it now). (And I just found googling it that it's apparently part of what inspired the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Huh.)
2. Carol Emshwiller - The Start of the End of it All (short story collection)
See above!
3. Emma Bull - Bone Dance
This was the first post-apocalyptic novel I read, so it stuck with me; I loved Sparrow and I loved the worldbuilding and I loved the secondary characters and I loved that Sparrow did remixing and mashup in the post-apocalypse (not that I would've known to call it remix then). It's somewhat dated, and Emma Bull has said things about it that make me :/, but it's hard for me to stop loving it, because it's one of my earliest scifi experiences, and it's the reason I still love apocalypses.
4. Laura Esquivel - Like Water for Chocolate / Como agua para chocolate
Because magical realism is amazing! Nobody I knew was into scifi when I was a kid, but my parents loved magical realism, and so I found my speculative fiction in Borges and Esquivel and Marquez and Carpentier. And Tita's magical cooking is amazing.
5. Yellow Submarine - movie
This was one of my favorite movies for years.
6. The Dead Zone - tv
What I love about the Dead Zone as a series is how much it does with a single concept: Johnny Smith sees the future or past when he touches people. That's it! They just keep coming up with new and clever ways to play with his new abilities, so that he gets multiple visions for a month when he gets a blood transfusion, or gets a confusing expanding series of visions when he tries to have sex, or gets visions of himself as a killer.
7. greensilver - Ooh La La (Dead Zone)
Greensilver does such a great job of illustrating the concept of the Dead Zone and zooming Johnny in and out of vision after vision; it's basically a vid about his touch-ESP and about the way he's jumping from moment to moment and seeing himself as different people all the time. I saw this vid before I saw the show, and it's what convinced me to give it a try.
8. aycheb/hazel k. - Scarlet Ribbons (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
This is lovely and a bit sad and a bit creepy, because it's all about slayerhood on Buffy, and what it means to be a slayer, and what slayers were made for, and what they do with that.
9. futuransky - The Future Stops Here (fanvid) (Children of Men, V for Vendetta, 28 Days Later)
I really, really love this vid: I have a thing for dystopias (as you could maybe guess), and futuransky takes three dystopic/apocalyptic films and threads them together to talk about the state power in dystopias, and the ways in which that power is particularly targeted at oppressed people - these are things that need to be repressed to make a beautiful future happen! - and the ways people try to escape from that power. I love it to pieces. (Note: this vid contains explicit images of violence, sexual violence, state-sanctioned violence, death, dead bodies.)
+5
1. crickets - O Death (Book of Eli)
Great use of visuals, great combination of music and voiceover, great post-apocalypse. I loved the vid, and tried to watch the movie, but actually I enjoyed the vid more.
2. bironic - Afraid of Americans (Watchmen)
I'm not actually much of a Watchmen fan, but I still love this vid to pieces. It really draws out the scary power of the superheroes, the creepiness of the canon, and "God is an American." Yes.
3. Martha - Lovely/Tatters (SG-1, The Sentinel, Angel: The Series)
Martha does so much seriously creepy fanfic - she's great at suspense and at melding some Lovecraft in there really seamlessly - so it was hard for me to pick a series. But I keep coming back to "Lovely" and its sequel "Tatters," which are both really great at turning canon events into something slowly horrifying.
4. The Longest Journey - Ragnar Tørnquist and Didrik Tollefsen, designers (video game)
I played this game for ages.
(Maybe two more to come! But I'm running out the door right now.)