As I mentioned last week, one of my projects for this year is to read through the eleven books voted by Torque Control readers as the best science fiction novels written by women between 2001 and 2010. Hopefully, some of you will be joining me in this!
Each month, I will post a reminder at the beginning of the month, along with a bit of background discussion. In the second half of the month, I will host a discussion of the book here. I’ll post round-ups of reviews and discussion elsewhere of the novels too, whether recent or from previous years. Sometimes there will be contributions exploring a novel from other people, and I would certainly welcome others. (Niall has volunteered!)
There’s no great incentive to read this list in ranked order. I suspect some of the rankings are a very close thing, and the given order of the list is no authority for subjective quality. So instead, this will be a chronological project. I’ve gone with global chronological dates instead of their publication dates in the UK in particular. Life has yet to be published here, and some of us are occasionally prone to reading books on import instead of waiting for the possibility of local publication. Further, a major proportion of the poll participants were based outside of the UK, and so this country’s publication schedule does not necessarily affect the local availability of a given novel for them.
(It’s been an interesting challenge: I had no idea how hard it was going to be to figure out the month in which some of these books were published.)
So here’s the schedule:
| February | Bold as Love, by Gwyneth Jones | |
| March | The Speed of Dark, by Elizabeth Moon | |
| April | Natural History, by Justina Robson | |
| May | The Time-Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffennegger | |
| June | Maul, by Tricia Sullivan | |
| July | City of Pearl, by Karen Traviss | |
| August | Life, by Gwyneth Jones | |
| September | Farthing, by Jo Walton | |
| October | The Carhullan Army/Daughters of the North, by Sarah Hall | |
| November | Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin | |
| December | Spirit, by Gwyneth Jones |
January 20, 2011 at 8:47 pm
[...] Reading Future Classics by Women « Torque Control [...]
January 21, 2011 at 11:33 am
This is brilliant, Shana. I will definitely be taking part in June and December.
January 21, 2011 at 3:50 pm
A few weeks ago, I decided to do the same, although I chose different books – see here. January’s review is already up here.
January 22, 2011 at 5:38 am
It’s pretty awesome that the Justina Robson novel falls in April since that is the month she will be the GOH at Swancon in Perth, Australia!
I’ll definitely be trying to join you for some of these, there are several I have been meaning to read, and at least one on my To Read shelf right now…
January 22, 2011 at 1:13 pm
[...] of the blocks was Ian Sales and now Shana Worthen, the new editor of Vector, will be running a monthly discussion group for each of the eleven novels on the future classics poll. So I’d like to treat my year of [...]
January 22, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Ian and Martin: It’s the year of book-of-the-month reading!
Tansy: What fortunate timing!
January 30, 2011 at 6:52 pm
[...] Reading Future Classics by Women [...]
February 2, 2011 at 5:25 pm
[...] Reading Future Classics by Women [...]
March 2, 2011 at 2:28 pm
[...] poll-topping best science fiction novels written by women in the last ten years that we’ll be discussing here at Torque Control over the course of this year. It was the only one of them published in [...]
March 2, 2011 at 4:53 pm
[...] as Love: IIBold as Love: Recap … on Bold as Love: IBold as Love: Recap … on Reading Future Classics by…Mark on Contest: Guess the 2011 [...]
March 31, 2011 at 11:12 pm
[...] poll-topping best science fiction novels written by women in the last ten years that we’ll be discussing here at Torque Control over the course of this year. It was the only one of them published in 2002. [...]
April 1, 2011 at 1:24 pm
[...] I’d like to invite you to join us in reading Justina Robson’s Natural History this month, part of a year-long chronological reading of the novels nominated as the best science fiction novels written by women in…. [...]
May 31, 2011 at 9:11 pm
[...] of the best science fiction novels written by women in the previous decade which we are reading here at Torque Control over the course of [...]
June 21, 2011 at 10:27 am
[...] I (Tony) will start posting discussion of Tricia Sullivan’s Maul, the next in the project of reading Future Classics by women. Please read a long if you have [...]
July 7, 2011 at 5:13 pm
[...] of the best science fiction novels written by women in the previous decade which we are reading here at Torque Control over the course of this calendar year. 2003 really was astonishing, with [...]
August 15, 2011 at 1:39 pm
[...] It was the first of two 2004 books we are reading here at Torque Control this year as part of the Future Classics series of the best science fiction novels written by women in the previous [...]
August 15, 2011 at 4:19 pm
[...] Pearl: IICity of Pearl: Recap… on City of Pearl: ICity of Pearl: Recap… on Reading Future Classics by…Shana on City of Pearl: IINiall on City of Pearl: IIINiall on City of Pearl: IBold as [...]
September 19, 2011 at 6:32 pm
[...] the seventh book we’ve examined in the Future Classics series here on Torque Control, is our last book from 2004, the end of the first half of the decade [...]
September 27, 2011 at 11:03 am
[...] Le…Joachim Boaz on Out of this World: Six Days Le…Life: Recap « … on Reading Future Classics by…Life: Recap « … on [...]
October 19, 2011 at 1:37 pm
[...] The Conflux Cookbook: First…Niall on Coming up: FarthingComing up: Farthing … on Reading Future Classics by…A Shadow in Summer o… on Short Story Club: “The B…Short Fiction | Divi… [...]
November 21, 2011 at 4:40 pm
[...] up in reading the Future Classics is a novel set in ancient [...]
March 5, 2012 at 1:22 pm
[...] we never quite finished discussing all of the books we had planned to last year, here on Torque Control. We’ll be filling in those gaps this year, starting with [...]