Fantasy Fiction LGBT Sci-fi Sci-Fi Fantasy

Elysium Cycle #1

A Door Into Ocean

Name: A Door Into Ocean
Rating: 3.98 (2414 reviews)
Author: Joan Slonczewski

Joan Slonczewski February 1, 1986

3.98 2.4k Ratings

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Synopsis

Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean is the novel upon which the author’s reputation as an important SF writer principally rests.

A ground-breaking work both of feminist SF and of world-building hard SF, it concerns the Sharers of Shora, a nation of women on a distant moon in the far future who are pacifists, highly advanced in biological sciences, and who reproduce by parthenogenesis–there are no males–and tells of the conflicts that erupt when a neighboring civilization decides to develop their ocean world, and send in an army.

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Raising the Stones

★ 4.07

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The author of The Gate to Women's Country and Grass weaves a moving story of one man's coming to accept his role in a far future universe, providing a brilliant exploration of relations between the sexes, the value of religion, and mankind's place in the universe.

Four Ways to Forgiveness

★ 4.2

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Ursula K. Le Guin revisits her popular Hainish universe with four interconnected stories that together weave a tapestry of revolution and political turmoil. Le Guin tells the tale of two worlds where decades of slavery and class distinction are about to come to an end. She begins at the end with the story of a woman who survived the perilous times and now must face what comes after. Then in turn come tales of a naive envoy, an aloof observer forced to choose sides, and a young slave who wins freedom, only to confront the bonds of her own mind.

Contents:
Betrayals (1994)
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Native Tongue

★ 4

Suzette Haden Elgin

Called "fascinating" by the New York Times upon its first publication in 1984, Native Tongue won wide critical praise and cult status, and has often been compared to the futurist fiction of Margaret Atwood. Set in the twenty-second century, the novel tells of a world where women are once again property, denied civil rights and banned from public life. Earth's wealth depends on interplanetary commerce with alien races, and linguists--a small, clannish group of families--have become the ruling elite by controlling all interplanetary communication. Their women are used to breed perfect translators for all the galaxies' languages.

Nazareth Chornyak, the most talented linguist of the family, is exhausted by her constant work translating for trade organizations, supervising the children's language education, running the compound, and caring for the elderly men. She longs to retire to the Barren House, where women past childbearing age knit, chat, and wait to die. What Nazareth comes to discover is that a slow revolution is going on in the Barren Houses: there, word by word, women are creating a language of their own to free them from men's control.

A Plague of Angels

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Atop a twisting, canyon-climbing road, a witch lurks in a fortress built strong to keep out dragons and ogres. In another part of the countryside, a young orphan is maturing into a beautiful woman in the enchanted village that is her home. Somewhere nearby, a young man is seeking adventure after running away from his family's small farm. Suddenly a strange and terrible prophecy sets off a chain of events that will bring these three together in the heroic, romantic, and thrilling tale of an age-old battle.

Glory Season

★ 3.76

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Hugo and Nebula award-winning author David Brin is one of the most eloquent, imaginative voices in science fiction. Now he returns with a new novel rich in texture, universal in theme, monumental in scope--pushing the genre to new heights.

Young Maia is fast approaching a turning point in her life. As a half-caste var, she must leave the clan home of her privileged half sisters and seek her fortune in the world. With her twin sister, Leie, she searches the docks of Port Sanger for an apprenticeship aboard the vessels that sail the trade routes of the Stratoin oceans.

On her far-reaching, perilous journey of discovery, Maia will endure hardship and hunger, imprisonment and loneliness, bloody battles with pirates and separation from her twin. And along the way, she will meet a traveler who has come an unimaginable distance--and who threatens the delicate balance of the Stratoins' carefully maintained, perfect society....

Both exciting and insightful, Glory Season is a major novel, a transcendent saga of the human spirit.

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★ 4.12

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The November/December 2022 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine.

Featuring new fiction by Samantha Mills, Vivian Shaw, Matthew Olivas, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Iori Kusano, Anya Ow, and Emily Y. Teng. Reprint fiction by Catherynne M. Valente. Essays by Izzy Wasserstein, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Alex Jennings, and Karen Heuler, poetry by Eshqin Ahmad, Ewen Ma, May Chong, Taiwo Hassan, and Ai Jiang, interviews with Vivian Shaw and Iori Kusano by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Maxine Vee, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Meg Elison.

In The Issue

FICTION
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills
Transference by Vivian Shaw
To Walk the River of Stars by Emily Y. Teng
The Other Side of Mictlān by Matthew Olivas
A Fall Counts Anywhere by Catherynne M. Valente
can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time by Iori Kusano
Earth Dragon, Turning by Anya Ow
Travelers’ Unrest by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

POETRY
A Dead, Divine Thing by Eshqin Ahmad
Crossing by Ewen Ma
Sang Kancil at the Protest by May Chong
I Am a Little Hotel by Ai Jiang
A Testament of Bloom by Taiwo Hassan

EDITORIALS
The Uncanny Valley by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
The Horny Body Problem by Meg Elison

ESSAYS
The Necessity of Trans Joy by Izzy Wasserstein
Thank You, Patreon Supporters! by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas
For Your Re-Consideration by Jennifer Marie Brissett
Across the Afterverse: A Conversation with Afropunk SF/F Author Alex Smith by Alex Jennings
What Do the Dying Know? by Karen Heuler

INTERVIEWS
Interview: Vivian Shaw by Caroline M. Yoachim
Interview: Iori Kusano by Caroline M. Yoachim

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★ 3.46

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It has influenced William Gibson and been listed as one of the ten essential works of science fiction. Most importantly, Joanna Russ's The Female Man is a suspenseful, surprising and darkly witty chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael—four alternative selves from drastically different realities—meet.

A Door Into Ocean

Books similar to A Door Into Ocean

Raising the Stones

Four Ways to Forgiveness

Native Tongue

A Plague of Angels

Glory Season

Singer from the Sea

Uncanny Magazine Issue 49: November/December 2022

The Female Man

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