Not a top 10, but yet a list

More than 12 years ago, for my Ph.D. dissertation in semiotics, I built my own list of women's queer SF. Not really a top 10, but a list of 9 narratives based on what I had read back then, and what I thought would be a representative selection. More specifically, I was working on narratives (novels and short stories) written by women and featuring a sexualised encounter between a human character (a character living in a world based on two genetically dominant genders, male and female) and a character not pertaining to such a system (a mutant, an alien, etc.). I had chosen to focus on the period I defined as "between the New Wave and the Cyberpunk", so that explains why I had to omit too ancient or too recent yet relevant texts. Submitting my dissertation in a French (Québec) university, I also thought important to include fictions originally published in French.

Anyway, here is my list:

• Octavia Butler, "Bloodchild"
• Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Boy Crossover"
• Jaygee Carr, Leviathan's Deep
• Ursula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Christine Renard, "Les Narcisses poussent le soir" ["Narcissuses grow at night" (my translation)]
• Esther Rochon, Coquillage [The Shell]
• Joanna Russ, "What did you do during the revolution, Grandma?"
• James Tiptree, Jr, "Your Haploid Heart"
• Élisabeth Vonarburg, "Dans la fosse" ["In the Pit"]

I'm not sure if my list would be the same if I was writing the same dissertation today, but those sure were great and rich narratives.

The dissertation (in French) Je pense or je suis: Discours et identité dans la SF côté femmes: Entre la New Wave et le cyberpunk [I Think or I Am: Discourse and Identity in SF on the Women's Side: Between the New Wave and the Cyberpunk] is available through the Université du Québec à Montreal library.

Sylvie Berard