Reviews for Dawn of time

The average rating for Dawn of time based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-23 00:00:00 Jessica Steger I want to now read every anthology with science fiction by women constructed the way Larbalestier put this book together. 11 scifi short stories by women in published chronological order beginning with Clare Winger Harris in 1927, and ending with Karen Joy Fowler in 2002. Each short story is followed by an essay written by a feminist scholar. Larbalestier introduces us to the collection explaining she chose the essayists and let each pick the story to write about. The essays are academic, and difficult to stuff in my brain because of the vast knowledge on the subject the writers bring. A bibliography covers background materials, and there are plenty of footnotes. I learned more from this book than I learned from looking at the subject for decades. Because of the span of years, it is easy to follow the timeline of sf women writers. Clare Winger Harris was a fan of sf, and a letter-to-the-editor writer, who then became a sf writer. My guess is she always was one. We can see clearly the segue from fan to contributor. From the early sf collection magazines, we get to the slicks - the magazines that showed up after WWII when it was socioculturally necessary to get the women out of the workforce, back in the kitchen and make them like it. Slicks like Good Housekeeping did not publish sf, and the editors of sf magazines got it stuck in their pans that women had other venues for writing now. Housewife sf, some male editors called it. Harry Harrison called sf by women "tears and tampax sf." And here we are in the 21st century. Makes me wanna holla. Information is power, knowledge is how to act on that. Talking with a friend recently about how women can improve their standing in the world overall, and particularly in the realm of writing and filmmaking, we arrived at this: the game is rigged. What we need is to find the hacker's back door and tip the gameboard. The women who wrote, and continue to write, science fiction do exactly that. I am inspired by them.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-08 00:00:00 Edward Joseph Cross So far, I am really enjoying some of the groundbreaking fiction, though it seems as if they are deemed feminist by merely being by women writers or centralizing female characters to say nothing of the lack of black and brown writers. In my book feminism is more than that, or not that at all. But the pieces are important ones, dating back to 1927, in terms of the history of the recognition of women spec fic writers. The essays that accompany each piece are really interesting. I am not much of a literary essay fan, but I appreciate the added depth. A couple of my favorites are in here, like Octavia Butler's The Evening and the Morning and the Night. But as it was published in 2006, if it is truly highlighting feminist writers, it is remiss in not including LeGuin, Hopkinson, and dare I say Delaney to name a few. So, yes, read it. Is it feminist? depends upon your brand of feminism.