Pop quiz: you are an award-winning researcher, leading the field in human cloning. Your husband has stolen your research to clone a version of you he finds easier to live with. Do you help her cover up his murder?
feminism
It is 200 years since women were stripped of their adult status and civil rights. Now men rule a repressive world, but humanity is thriving as it reaches out to the stars. One group of women plan to rebalance the status quo a word at a time…
Nobody expected a meteorite to wipe out the Eastern Seaboard, but we had as little chance as the dinosaurs of surviving the ensuing climate catastrophe. There was only one way out: the space program.
Recently qualified and newly wed, Dr Ally Moberley-Cavendish has a lot to adjust to as a wife and as a doctor in a women’s asylum. Can she and Tom survive a separation of months so soon after their marriage; is she right to stay behind with her ghosts as he sets sail for Japan?
Daniel Dann doesn’t believe in ESP, but he’s monitoring telepaths on a top secret Navy project. The Navy wants to talk securely to submarines, but across the galaxy a desperate race on a dying planet latch on to the little group’s signals as their last best hope to save their children. Whatever the cost.
Ally is mad, or so her mother assures her. Mad, weak and sinful. Only physical penance and dedication to a good cause can save her.
Religion, art, psychology, women’s suffrage and Victorian medicine all come under the scope in this excellent historical novel about one girl’s journey to define herself and claim her future.
The second of my reviews for Diversiverse 2014, this SF classic deserves every mention it gets (and a few more that it doesn’t. It should get all the mentions). Anyanwu discovers she isn’t the only immortal in the world – but her potential partner through the ages is ruthlessly pursuing a program of eugenics. Is his companionship worth the cost?
On the surface of it, this is exactly the sort of book I hate: chick lit, in which smart, independent girls define themselves almost entirely through their (much-imagined) love lives. But I didn’t hate it. It was a fascinating, tempestuous peek into a world I may never understand: Saudi Arabia.
onemore.org 