Cat Women of the Moon, Part 2: Bibliography

Here are the books mentioned in the second and final part of the BBC Radio 4 documentary, Cat Women of the Moon, hosted by Sarah Hall. Some of the duplication from last time is because their authors featured on the both programmes.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
HG Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau
China Mieville, Embassytown
China Mieville, Perdido Street Station
Ian M Banks, the Culture novels
Urusula Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
Nicola Griffith, Slow River
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Plus Star Trek and the titular Cat Women of the Moon.

Edited: It’s now available, for at least the next week, on Listen Again.

Cat Women of the Moon, Part 1 – Bibliography

Cat Women of the Moon, the two-part documentary of science fiction and sex hosted by Sarah Hall, was on BBC Radio 4 just now. (Part 2 will be next Tuesday at 11:30 BST).

Part way through the episode, I realized that this was a prime opportunity for book recommendations, and to consider just what the show has collectively mentioned. Here, then, for your contemplation, are the books mentioned in the program for whatever reason.

The programme is now available on Listen Again.

Nicola Griffith, Slow River
Nicola Griffith, Ammonite
Mike Ashley, Out of this World: Science Fiction but Not as You Know It
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Jane Webb Loudon, The Mummy, or A Tale of the Twenty-second Century
Joanna Russ, The Female Man
Sarah Hall, The Carhullan Army
Geoff Ryman, The Child Garden
George Orwell, 1984
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Iain M Banks, The Player of Games
China Miéville, Perdido Street Station
Isaac Asimov, Robot series
Bram Stoker, Dracula (Mentioned in such a way it could be a film reference instead)
John Christopher, Death of Grass

Also, in other media, Bladerunner, the titular movie, Cat Women of the Moon,and Michaelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco of the Creation of Man.

Mundane Frenzy

Public service announcement: apparently Geoff Ryman will be talking about mundane sf on Front Row, on Radio 4, at 7.30 this evening.

The occasion (I assume) being the imminent publication of the “Mundane sf” issue of Interzone, as discussed over on the BSFA forum. It’s out next Thursday, in fact, and in the meantime here’s the fiction contents:

“How to Make Paper Airplanes” by Lavie Tidhar
“Endra” – from Memory by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
“The Hour is Getting Late” by Billie Aul
“Remote Control” by R.R. Angell
“The Invisibles” by Élisabeth Vonarburg
“Into the Night” by Anil Menon
“Talk is Cheap” by Geoff Ryman

If that’s not enough, here’s a Guardian blog piece by Damien G Walter:

The battleground for this SF smackdown would be the pages of one of the world’s most influential short fiction magazines. Where literary fiction has long since abandoned the short form in favor of the fertile intellectual territory of Waterstones 3 for 2 tables, SF has continued to value short fiction as the arena where the genre innovates and evolves. Enter Interzone, Britain’s longest-running SF magazine, at a time when British writers have come to dominate the field. Never one to shy away from a good dust-up, but smart enough not to step in front of a locomotive full of enraged SF fans, the editors of Interzone handed control to a team of guest editors representing the heartland of Mundanista territory, and the call went forth for stories that represented the Mundane manifesto.

No prizes for spotting the most ironic statement in this paragraph.

EDIT: You know, it’s almost like some mastermind is coordinating this. Here’s the first review of IZ216, which is generally positive, although it offers almost no insight into how well the issue functions as a showcase for mundane sf.

AFTER FRONT ROW: Well, that was brief, but good to hear nonetheless. Here’s the Listen Again link.