Theme & Character Lists: Librarians in SF

You may ask. What do librarians have to do with - well, with feminist science fiction? I mean, are librarians necessarily feminist? Nooo. Are novels about librarians gender-busting? Well, no. I have to admit - I'm a librarian. And I wanted to note that we are, by god, an archetype. Well, several. There's the meek, mild, bookish virginal librarian. When she cuts loose, there's the sexpot librarian. There's the fussy old lady librarian. And there's just a whole lot of weird librarians that show up in science fiction: computers, spies, defenders of freedom ... Plus, in real life, we're disproportionately female and disproportionately queer.

What the hell, I just wanted to do a page about librarians in sf. I haven't seen one out there yet. So here it is. The groundbreaking, Images of Librarians in Science Fiction.

• "Batwoman"
• "The Mummy" feature film, 1999
• Giles in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (TV series)
• Alderman, Gill. The Archivist
• Ellison, Harlan. "Enter the Fanatic, Stage Center," in Gentleman Junkie (1961)
• Fletcher, Jane. The World Celaeno Chose (Dimsdale: London, 1999) - a librarian plays an important role (although by the time of the plot she is an ex-librarian)
• Le Guin, Ursula K. The Telling (2000) (The whole thing is about libraries, really.)
  --. short story in Sea Road (not science fiction, but completists may want to read it just because it's by Le Guin)
• Joanna Russ' The Female Man (one of the protagonists is a librarian)
• Springer, Nancy. Fair Peril (librarian protagonist / gay black male librarian cohort)
• Sturgeon, Theodore. "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?" (the Master Archivist, on an interestingly-described library-sort-of-planet, is the recipient of this tale which is otherwise not about librarians. The MA -- as an upper-echelon male -- has an attractive female secretary.)
• Ward, Cynthia. "Brass in Pocket" in New Amazons edited by Margaret Weis, 2000. (not a very nice librarian; in fact a librarian that is one of the stereotypical shy women without social skills)
• Wren, M. K. A Gift Upon the Sea (tale centers around a post-holocaust archivist of books and the threats posed by fundamentalist christians)