|
B.F.: Before Frankenstein |
| 1666 / 1668 |
Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing
World [aka: The Description of a New World Called The
Blazing-World]
Identified by Lyman Tower Sargent as the first
utopian fiction in English by a woman, in British and American Utopian
Literature, 1516-1985 |
| 1762 |
Sarah Scott, A Description of Millennium Hall |
|
|
|
The Nineteenth Century: After Frankenstein
|
| 1818 |
Mary Shelley publishes Frankenstein, or, The
Modern Prometheus, often cited as the first example of a "science fiction"
novel |
| 1827 |
Jane Webb Loudon publishes The
Mummy!: A Tale of the Twentieth Century |
| 1872 |
J. Sheridan Le Fanu publishes "Carmilla", one of the
earliest or possibly the first published lesbian vampire story |
| 1880-81 |
Mary E. Bradley publishes Mizora: A Prophecy
|
| late 19th/early 20th century |
Suffragette backlash: loads of novels published where humorless
women take over the world, for good but more often for ill;
laughing valiant men usually take it right back to the
satisfaction of both sexes
|
| 1915 |
Charlotte Perkins Gilman publishes
Herland |
| 1918 |
Frances Stevens (pseudonym for Gertrude Barrows
Bennet) publishes Citadel of Fear
Gertrude Franklin Atherton published The White Morning: A Novel
of the Power of the German Woman in Wartime
|
|
|
|
The 20th Century: After The Great War |
|
|
| 1926 |
Thea Von Harbou publishes Metropolis |
| 1928 |
Virginia Woolf publishes Orlando |
|
|
|
|
| 1935 |
Katharine Burdekin publishes The End of
This Day's Business |
| 1930s |
C. L. Moore begins publishing the
Jirel of Joiry stories |
|
|
|
After WWII |
| 1940s |
A flood of new writers, including Judith Merril, Leigh Brackett,
Miriam Allen deFord
|
| 1948 |
Lisa Ben's "New Year's Day", first modern "gay" sf story
published
Shirley Jackson publishes "The Lottery"
Judith Merril publishes "That Only a Mother"
Wilmar Shiras publishes "In Hiding" which is later made into a
novel, Children of the Atom (1953)
|
| 1950s |
New women writers include Katharine MacLean, Margaret
St. Clair
Cautionary tales about "the sex war" begin to appear again,
depicting the socialist hive-like societies that women
create; as in the earlier backlash, the societies run by women are
usually authoritarian, humorless, dull, and lack ingenuity
|
| 1950 |
Judith Merril publishes Shadow on the Hearth
|
| 1952 |
Zenna Henderson begins publishing the People stories
Andre Norton begins publishing
|
| 1953-1967 |
no female Hugo Award winners for fiction
|
| 1954 |
Summer: Femizine "all female" SF fan zine created in
England (by Sandy Sanderson using a female pseudonym, Joan Carr; Frances
Evans; and Ethel Lindsay). Hoax revealed to U.K. fandom in May 1956. --
Merrick, 1999.
|
|
|
| 1960s |
Numerous women begin publishing, including Marion Zimmer
Bradley, Rosel George Brown, Sonya Dorman, Sylvia Louise Engdahl, Phyllis
Gotlieb, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Kate Wilhelm
|
| 1960 |
Theodore Sturgeon publishes Venus Plus X
|
| 1961 |
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Door Through Space
|
| 1962 |
Naomi Mitchison publishes Memoirs of a Spacewoman
Madeleine L'Engle publishes A Wrinkle in Time
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes Planet Savers (first
Darkover novel)
|
| 1963 |
|
Women are writing SCIENCE-FICTION! Original! Brilliant!!
Dazzling!!! Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious
of the moon-pulls, the earth- tides. They possess a buried memory of
humankind's obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color
and flavor an novel.
Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel
is this, SIGN OF THE LABRYS, the story of a doomed world of the future,
saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites... FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!!
INVENTIVE!!!
from the back of the Bantam 1st edition of Sign of the
Labrys by Margaret St. Clair, 1963
|
|
|
|
| 1966 |
Ursula Le Guin first publication: Rocannon's World and Planet
of Exile
Rosel George Brown publishes Sibyl Sue Blue
|
| 1967 |
Pamela Zoline's "The Heat Death of the Universe" published in Michael
Moorcock's New Worlds
Anna Kavan's Ice published
Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology
includes some ground-breaking work by Delany, Sturgeon &
Emshwiller
|
| 1968 |
Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, a major
sf novel with a gay protagonist
Joanna Russ' Picnic on Paradise
Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Capt. Kirk (William Shatner)
kiss on "Star Trek" -- the first interracial kiss to be shown on American
TV ("Plato's Stepchildren", third season)
|
|
|
|
1969/1970s: Stonewall & Beyond: Gay Lib, Lesbian-Feminism & Wiscon
|
| 1969 |
Angela Carter's Heroes and Villains
Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness published
Anne McCaffrey's The Ship Who Sang first published
|
| 1970s |
Publication of The Witch and the Chameleon, the first feminist
fanzine
Publication of Janus, a feminist fan-zine from the group that
later founded Wiscon
Women's Periodical, a British women-only publication
started after Janus
Numerous women begin publishing in the field, including
Octavia Butler, C. J. Cherryh, Jo Clayton, Diane Duane, Sally Miller
Gearhart, Jody Scott, Sydney J. Van Scyoc, Elisabeth Vonarburg
And of course the feminist backlash: various misogynistic /
anti-feminist novels (and simultaneously exploitive) published
re-asserting that women were
happiest when dominated by men and lesbians don't really
know how to have sex ...
|
| 1971 |
Monique Wittig published Les Guerilleres
Dorothy Bryant publishes The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You
Doris Lessing publishes Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
|
| 1972 |
Joanna Russ' "When It Changed"
|
| 1973 |
James Tiptree, Jr.'s "The Girl Who Was Plugged In"
|
| 1974 |
Suzy McKee Charnas publishes Walk to the End of the World, first
in the important series
Pamela Sargent publishes Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories
by Women about Women - the first women in sf anthology
Diane Marchant published the first known Star Trek slash, "A Fragment Out of
Time," an oblique Kirk/Spock story
|
| 1975 |
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Heritage of Hastur
Tanith Lee publishes The Birthgrave
Naomi Mitchison publishes Solution Three
Joanna Russ publishes The Female Man
Robert Silverberg described James Tiptree, Jr.'s, writing as "ineluctibly
masculine" in the introduction to Warm Worlds and Otherwise
|
| 1976 |
Feminist panel at MidAmericon set up by Susan Wood - the first women
and science fiction panel; led ultimately to founding of A Women's Apa
Samuel Delany publishes Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Marge Piercy publishes Woman on the Edge of Time
Vonda McIntyre & Susan Janice Anderson publish Aurora: Beyond Equality,
another early influential feminist sf anthology
Anne Rice publishes Interview With the Vampire, which
brings homoeroticism to mainstream culture, re-popularizes
vampires, and helps kick-start the goth movement
|
| 1977 |
First Wiscon held - a confererence
/ convention for the feminist sf community
At Suncon, Miamia's Worldcon, fans organized against Dade County's anti-gay
laws
|
| 1978 |
First "A Room Of One's Own" organized by Susan Wood at Westercon in
Vancouver
Esther M. Broner publishes A Weave of Women
Vonda McIntyre publishes Dreamsnake
|
| 1979 |
Octavia Butler publishes Kindred
Diane Duane publishes The Door Into Fire (ya)
Sally Miller Gearhart publishes The Wanderground: Stories of the
Hill Women
Doris Lessing publishes Shikasta (first novel in Canopus in Argos
series)
Jessica Amanda Salmonson edits & publishes Amazons!
the glb bookstore A Different Light gets its start, and names itself
after Elizabeth Lynn's novel of the same title.
|
|
|
|
1980s & Beyond: Cyberpunk, Cyborgs, and "Post-Feminism"
|
| 1980s |
Large amounts of Latina fiction being published in English,
including elements of magical realism, such as Ana Castillo, Luisa
Valenzuela, and Laura Esquivel.
Lots of lesbian publishing from Naiad Press & others, as the
women's presses & women's bookstores from the 1970s gain steam (and then
wind down again in the late 1980s and early 1990s)
|
| 1980 |
Octavia Butler publishes Wild Seed
Elizabeth Lynn publishes Northern Girl
Kate Wilhelm publishes Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
|
| 1981 |
Julian May publishes Too Many Colored Lands
WomanSpace: Future and Fantasy: Stories and Art by
Women published by New Victoria Publishers
Elisabeth Vonarburg publishes La Silence de la Cite,
translated into English in 1988 as The Silent City
|
| 1982 |
Tanith Lee publishes The Silver Metal Lover
|
| 1983 |
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes The Mists of Avalon
Mary Gentle publishes Witchbreed
Joanna Russ publishes How to Suppress Women's Writing
|
| 1984 |
Suzette Haden Elgin publishes Native Tongue
Marion Zimmer Bradley publishes Sword and Sorceress, the first
in a series of anthologies that lets many new writers get their first
start, and consistently creates a place for stories about women
Kindred Spirits: An Anthology of Gay and Lesbian Science Fiction
Stories, edited by Jeffrey M. Elliot, and published by Alyson, is
perhaps the first explicitly g/l sf anthology, reprinting g/l stories
from previous publications.
|
| 1985 |
Margaret Atwood publishes The Handmaid's Tale
|
| 1986 |
Joan Slonczewski publishes A Door Into Ocean
Gaylaxian Science Fiction Society formed
Worlds Apart, an second anthology reprinting lesbian &
gay sf & fantasy, edited by Camilla Decarnin, Eric Garber, and Lyn Paleo
"Aliens": Sigourney Weaver kicks ass (dir., James cameron)
|
| 1987 |
Toni Morrison publishes Beloved
Pamela Sargent publishes The Shore of Women
Gwyneth Jones publishes Divine Endurance
Octavia Butler publishes Dawn, first book of the Xenogenesis
trilogy
James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon) dies, 1915-1987
|
| 1988 |
Carol Emshwiller publishes Carmen Dog
C. J. Cherryh publishes Cyteen
Sheri Tepper publishes The Gate to Women's Country
first glb sf convention held: Gaylaxicon
|
| 1989 |
Lambda Literary Awards, in their second year, split the lesbian mystery/sf
category, and create a category for Lesbian Science Fiction/Fantasy. (The
previous year mysteries were chosen.) Jessica Amanda Salmonson's What
Did Miss Darrington See? wins. The categories are shifted over the
years but remain.
Susanna Sturgis publishes Memories and Visions: Women's Fantasy and
Science Fiction
|
| 1990s |
New women authors: Pat Murphy, Elizabeth Hand, Stephanie
Smith, Cecilia Tan
Queer sf comes of age: new anthologies, lots of new writers,
and a queer sf erotic press (Circlet Press)
|
| 1990 |
Pat Murphy publishes Points of Departure
"The Handmaid's Tale" (the film) released
|
| 1991 |
February: At Wiscon, Pat Murphy announced creation of the James
Tiptree, Jr., Award for sf or fantasy that explores and expands gender
roles.
Jewelle Gomez publishes The Gilda Stories
first James Tiptree Jr., Award for given to Eleanor Arnason's A Woman
of the Iron People and Gwyneth Jones' The White Queen
Rebecca Ore publishes The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid
Marge Piercy's He, She, and It
Eric Garber edits Embracing the Dark, and Alyson Press publishes
it -- the first explicitly lgb anthology (horror) that includes
some original content
|
| 1992 |
Nicola Griffith publishes Ammonite
Kim Stanley Robinson publishes Red Mars, first in a new trilogy
Angela Carter dies
Sally Potter directs "Orlando"
|
| 1993 |
Pam Keesey publishes Daughters of Darkness: Lesbian Vampire
Stories, one of the first explicitly lesbian anthologies of fantasy /
horror.
|
| 1994 |
Nancy Kress publishes Beggars in Spain, first in an important
trilogy
Kathleen Ann Goonan publishes Queen City Jazz
Maureen McHugh publishes Half the Day is Night
December - First web page on Feminist SF (which eventually became feministSF.org)
|
| 1995 |
Nancy Springer publishes Larque on the Wing
Lucy Sussex edits She's Fantastical, the first book of
Australian women's sf/f
9/9/1995: "Xena: Warrior Princess" series premiere airs in the
US (UK airdate, 9/8/1996)
"Tank Girl" directed by Rachel Talalay
|
| 1996 |
Two new queer sf anthologies come out that include glb
content, Swords of the Rainbow ed. by Eric Garber & Jewelle Gomez,
and Bending the Landscape: Fantasy, ed. by Nicola Griffith &
Stephen Pagel. BTL is the first in a planned 3-volume trilogy of
fantasy, sf, and horror. |
| 1997 |
Judith Merril dies
March 10: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series premiere
|
| 1998 |
Nalo Hopkinson publishes Brown Girl in the Ring
Flying Cups and Saucers, the Tiptree Anthology, published by
the Secret Feminist Cabal
Gaylactic Network establishes the Spectrum Awards "to honor works in
science fiction, fantasy and horror which include positive explorations
of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues."
|
| 1999 |
FemSpec, a new journal dedicated to the study of women & speculative
literature, founded
Spaced Out Inc.,
Australia's first sf club for the glb etc. community, founded
Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1930-1999, died
Naomi Mitchison, 1897-1999, died
|
| 2000 |
Fall: Broad Universe
founded to promote women writers of sf/f/h
|
| 2001 |
|
| 2002 |
Astrid Lindgren died
Kathleen Massie-Ferch died, 1954-2002
First year of "ConBust", a con on women in sf, gaming & anime, at
Smith College, MA
Whileaway LiveJournal began, 2002 June 26
|
| 2006 |
feministSF wiki born [wiki.feminisntsf.net]
Octavia Butler died
WisCon 30 year anniversary!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I've selected significant publications, and/or first works by
significant writers. I created this timeline to give a little sense of
historical perspective to particular in sf history, and to show off a
little of the history of women & feminism in sf. -- lq, 1/8/2001
Based on listserv discussions, personal collection, and the
recollections of many many people.
Initial drafting: Jan. 2001. Latest revision: April 2006.
