RUSS, Joanna

(1937-)

   US writer and academic who has taught at various universities since 1970; she has been a professor of English at the University of Washington since 1977. She began publishing sf in 1959 with "Nor CustomStale" for The MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, a journal to which she also contributed occasional book reviews for some years. (JR won the 1988 PILGRIM AWARD for her sf criticism.) Her early work is less formallyinnovative than the stories she began to publish in the 1970s, but The Hidden Side of the Moon (coll 1987), which assembles material fromthroughout her career, demonstrates how cogent a writer of GENRE SF she could have become. JR's first novel, Picnic on Paradise (1968), comprises the largest single portion of ALYX (coll 1976; vt The Adventures of Alyx 1985 UK), a series of tales about a time-travelling mercenary, tough,centred, autonomous and female; much of the initial impact of the sequence lies in its use of Alyx in situations where she acts as a fully responsible agent, vigorously engaged in the circumstances surrounding her, but without any finger-pointing on the author's part to the effect that one should only pretend not to notice that she is not a man. The liberating effect of the Alyx tales has been pervasive, and the ease with which later writers now use active female protagonists in adventure roles, without having to argue the case, owes much to this example (WOMEN AS PORTRAYED IN SCIENCE FICTION). JR herself became, in most of her laterwork, far more explicit about FEMINIST issues, though her muffled but ambitious second novel, AND CHAOS DIED (1970) tells from a male viewpoint of the experiences of a man forced by the psychically transformed human inhabitants of a planet on which he has crashlanded to endure the rewriting of his psychic nature as he perilously acquires PSI POWERS. His rediscovery of Earth in the latter part of the book is to satirical effect.It was with JR's third tale, THE FEMALE MAN (1975), which awaited publication for some time, that the programmatic feminist novel may be said to have come of age in sf. Stunningly foregrounding the feminist arguments which had tacitly sustained her work to this point, it presents a series of 4 ALTERNATE WORLDS, in each of which a version of the central protagonist enacts a differing life, all dovetailing as the plot advances. From psychic servitude to fully matured freedom - as represented by thefemale UTOPIA of the planet Whileaway - these lives amount to a definitive portrait of the life-chances of the central protagonist on Earth. Savage and cleansing in its anger, the book stands as one of the most significant uses of sf instruments to make arguments about our own world and condition.In its portrait of a dying woman on a planet without life, We who Are About to . . . (1977), an anti- ROBINSONADE, less vigorously moves to the pole of utter solitude. The Two of Them (1978) shivers generically between telling the realistic story of the oppression - and escape - of a young woman brought up on a planet whose religion is reminiscent of Islam, and deconstructing this generic material into the embittered dreams of a woman trapped on Earth.JR won the 1972 NEBULA for Best Short Story with "When it Changed", an earlier and perhaps even more devastating tale ofWhileaway. Other short work of note - including "Daddy's Girl" (1975), a reprise of some of the themes of THE FEMALE MAN, and "The Autobiography of My Mother" (1975) - has appeared in The Zanzibar Cat (coll 1983; rev 1984)and EXTRA(ORDINARY) PEOPLE (coll 1984), the latter volume containing Souls (1982 FSF; 1989 chap dos), which won the 1983 HUGO for Best Novella. For30 years, JR has been the least comfortable author writing sf, very nearly the most inventive experimenter in fictional forms, and the most electric of all to read. The gifts she has brought to the genre are two in number: truth-telling and danger.

   JC

   Other works: Kittatinny: A Tale of Magic (1978 chap), a juvenile; WomanSpace: Future and Fantasy Stories and Art by Women (anth 1981 chap) ed anon; On Strike Against God (1982), associational; How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983), an adversarial nonfiction study; Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (coll 1985).

   About the author: Marilyn Hacker'sintroduction to the 1977 reprint of THE FEMALE MAN; Samuel R. DELANY's introduction to ALYX.

   See also: ANTHROPOLOGY; ARKHAM HOUSE; AUTOMATION; COLONIZATION OF OTHER WORLDS; CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL WORKS ABOUT SF; ESP; FANTASTIC VOYAGES; GOLEM; PARANOIA; PILGRIM AWARD; SEX; SOCIOLOGY; WOMEN SF WRITERS.