The Russ Pledge

That’s from the backcover blurb of Sign of the Labrys, a 1963 sf novel written by Margaret St. Clair. Even then the idea that it was new and different for women to write science fiction was laughably ignorant, but that didn’t stop whatever unnamed marketering genius who came up with that quote.

This blurb is the perfect illustration of why the “Russ Pledge” is important. No male writer would’ve been introduced like Margaret St Clair was here, as both representative of his whole genre and as something new. That’s one part of what Joanna Russ wrote about in How to Surpress Womens’ Writing: the constant emphasis that this female writer is an exception, that female writers are rare and strange. Though things improved since this blurb was written, we’re currently — with allegedly only two female sf writers having a book contract in the UK — in danger of moving back towards a situation in which it once again becomes easy to imagine such blurbs, unless we actively work to prevent this.

As Farah Mendlesohn made clear in her contribution to the SF Mindmeld linked to above, it is especially important for male sf writers, editors, reviewers and readers to take the lead in this. Though women can obviously share the same biases and are caught in the same distortion, it’s been us men who’ve — consciously or unconsciously — been setting this trap. Moreoever, if we don’t change our behaviour the same power dynamics will continue to be in force. Obviously. Hence the Russ pledge and its importance. What I’d therefore like to do, apart from reading and reviewing more books by female sf writers, is to do a series of posts on my favourites and why they’re my favourite female writers: people like Jo Walton, Mary Gentle, C. J. Cherryh, Leigh Brackett, Lois McMaster Bujold…