Library of America, Belletristik, Joanna Russ (Englisch, Joanna Russ, 2023)

Rediscover one of America&rsquo s best SF writers in a definitive hardcover edition gathering all her finest work together for the first time A LGBTQIA+ pioneer joins the Library of America series An incandescent stylist with a dark sense of humor and a provocative feminist edge, Joanna Russ upended every genre in which she worked. The essential novels and stories gathered in this definitive Library of America edition make a case for Russ not only as an astonishing writer of speculative fiction, but, in the words of Samuel Delany, &ldquo one of the finest&ndash &ndash and most necessary&ndash &ndash writers of American fiction&rdquo period. Here is her now-classic novel The Female Man (1975), in which four remarkable women&ndash &ndash Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael&ndash &ndash traverse alternate histories and parallel worlds (including the brilliantly imagined all-female utopia, Whileaway) in a multi-voiced, multidimensional voyage that continues to alter readers&rsquo sense of gender and reality. We Who Are About To &hellip (1977), recounting the fate of a misfit band of space-tourists stranded on an alien world, challenges &ldquo golden age&rdquo expectations about civilization, in what becomes an allegorical thriller. In On Strike Against God (1980), her incisive, darkly comic, and ultimately joyous final novel, Russ returns to Earth to explore LGBTQIA+ and feminist themes and the unfamiliar territory of &ldquo coming out&rdquo and lesbian romance. Russ&rsquo s &ldquo Complete Alyx Stories&rdquo &ndash &ndash which feature her inimitably sly, resilient, and stone-cold heroine Alyx, who is plucked from a life of petty crime in ancient Phoenicia to serve as adventurer-for-hire for the Trans-Temporal Authority, and which reinvent the sword and sorcery genre for a postmodern era&ndash &ndash are presented in their entirety here for the first time, and newly restored to print. Also included are her unforgettable tales &ldquo When It Changed&rdquo and &ldquo Souls,&rdquo the former a 1973 Nebula Award winner and the latter the recipient of the 1983 Hugo and Locus Awards.