A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. I Is For Ivan Vorpatril.

 Today I am going to cheat a bit. I couldn’t think of a female author I have read whose name started with I, a book title or even a heroine name starting with I, so I have chosen a male character in a novel written by a woman, Lois McMaster Bujold, whom I have mentioned under B. 

The novel is A Civil Campaign, her Regency romance-style book set in her Vorkosiverse and her character is Ivan Vorpatril, the cousin of Miles Vorkosigan, the hero of the series. 

Ivan is Miles’s best friend and also a humorous sidekick, who appears regularly in the series, when Miles needs his help. He does get his own novel late in the series, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, in which he marries, while helping a woman. In A Civil Campaign he helps more than one woman, starting with an ex-woman, Lady Donna, who has become Lord Dono. He goes to the spaceport early in the novel, bunch of flowers in hand, to meet his former lover, only to find that she is now a he, after a trip off planet. Lord Dono is completely transformed and can even father children. This is a matter of an inheritance to a Countship, something a woman can’t get on the backwards planet Barrayar, where women can’t even join the army.

Ivan gets a shock, but helps out as best he can. While he is generally considered a bit dim-witted, he isn’t, really. He just does what Miles persuades him to do, complaining all the way.

Ivan is tall, dark and handsome, and women like him. He always seems to have one girlfriend or another, while Miles has one romance at a time, keeps proposing and being rejected. 

In the novel Cetaganda, when Ivan and Miles are sent to represent Barrayar at the funeral of an Empress, Ivan is the one who receives all the  invitations from (female) members of the local aristocracy, while Miles gets on with solving a mystery. 

In Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance he conducts a speedy Barrayaran wedding ceremony using a breakfast cereal to represent the traditional circle of groats, to help out a woman who is being chased by the authorities, and gets involved with her family from the uber-capitalist planet Jackson’s Whole, whose Cetagandan matriarch had hidden something important underneath the headquarters of Imp Sec during the time when Cetaganda was ruling Barrayar. I won’t go any further because spoilers, but this novel is a lot of fun and the first time Ivan has been the protagonist instead of the sidekick.

Thinking about it, it’s not as inappropriate as we might think to talk about Ivan instead of a female character, because there are a lot of women in his life, and female issues in the books where he plays a large role.

The Vorkosigan novels are easily available online, in print, audiobooks and ebooks. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Speculative Fiction, H Is For Barbara Hambly

 I confess Barbara Hambly is one of my favourite spec fic authors. She also writes historical crime fiction, in the Benjamin January novels, which I have reviewed on this site. When I first discovered them, I was a bit disappointed, as I had been reading and loving her fantasy. But they quickly became among my favourite of her fiction. 

However, this A to Z is focussing on speculative fiction, so let’s get on with it. Fortunately there is plenty of that to enjoy. And most of her books are in a series of one kind or another. I will keep to a few individual books and series, or this post will be novel length in itself. 

The first of her works I read was Dragonsbane. It was wonderful! It starts with a young man coming to find John Aversin, a knight who once slew a dragon and ask him to do it again, on a dragon menacing his own area. He is shocked to see him as a middle aged bespectacled man with a regional accent. He also discovers that John killed the dragon because it was necessary and did it with a harpoon, with the help of his partner, Jenny, a witch. It was beautiful and he regrets having had to kill it. But the current dragon is not a villain. 

It’s the first of the Winterlands series.

I read what was then the Darwath trilogy(she has written more since then). Two people from our world, Rudy and Gil, turn up in another universe, Darwath. Rudy begins to train as a wizard. The woman, Gil,  becomes a soldier. However, she is a historian, and it’s her research on what happened in this world that saves the day. I won’t go into detail, because spoilers, but the original trilogy is amazing. There are a number of shorter stories set in the Darwath universe.

Barbara Hambly wrote three Star Trek novels and some Star Wars books.  She got into trouble about one of the Trek books, Ishmael, over copyright issues as it was not entirely Star Trek, but if you can find a copy second hand it’s well worth a read. It’s very funny. 

She is also a great Doctor Who fan, which led to her Antryg Windrose series. Three of them were published by regular publishers, as well as a novel set in the same universe, and she has self published several novellas and novelettes that continued the adventures of Antryg and his partner - “companion”? - Joanna. Antryg Windrose is a wizard who once was studying with a villain. That has kept poor Antryg imprisoned in a tower that locks up his magic, in the first novel The Silent Tower. Joanna, a computer expert from our world, comes into his life when it turns out that the villain is not so dead as thought, and her boyfriend is used to build a giant computer in which the baddie can put his mind. 

Basically, Antryg is the Tom Baker Doctor, with cheap jewellery instead of a long scarf. The author has admitted it, but I certainly noticed it when I first read it. This is my favourite series of all her books, but I love them all. I’ve been buying the self published titles as well. 

The James Asher books are horror fiction, starting with a book called Those Who Hunt The Night in the US, and Immortal Blood where I live. I have reviewed some on this site, so I won’t go into detail here, but they are very readable stuff. It starts with James Asher, a spy agent in the Victorian and Edwardian era, being approached by Spaniard Simon Ysidro, on behalf of the vampire community in London to find out who has been killing them…or else they will have a go at his intelligent wife, Lydia. Simon falls in love with her, so in the books that follow - there are eight - he helps James for her sake. This series is the only one I have read that makes the point that, while vampires can love, they can’t actually have sex, or at least the men can’t, for obvious reasons. In this universe, vampires are what they are because they want to be vampires. They are selfish, as Simon admits. If a vampire bites you, you just die, you don’t become one of them, unless you have requested it. 

The first two books in the series are available in audiobook. You might need to get the rest second hand from ABEBooks. There is a self published novella in this series in ebook.

I have mentioned Bride Of The Rat God on this site, also only available in audiobook. It’s worth buying, great fun, set in 1920s Hollywood. The reader is excellent.

I have just started reading The Ladies Of Mandrigyn, the first of the Sun Wolf And Starhawk series, but I bought it second hand from ABEBooks. You can get it in audiobook, but I listened to a sample and don’t recommend that. 

There is so much Barbara Hambly to enjoy, I’ll leave it here. 

I’ll just give you a link to the Wikipedia article, which has a list of her works and a biography.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Hambly

PS I know I promised a post on The Handmaid’s Tale, but this is such a long post, I’ll see if I can slip it into my X “Extras”.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Speculative Fiction. G Is for Kerry Greenwood

 Today I am going to talk about Kerry Greenwood. You probably know her for her crime fiction - Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman. Those two series are the books for which she is best known. In fact, when you hear her name, Phryne Fisher comes up first. 

 But she wrote some speculative fiction as well. 

Most of her spec fic was her children’s and YA books - around a dozen speculative fiction books, in fact, including The Broken Wheel, which was set about ten years in the future after a destructive accident with a satellite, and had a lot of societies between Melbourne and Geelong, including a mediaeval group who had been the Society for Creative Anachronism and were now living a mediaeval life. I found that novel a bit silly, but I did agree with her that if there was only one computer left in the world, the SCA would have it! I used to be a member. I remember who was in the group with me, and they were very much techno nerds; the mediaeval thing was strictly cosplay. 

 But she also wrote three novels set in the world of Greek mythology - Cassandra, Electra and Medea. 

Cassandra is, of course, about the Trojan princess whose prophecies were never believed. In the original myth, she was dragged back to Mycenae by Agamemnon and killed by his wife, Clytemnestra.Kerry didn’t like that ending, so Cassandra survives and she and her lovers help Agamemnon’s daughter, Electra, whose little brother Orestes is, in fact, her child of a rape by her mother’s lover Aegisthus. 

Medea is seen from the viewpoint of the title character. She was the princess of Colchis who helped Jason steal the Golden Fleece in mythology. She returned with the Argonauts and supposedly killed her own children and fled when he betrayed her. But Jason is not the good guy in this novel. I heard Kerry describe him as an idiot at the Melbourne Writers Festival when I was first discovering her and her fiction. Which he certainly was, even in the myth. As I recall, in the myth Medea lived happily ever after while Jason was killed by the prow of a rotting Argo. 

If you have seen the film Jason And The Argonauts, it’s not much like the myth, and ends with a much nicer Medea asking Jason to take her with him because she no longer has a country, and the gods decide to leave things for another day. The film is well worth a watch, though, even if only for that famous scene with the fight with the skeletons. It was a Ray Harryhausen film, after all.

You can get all the books easily from Clan Destine Press, which 

re-printed them with much nicer covers after the originals went out of print. They are only A$4.99 each in Apple Books, and has them in audiobook. You can also get them on Amazon, in Kindle, audiobook or print. I haven’t checked the Clan Destine Press web site but I imagine they will be there too.

She wrote three volumes of “slash” fiction about male characters from myth and legend, Herotica 1 and 2 and Mytherotica. 

Out Of The Black Land, also published by Clan Destine Press, is not really speculative fiction, but worth a read. It’s about Akhenaten as seen from the viewpoint of a scribe, and his queen, Nefertiti. If you think there was something good about this monotheist Pharaoh, think again. He is horrible in this book. And once again, Kerry Greenwood doesn’t let a heroine be killed. We don’t really know what happened to Nefertiti, but Kerry Greenwood’s imagination supplies a story. 

Do you have any favourite books about Greek mythology - or Egypt? 

A To Z 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. F Is For Kate Forsyth

Today’s woman in speculative fiction is Australian writer Kate Forsyth. Kate writes historical fiction, set in various eras, from the Renaissance to World War II, but her novels tend to be based on fairy tales, so I will count them. Besides, ALL her children’s books are fantasy. And she has received an award from the Australian Fairytale Society for her contribution to Australian fairytale culture. Also her novels are all about women.

I started with reading her children’s books, the series called “The Witches of Eileanan”, but then discovered her adult books which are fairy tale themed. 

She also wrote a non fiction book about Rapunzel,  The Rebirth Of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography Of The Maiden In The Tower.

Speaking of Rapunzel, she has written a novel called Bitter Greens, which has two stories in it. One is the story of Charlotte-Rose De La Force, the woman who created the Rapunzel fairy tale, the other is the story of Rapunzel. That one is set in the Renaissance and the witch is a former model of the artist Titian, so no, not a hag. 

The Beast’s Garden is set in Nazi Germany. The heroine, Ava, is a singer. She has Jewish friends and on Kristallnacht saves the family by yelling at an SS officer, Leo. She doesn’t know it yet, but he is involved in a plot against Hitler, so he is fine with it, and sends away his men. They eventually marry. She has to save him from a concentration camp. The story is based on fairy tale “The Singing, Springing Lark”, a version of “Beauty And The Beast”, which has a lion instead of a Beast(hence the name Leo) and which has the heroine rescue him from a nasty woman who wants him. This is one of my favourites of her books. 

The Blue Rose is set in the time of Louis XVI, the heroine being an aristocrat who falls in love with a gardener who is fascinated by a Chinese tale about a very special rose. I believe he is based on a real person. There are hints of the Arthurian legend and the heroine is even called Viviane.

The Wild Girl is about Dortchen Wild, the girl who lived next door to the Grimm Brothers, who told them some of the stories they used in their fairy tale anthologies and married Wilhelm Grimm. The author lets it be known that the Grimms did not get their stories from old women in the countryside, as is usually assumed, but from middle class girls. Mind you, I think those girls probably got the stories from their nurses! It was a great novel, and, of course, set just after the time when Napoleon made his brother Jerome king of what he called Westphalia. It feels strange to read this and think that in England Jane Austen’s heroines were drinking tea. It’s straight historical fiction, but it’s got fairy tales in it, so I’m counting it. 

Beauty In Thorns is about the women in the lives of the pre-Raphaelites, with hints of “Sleeping Beauty”.

I have just bought Psykhe, which is based on “Eros and Psyche”. The only other novel on this theme I have read was by C.S. Lewis and seen from the viewpoint of one of Psyche’s sisters. I’ll be interested to compare. 

There are others, which I haven’t read yet but would like to, such as Dancing On Knives, which, of course, refers to “The Little Mermaid.” 

If you haven’t read any of Kate Forsyth’s work, I do highly recommend it. 

If you have, what do you think? 

All these books are easily available in ebook. I’d be surprised if you couldn’t get them in print. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. E Is For Eowyn

 Today’s post is not about a writer but a character - in fact, a female character  from a novel written by a man. 

I’m talking about J.R.R Tolkien, of course, the author of classic heroic fantasy - the best known being The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings. Tolkien didn’t have many female characters in those books. There were, as far as I noticed, no women in The Hobbit, only “The Sackville-Bagginses”. We know, from Lord Of The Rings that one of them was Lobelia Sackville-Baggins, a relative of Bilbo and Frodo, but she isn’t mentioned by name in The Hobbit. In the films, there were two women, Galadriel and a character invented for the films, who falls in love with one of the Dwarves. Neither of them was in the book.

But the women in Lord Of The Rings are all strong, including Lobelia. There is the Elven queen Galadriel and even Goldberry, the wife of Tom Bombadil. Elf maiden Arwen, the beloved of Aragorn, was given a lot more to do in the film than in the novel, where she mostly sits sewing a banner for her lord throughout the book. There is more about her in the Appendices, of course, and she does fight her father, Elrond, over her marriage to Aragorn. 

But the strongest and most interesting woman in the novel is Eowyn, the niece of Theoden, the King of Rohan. Rohan is inspired by the Saxons culturally, though the Riders of Rohan are passionate horse lovers, while the Saxons didn’t generally ride. Eowyn is a shield maiden, that is, a female warrior. She is very, very good at it, and much respected for her abilities.

However, in the end she is a woman, responsible for looking after her uncle when he is under the influence of the evil Grima Wormtongue, and when the men go off to battle she is left to look after the kingdom. Theoden certainly considers this a compliment; she is, after all, competent and loved by the people, and he trusts her. Eowyn doesn’t see it that way. 

She certainly has a crush on Aragorn, though it’s as much hero worship as romantic feelings. 

But she wants to be of use in the fight against Sauron, and disguises herself as a man, Dernhelm, and smuggles hobbit Merry along, as he, too, has been told to stay behind and wants to come along. I got the impression when reading it that the men in the army knew perfectly well who she was and supported her. Her brother, Eomer, would probably have sent her back if he had known she was there.

Later, Gandalf points out to him that he had his heroics to do while she didn’t have any such thing. 

You probably know from the film, if you haven’t read the book, that she and Merry between them manage to kill the Witch King of Angmar, leader of the Ring Wraiths, who thinks he is safe because he has been told he will be killed by no man, and then finds himself being confronted by a woman and a hobbit, neither of them a man. Ah, technicalities! Dare I mention that Tolkien created the walking trees, the Ents, because he found the forest coming to Dunsinane in Macbeth irritating? And by the way,  all the female Ents, the Ent Wives, are missing. They are a dying race. 

Eowyn does get a happy ending. While in hospital she meets Faramir, the new Steward of Gondor, whose Dad had died while trying to kill himself and Faramir. They fall in love, he kisses her passionately in public - only in the book, not the film - and they decide to get married, clearly much to Aragorn’s relief. Eowyn decides she has had enough of fighting and killing and wishes to become a healer instead. I think Faramir would support her in whatever decision she makes, but that is the new career she decides on. They live happily ever after. 

Tomorrow I will be posting about Kate Forsyth.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Speculative Fiction. D Is For Diane Duane

 Diane Duane is an American speculative fiction writer. I discovered her years ago through her children’s books and her Star Trek fiction. She has written several professional Star Trek novels which I read back in the days when I was buying those books, but I also read her fan fiction in fanzines, before she was being professionally published, before online sites such as AO3. When I told her on Twitter that I had enjoyed her fan fiction years ago, she replied, “What makes you think I’ve stopped?” So, I’m guessing her work is up on AO3 under a pen name. She isn’t the only well known professional spec fic author who is still writing fan fiction. I remember Kerry Greenwood mentioning at a Sisters In Crime event that she was a Doctor Who fan who was still coming up with ideas for stories set in that universe. Her friend, YA author Jenny Pausacker, sneaked Blake’s 7 character Kerr Avon into one of her children’s novels. It wouldn’t surprise me if her fan stories were also published on AO3.

 Diane Duane’s late husband was Peter Morwood, an Irish spec fic author who wrote a wonderful series of fantasy novels set in fairy tale Russia, with Prince Ivan and the Firebird as characters. He also wrote Star Trek fiction; at least one novel was with his wife, The Romulan Way. 

Diane also co-wrote a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Where No One Has Gone Before” which was actually based on one of her Star Trek novels, The Wounded Sky. 

But she did far more than Star Trek. She is best known for her children’s fiction, the Young Wizards series, which started with a novel called So You Want To Be A Wizard, and went on to be a series of eleven books, plus several more or less set in the Young Wizards universe. I confess to only having read three of that series so far. They have messages and are a bit religious in a C.S. Lewis style. I’m not a huge fan of Lewis but these are very readable.

Several of her novels are available on Amazon, both print and Kindle. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction - C Is For Suzanne Collins

 Today’s post is about Suzanne Collins. She is an American YA and children’s writer, who wrote for children’s television before becoming a novelist. I am going to give you a link to her Wikipedia entry, which has a very long list of her awards, far too many to list here. One of her awards was a Silver Inky, which was part of an Australian children’s literature prize, in 2009, for The Hunger Games. It was arranged by the Centre for Youth Literature at the Victorian State Library. The Golden Inky was for Australian YA and children’s books, the Silver for overseas work. It’s gone, alas, along with the Centre for Youth Literature, but it’s nice to be able to put an Australian award among her many prizes. 

Here is the Wikipedia entry, where you’ll find the list. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Collins

If you haven’t heard of Suzanne Collins for anything else, you have surely heard of the Hunger Games series. I had the original trilogy in my school library, where it was very popular. I think I may be one of the few people who was happy with the ending.

On the remote chance you haven’t read it or seen the movies, it’s set in a future America, now known as Panem, where every year teenagers from twelve Districts are chosen by lot to fight each other to the death or be killed by terrifying creatures in the arena in the Capitol, till only one remains. The survivor is taken on a tour and given a house. That doesn’t necessarily mean the survivor can now live comfortably; in one of the novels, the winners of previous tournaments are dragged back to fight again. 

When I first read it, I thought it must have some connections to the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which young people are taken as tributes to Crete to be eaten by the Minotaur. This has been confirmed by the author. 

Since then there have been two prequels, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes and Sunrise On The Reaping which I have reviewed on this blog. 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2025/11/just-finished-reading-sunrise-on.html

The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes is the back story of Coriolanus Snow, the villain of the series. Sunrise On The Reaping is the back story of Haymitch Abernathy, the town drunk who once won a Hunger Games and has suffered PTSD ever since. Sunrise On The Reaping is the most tragic of all the books, because you find out, in it, just why Haymitch ended up as the town drunk and don’t blame him. It is, like all the others, being made into a film. 

I’m not sure I can bring myself to see it, after having read the book and cried. But up to you.