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.

A To Z 2026 - Women In Speculative Fiction - B is for Lois McMaster Bujold

 Lois McMaster Bujold is an American woman writer of speculative fiction. She is best known for her space opera series about a character called Miles Vorkosigan, who lives on a planet called Barrayar, where he is the cousin of the Emperor, and spends time as a mercenary Admiral. I’ll talk about the series later. The books are great fun, the character likeable, and an Australian YA novelist, Michael Pryor, was inspired by Miles to write his own steampunk series about a very Miles-like character called Aubrey Fitzwilliam. At least, Michael didn’t deny it when I asked him!

Lois doesn’t mind when fans write fan fiction set in her universes, and actually wrote fan fiction herself in her early days of writing, even producing a fanzine. If you are a fan of the Vorkosigan series, there are around 1000 stories set in that universe on fan fiction website Archive Of Our Own. 

Those books are her best known, but she no longer writes space opera, having moved into fantasy. I’m not a huge fan of secondary world fantasy, even though I wrote a novel set in a secondary world inspired by the work of mediaeval poet Marie De France, Wolfborn. But that was set in a world that resembled the mediaeval Brittany of Marie de France. 

That said, the first of her novels I read was The Spirit Ring, set in a fantastical Italian Renaissance with a heroine who is the daughter of an artist inspired by Benvenuto Cellini. I was reading Celliini’s autobiography at the time, so it interested me. I did enjoy it, but haven’t been able to get into her later fantasy series, though I tried.

She wrote that one while she was already working on the  Vorkosigan novels but it was rejected several times. Baen published it on condition she give them some more Vorkosigan books. 

The series has sold literally millions of copies over the years. She has won science fiction’s Hugo Award four times; the only other author who did that was Robert Heinlein. She has also won the Nebula Award for her  Vorkosigan novella “The Mountains Of Mourning”; the Hugos are voted by the fans, the Nebulas by fellow writers, so she has been acknowledged by both. 

You should be able to buy her books easily enough; I have her space operas in ebook. 

I hope you enjoy them as much as I have.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026: Women in Speculative Fiction. A Is For Margaret Atwood

Today’s post is about Margaret Atwood. 

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, non fiction writer and poet, born in Toronto. She has written about fifty books, but the one best known - and I admit, the only one I have read so far - is The Handmaid’s Tale. I haven’t even read the sequel, The Testaments yet. I suppose it’s time to read some more of Margaret Atwood’s work.

However, popular as The Handmaid’s Tale has been since it was published in 1985, it has sold even better since Donald Trump came to power in the US. The Handmaid’s red costume with white headdress has been used in many protests. I will talk more about this book in a later post.

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939. She got a degree in English, having her poetry published at school and university. She is still interested in poetry, as a founder of the Griffin Poetry Prize. She decided she wanted to be a professional writer when she was sixteen and has definitely succeeded there!

Margaret has written about seven works of speculative fiction. I wouldn’t mind checking out her novel about Greek myth, The Penelopiad. 

She said that the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale didn’t have anything in it that hadn’t happened somewhere in the world. Looking around the world now, there are still plenty of things happening that were in her novels. It’s all the more scary for being so real; SF doesn’t have to be set in the distant future with spaceships and ray guns, after all. 

Time for me to read The Testaments.

Tomorrow I will be writing about Lois McMaster Bujold.

This Year’s A To Z Theme - Women Writers In Speculative Fiction

 This year my A to Z will be on the theme of women in speculative fiction - SF or fantasy. I will be writing about the authors themselves and their work. So, one post might be about an author and another about a character from one or more of her works, a series or a book from a series. When you have a writer like, say, Barbara Hambly, she writes a whole lot of different series with different themes. Barbara Hambly writes horror, fantasy, crime fiction, historical fiction. 

Kerry Greenwood is best known for her crime fiction, especially the Phryne Fisher novels, but also wrote novels set in Ancient Greek mythology and one set in ancient Egypt, about Nefertiti, Akhenaten’s Queen. 

Tanya Huff wrote some space opera, but also a series about Henry VIII’s son Henry Fitzroy, who became a vampire and is currently in Canada, making a living as a writer of historical romance.

There will be more, so sit back and enjoy! Hopefully you will have as much fun as I will. 

Let me know if you are taking part this year so I can put you on my list to visit.

An Evening with John Silvester - “Inside Melbourne’s Underworld”

 Those of you who live in Australia may well have heard of John Silvester. He is a journalist who writes the crime section of the Age newspaper. I subscribe to that paper online and get his newsletter. He is a very entertaining writer. 

On Wednesday this week, I went to hear him speak at the Capitol Theatre, a  beautiful Melbourne landmark designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin, as a cinema in 1924. It was taken over by RMIT, where I studied librarianship and this event was planned for the RMIT journalism students, but the Age invited subscribers to attend as well. It was free. I nearly missed out, because the event was booked out in an hour, but someone must have cancelled because I was on the waiting list and got an email saying I could get a ticket. 

It was a great evening. It was done in the form of an interview and discussion, by one of his colleagues from the Age. Both of them had worked on the stories about Erin Patterson, the woman who poisoned her family with mushrooms, so that was one of the discussions. John had met quite a few big names in crime, and wrote about the gangland wars known as Underbelly. That was the name of a TV series, which I never saw because there were trials going on in Melbourne and it might have affected the outcome.  I was working on my children’s book about crime in Australia, Crime Time: Australians Behaving Badly at the time, and I used his books about the gangland wars as part of my research, along with the work of Andrew Rule. So you can understand why I was excited to go.

I found myself sitting next to a lady who was a fellow Kerry Greenwood fan, so we happily chatted away until it was time for the show to start. Well, I say “show” but it was a bit like being at the Melbourne Writers Festival, back in the days when they were doing this sort of event. 

I hadn’t realised that he has a podcast and a TV show about true crime. I googled them and now I have something worth watching/ listening to. 

It was a fascinating evening, which started with how he got into journalism - some funny stories there. One of the criminals he interviewed was Chopper Read, whom he interviewed in jail. When they made a film about him, he chose Eric Bana to play himself, according to Wikipedia. 

There was a table from Reading’s, selling two of his books. I struggled with myself, but bought one, Dark City, which is about crime in Melbourne. I just couldn’t resist. I found the other book on Apple Books for $4.99! Still, Dark City is a visually beautiful book, and I’ve read it a chapter at a time. The chapters are very short and easy reading.

I might do a proper review when I read it all.

Meanwhile, I have some good reading to enjoy.

Just Finished Reading… Death In The Palace by Barbara Hambly. Severn House 2026

 Death In The Palace is the fourth of a series of murder mysteries(Silver Screen Mysteries) which were inspired by this author’s fantasy novel Bride Of The Rat God. They are set in Hollywood in the 1920s. The characters are more or less the same as those in Bride Of The Rat God, but with different names. Norah, the Englishwoman who lost her American husband during World War I, and is living with her beautiful film star sister in law, is now Emma. Christine, her sister in law, is now Kitty. She still has the three cute little Pekinese dogs, still called Chang Ming, Black Jasmine and Buttercreme. Emma is still a writer for the studio, dating the cameraman, whose name changes from Alec to Zal. The Chinese wizard is just their gardener in this series.

It does work out as murder mystery. It’s a lot of fun seeing what Hollywood was during the silent movie era. In this novel, the stars of Shining Bright, Foremost studio’s latest epic, go to New York to film on location. They are using an unfinished mansion called Versailles, which has its own mystery, to do their filming. Kitty has had an offer of marriage from a wealthy young man, who says it’s only for a week, then a divorce, and he will pay $50,000. The puzzling thing is that he has sent the same letter to a number of other actresses. 

There is a murder while they are in New York and, as usual, Emma and Zal solve it. Meanwhile, Kitty has an affair with Chico Marx - yes, that Chico Marx. In fact, all four Marx Brothers are characters in this book, still in their vaudeville era. 

I do enjoy these books, but it’s probably best to read them from the beginning to get some idea of what they are about and who the characters are. 

Unfortunately, Bride Of The Rat God is out of print, though you can still buy it in audiobook, which has a very good reader. You don’t have to read it to enjoy the Silver Screen Mysteries, but it’s a lot of fun.

I bought this in Apple Books, but it has only just come out and should be available in all good bookshops and web sites.

Just Finished Reading… Esther by Norah Lofts

 

It was Purim a few days ago. I even went to my local Purim Spiel, (Bageljuice), which takes place every year at the Phoenix Theatre at Elwood College, my school, though the theatre was not built when I was a student there. 

I did read this novel many years ago, but couldn’t get it in ebook until now. To my delight, it is available, though only on Kindle; I prefer Apple Books. Apple Books does have it in audiobook, but not ebook.

Norah Lofts’ books are all historical fiction. There is one about Anne Boleyn. Another one, How Far To Bethlehem, is the Christmas story seen through the eyes of the Magi, who all have back stories and personalities. There is even a reason for the gold, myrrh and frankincense, nothing to do with religion.

Her style is light and very readable. 

This novel is, of course, about Queen Esther, heroine of the Bible book under her name. She is an intelligent young woman who lives with her cousin Mordecai, the two of them reading and discussing books until they need money, then working for a while - Mordecai is a tradesman, Esther is very good at cooking and gets jobs preparing banquets for rich people. 

And one day, the king sends out notices offering his hand in marriage to whichever girl can please him enough, and Mordecai talks her into entering the competition because he has a feeling she might be able to do something important some day. She is chosen, not for her beauty, though she is attractive, but for her brain. And then, as you’ll know if you have read the Bible or seen an Esther film(there are several), she saves her people.

There was an introduction by the author, which must have been added to the ebook, or perhaps a later edition(there are twenty six editions !) because I don’t remember it, and Norah Lofts explains her thoughts behind it and adds that it’s a YA novel. That never occurred to me, but as I’ve said, it’s easy reading. I might even, after this reread, think of it being suited to kids from about twelve upwards.

You don’t have to have read the Bible to enjoy this novel, but I confess I rather like the Megillah. It starts with Persian King Ahasueras throwing a huge party for the rulers of his various provinces, getting drunk(“The king’s heart was merry with wine”) and ordering his Queen,Vashti, to show herself to his guests. When she says no, his advisers beg him to divorce her because otherwise their wives will make their lives miserable. Yes, it’s all there in the Bible! In the novel, Vashti is delighted to get that divorce and flees home to Petra on a mule she brought with her, before her husband can change his mind.

And then there is the villain, Haman, plotting to kill all the Jews in the empire because Mordecai has refused to bow down to him. Of course, he is defeated.

The Megillah is read aloud on Purim, and kids boo Haman and cheer Esther and Mordecai, and make a lot of noise with noisemakers when Haman is mentioned. 

I have a beautiful Megillah which I bought years ago, illustrated. 

I told the story to the kids at my school, as part of a Diversity day. One of my colleagues, with a silly wig, held up signs saying Boo or Hurray at the appropriate spots. When the kids were leaving after school I gave them each a chocolate frog, as giving gifts of food is one of the traditions - as is wearing costumes and doing amateur drama(hence the Purim Spiel). 

The novel is fun, not a work of genius, but well worth a read.