I decided to find out more about women Scifi writers, and started with Katherine Ann Goonan.

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SCIFI INNOVATION - Nanotech with Jazz!!!

Goonan describes herself as, 'an inventor, an artist, a writer telling stories.' 

Queen City Jazz  was the first nanotech novel. Not all of her work is in this genre. She also does alternate universe and dystopia.

She says her writing is not predicitve, she is really writing about where we are now. But there is something especially haunting in the work Mississippi Blues. This was written just 5 years before the catastrophic hurricane Catrina, where the levees burst in real life and like this book's final scenes.

https://youtu.be/fPmruHc4S9Q

     (youtube link) 

Kathleen Ann Goonan calls it Bionan. Did someone say Surreal Steampunk? Art and psychology, rather than technology, scientific detail not the main feature. one reviewer called it the 'magic of science'.

Bionan is about interference with dna, by catastrophic events like radioactive contamination or by industrial or strategic interference like genetic engineering, and their unintended consequences. The greater the impact, the 'harder' the genre of the Nanotech/Bionan.

Her stories focus on the struggle. In her dystopias, with totalitarian regimes, and terrifying bio interference, she looks for heroines and heroes. Sounds harsh? It is? But she softens it with a quirky Jazz soundtrack! 

It's a feature that you can't miss with Goonan, in the title of her first novel and in all of her work: her addiction to American jazz. Her constant referencing to music and the arts weaves American culture and creativity all the way through her novels.

I read somewhere that you could say she even uses jazz structures in the structure of the story, maybe meaning weaving lines of character and plot. Intriguing. 

QUEEN CITY JAZZ     Brief outline

In Queen City Jazz, the countryside is ravaged by nan-based plagues. In contrast the cities have been brought to life by nan-based technologies. Goonan  turns the cities of the US into living entities, run by giant bees who fly between skyscrapers turned into exotic flowers. But they mutate in unexpected and threatening ways, out of human control, providing the crisis and the challenge. 

The main character Verity (yes, she doesn't shy away from calling the hero 'Truth') finds her role is to break the 'pleasant but futile' cycle in which this world is trapped. In the course of the action, and through dreams and play-acting (such as playing Hemmingway and Gertrude Stein), she uncovers the the core futility of this world. Verity has to confront her own role and purpose as a part of the whole. Is she, as critic-cum-revolutionary, an independent free thinker, or is she too a design feature of Bionan?

Born in Cincinnati, Goonan uses Scott Joplin's music, comic art, and the Shaker movement in Queen City Jazz. She explores a Shaker vision of a society and at the same time, the culture of the honey bee. Curious about the bees' world vision, their means of communication through detailed and intricate dances, and the function of pheromones in the management of their world, she identified a 'sisterhood of bees'.  Main character Verity (name meaning Truth!) reaches her conclusions about her own place in her world with a satisfying traditional scifi twist at the end of this novel, which is the first in what later became her Nanotech Quartet.

THIS SHARED DREAM   Brief outline

Eileen Gunn 's review of This Shared Dream pins it down: 

'What if you went back in time to fix the world, what would happen? The world would resist.'

In This Shared Dream, a small bunch of people do go back to try to fix things on Earth. They  crisscross repeatedly a growing number of parallel universes in the struggle to alter the twentieth century, to end wars and the brutality of nazism. They can only get through this apocalyptic scenario  by building on the art of friendship, and discovering what more that might create. 

As always with Goonan, layer upon layer of effort and understanding reveals an intricate interlace of self-deceit and self-knowledge as the protagonists develop into the heroes they are meant to be. 

Another awesome female Scifi writer, Ursula Le Guin, said of This Shared Dream:

'A tough-minded. kind-hearted, fiercely intelligent novel.'

So, a must-read!!!!

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Brief Bio

Kathleen Ann Goonan : 14 May 1952, Cincinnati Ohio, US

Grad: English Literature and Philosophy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

Work: Set up and ran Montessori school

Lived: Hawaii

Currently: Visiting Professor of the Practice of Creative Writing and Science Fiction,Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her Works (short summary)

Queen City Jazz, 1994.

Queen City Jazz Finalist for the 1998 British Science Fiction Award

Finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2000.

became book 1 of 4 in the Nanotech Quartet

Mississippi Blues Finalist for Nebula 1997

( sequel to Queen City Jazz )

The Bones of Time Finalist for Arthur C Clarke Awards

Light Music Finalist for Nebula and book 4/4 Nanotech Quartet

City Crescent Rhapsody prequel to Queen City Jazz

In War Times Campbell Award Winnner (alternate history genre)

American Library Association Best Scifi 2008.

Latest work : This Shared Dream

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 I read a lot of wiki pages for authors and genres to make these notes. I also searched you tube and sought reviews and interviews online. Sorry I don't have the links anymore but you will easily find most of the articles etc that I found, and many more besides. ( Try using wiki/Wikipedia author pages, wiki novel pages, wiki genre pages, you tube for author and genre, online reviews by typing author name + review, and book name + review).

I'd love to hear about your reaction to Goonans work, and any other female Scifi authors you love.

 ( - for editor's use)