20 female masters of science fiction to add to your reading list

The Snow Queen (Cover image via Tor Books)

19. Joan D. Vinge

Joan D. Vinge is probably best-known for her 1980 novel The Snow Queen. It’s a Hans Christian Andersen-inspired work that won her a prestigious Hugo Award. The Snow Queen was followed by three sequels, all set in a futuristic world that deals with quasi-immortality, myth, and science. Vinge skillfully draws on the power and scope of folktales, pairing it beautifully with the tropes of high-flying space operas.

Of course, Vinge isn’t a one-hit-wonder sort of author. She’s also written the Heaven Chronicles series, starting with The Outcasts of Heaven’s Belt (1978). That series tells the story of a future where interstellar travel and interplanetary colonization is only just beginning. Of course, as humans tend to do, everyone makes war. As such the cast of characters are caught up in a grim space conflict. There, an egalitarian, feminist society must pit itself against a coalition of more patriarchal settlements in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

If you’d like something marginally more uplifting, you could also check out Vinge’s Cat series, which follows the title character, a half-alien cyberpunk orphan with psionic powers. It may not be quite as ground shaking at The Snow Queen, but it’s certainly a lot of fun.