How to Suppress Women's Writing, by Joanna Russ

University of Texas Press, April 2018 (original publication 1983)

Joanna Russ was a science fiction writer who came to prominence in the field in the 1960s, when women in the field were beginning to increase in numbers, but the explosion of women in science fiction of the 1970s was still in the future. She was also one of science fiction's home-grown scholars and critics, doing the work academics and more conventionally "respectable" literary critics were not yet ready to do.

In How to Suppress Women's Writing, she once again takes on work respectable academics and literary critics weren't willing to do: take a long, hard look at how and why women writers and artists, as well as other minority group writers and artists, keep disappearing from the record. Prominent in their own times, they quickly fade from view, leaving later generations to believe that only an exceptional few ever existed, or if they did exist, were inferior, forgettable talents. Emily Dickinson, for instance, is generally presented as springing from nothing, influenced by no predecessors or contemporaries, and influencing no women who came after her.

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong:Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, by Pierre Bayard (author), John Lee (narrator)

Tantor Media, ISBN 9781400109838, December 2008

Pierre Bayard reads The Hound of the Baskervilles, and comes to the same conclusion many other readers have: In this particular case, Sherlock Holmes was wrong.

This is a work of slightly tongue in cheek, very French literary criticism. As such, it's not for everyone. This isn't a fault in the book, but simply a matter of taste.

Jar Jar Binks Must Die . . . and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies, by Daniel Kimmel--A Review

Fantastic Books, ISBN 9781617200618, March 2011

First off, in the interest of full disclosure, I need to tell you that Dan and I have been friends for years, and I received a free copy of this book from him. There's no pretending I'm completely objective, here. On the other hand, Dan and I have been arguing vigorously about science fiction, fantasy, and movies for all those years, too.

This is a collection of criticism and commentary about science fiction movies that Dan has written over his years as a movie critic. He's added some updating, new critiques, and some additional material, tying it together into a knowledgeable, educational, and entertaining discussion of science fiction movies, their value, and their significance.