This post is mostly to introduce a reading list that I’m embarking on, but also to provide updates on a couple things.

First, DC 33 is no longer on strike. At the time I’m writing this, members are voting at the union hall on whether or not to ratify the tentative agreement that DC 33 and the city have reached. It will most likely be ratified. I’m very optimistic about the future of DC 33. “If workers end up divided and disorganised after the struggle, this is a defeat, even if something has been gained. If workers come out of the struggle more united and organised, this is a victory, even if some demands remain unmet.” (From We Want Everything by Nanni Balestrini, trans. Matt Holden)

Another update on something I previously announced here: my story “I Remember a One-Sided Die” is now available to read online, free! It was previously only available to subscribers or people who bought the issue, but now anyone can read it. You can also read the interview which Marissa Van Uden conducted with me about the story.

Now, to the main point of the post!

What I’ll Be Reading

I am setting out on a little reading list that I’ve put together. It’s a very specific niche, but a surprisingly populous one: science fiction books by women in which the main character travels between two or more realms governed by contrasting economic and political regimes. These are not books where the two realms are at war (not necessarily, at least), or where one regime must supplant the other. The protagonists are not leaders or warriors, they are travelers, diplomats, emissaries. Some of the books feature anarchism, some communism. I expect to have more thoughts on why this specific treatment of this specific subject has occurred more than once, and why it has always been women writing this*, as I work through the list.

*I didn’t exclude books by male writers from this list, I just didn’t have any! Of books that I’ve read, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy comes closest to qualifying, though those books take place almost entirely within the political realm of Mars, and one regime is supplanted by another there.

These are the books, in the order I plan to read them:

Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley (1929)
Battle Hymn of China by Agnes Smedley (1943)
The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin (1974)
Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland (1976)
China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh (1992)
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, trans. Ken Liu (2016)

The first book is actually not science fiction, it’s an autobiographical novel about a working poor woman growing up, and growing into political consciousness, at the start of the 20^th century. And although she moves around a lot, she is always in early 1900s America, a uniformly dystopian capitalist setting. So why is it on this list? Well, the author herself was much like one of the main characters of these novels—shortly after finishing Daughter of Earth, Agnes Smedley moved to China, where she spent the next decade reporting on the nascent Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Civil War. Honestly, the book is on this list because I wanted to read the book, and I incorrectly thought it would cover some of her time in China.

And now it’s been so long since I first drafted this post, I’ve actually finished Daughter of Earth! I really enjoyed it, but it has quite an abrupt ending, so I’ve decided to just go ahead and read Battle Hymn of China, which as I understand it is a mix of autobiography and reportage covering most of Smedley’s time in China.

It would be cool if I posted a review for each of these books as I finished them, wouldn’t it? Yeah. Maybe I will. Probably not. But I will definitely periodically update the “Reading” section on my homepage as I move from one book to another.

If you have read any of these books, or want to suggest any additions that fit my narrow parameters, or if you want to read along (??), please write to me or comment below!