As this website founder states, “Science fiction has been traditionally perceived as a male domain: male writers, male readers, male characters. While there have been many wonderful women writers in science fiction and fantasy, nonetheless, few would deny that the genre has certainly been one of the great literary bastions of sexism”. To counter this bias, librarian Laura Quilter created this website in 1994, which is “essentially a complex bibliography that lists and cites and describes sf & critical works from a feminist perspective”. She compiled the authors based on reference materials, trade journals, cataloguing manuals, and suggestions from the field.
This website has as its core women science fiction writers. However, it expands its scope to include utopian and fantasy: speculative fiction. It also provides bibliographies by format, the strongest in film and television. The very short lists for other media, and no listings under the heading “anime”, are evidence of a dynamic website that was not fully built out.
The home page serves as the site map with a detailed hyperlinked table of contents. The first and major section includes bibliographies and reviews. The longest list is a comprehensive alphabetical author index, with almost a thousand women speculative authors from the eighteenth century to 2007; it includes the main names and many lesser known authors and stretches to authors such as Toni Morrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Willa Cather. About one-tenth of the author information includes birth/death dates or hyperlinks (most of which are broken). A selective alphabetical checklist of about a hundred authors mentions major works (and links to anthology chapters); males are included as feminist philosophy is not limited to one sex. Another several hundred authors and their works’ titles (sometimes with dates and publisher) are list under Other Works of Interest because they were either not read and reviewed or considered appropriate for the bibliography. Reviews are short, or are hyperlinked to the accompanying http://wiki.feministsf.net/, which no longer exists.
Several bibliographies cluster authors, themes and recommended readings. One reading list clusters works (books and other media) by theme: social/societal, biological/gender, reproductive strategies, sexuality, body image/issues, genre (fantasy, cyberpunk, etc.), SF for youth (broken link), strong women and feminist heroes and a couple dozen specific themes (e.g. wilderness, time travel and Southern stars). Each theme is subdivided into more specific subthemes. Some items are not feminist as a means to see a variety of perspectives. Other indexes list women SF writers of color, lesbian SF writers, non-English language women SF writers by nationality.
The second section addresses research, criticism and teaching. Separate pages list documentary films and videos (four works), periodicals (usually including a short description and contact information), an annotated guide to feminist SF resources (last updated in 1996), a database research guide providing key search terms and other review materials, Three resources were noted separately as being critical: Tiptree Award, Wiscon and Broad Universe, all of which remain active.
The third section features the feminist SF community. It includes a brief news archive for years 2001 to 2-3, a brief timeline of feminist SF and fiction and other women in that field, a short list of relevant conferences, an annotated list of reading groups and other relevant associations, and writing support (groups, publishers, venues and selected readings about writing SF).
The last section provides information about the website itself: origin, FAQs, policies, credits, usage and feedback.
Unfortunately, the website appears to be dormant, its last update being June 2007. In that respect, the website appearance looks dated, although the Web mistress consciously avoided graphics or complex layouts to maximize accessibility. Internal links usually worked, but links to external sources, including the mentioned wiki, are broken.
The website reflected a clear passion by its founder, and she welcomed suggestions for authors and supporting information. She was particularly interested in writers from other countries writing in other languages so as to fill those international gaps. She also developed accompanying venues to build community: a blog, listserv and wiki; however, they do not to exist anymore. Broad Universe (http://broaduniverse.org/), which is mentioned in Quilter’s website, continues as a voluntary organization to promote science fiction, fantasy and horror written by women. Nevertheless, Broad Universe does not have the extensive bibliographies found at feministsf.org.
Even though the website’s content stops in 2007, its content can still be useful for examining the history of feminist speculative fiction.
