

Indlæser... Woman on the Edge of Time (original 1976; udgave 1985)af Marge Piercy
Detaljer om værketKvinde ved tidens rand af Marge Piercy (1976)
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Woman unfairly committed to mental hospital contacted by woman from eutopian future I only read this book, and then only partially was to see how the location of this story, or rather the town in the future was a similar town to the one I spent my high school years, namely Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. So, I skipped 7 chapters and landed on chapter 8 where Mattapoisett figures prominently. When she mentioned the Grange, I knew she got it right. When I lived there (1960-64) the population was 3,000, and now it is 6,000. It's a suburb of New Bedford, but off the beaten path. It still has two churches, Congregational and Catholic. And 34 elective offices, including the Herring Weir Inspector. I'm adding a shelf for books recommended by the Feminist SciFi blog of books to read this election season. Challenging in places, but an interesting read. The central character lives in a world very unfamiliar to me, among the Hispanic American poor, bogged down in violence, addiction, and prostitution, and then trapped in a labyrinth of medical psychiatry which treats people only as examples of confidently misdiagnosed and brutally mistreated mental conditions. Other reviewers have described this as "dated", but what struck me was the remarkable way in which the themes of feminism, sexual diversity, and gender fluidity chime with the concerns of the present day. I had to look back in the book to check that it was actually written 40 years ago. The sections in which we travel to the (possible) future(s) are a kind of updated version of H. G. Wells's "The Time Machine", with the beautiful and childlike Eloi represented by Luciente's contentedly anarchic and artistic people, and the bestial Morlocks by a world where a woman can be confined to a room for the amusement of others and entertained entirely by a screen, attended by a cyborg/android that can read human emotional states. As with many utopias/dystopias, they represent aspects of today's world extrapolated into caricature. I loved being in Luciente's world, where the constraints of sex, gender, and sexuality are outgrown, but the inevitable conflict of personalities is dealt with in an adult way, accepting the imperfections of human reality. MB 24-iv-2019
It is the most serious and fully imagined Utopia since Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and even the cynical reader will leave it refreshed and rallied--as Piercy intended. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAriadne Social Fantasies (2015) Indeholdt i
Hailed as a classic of speculative fiction, Marge Piercy's landmark novel is a transformative vision of two futures--and what it takes to will one or the other into reality. Harrowing and prescient, Woman on the Edge of Time speaks to a new generation on whom these choices weigh more heavily than ever before. Connie Ramos is a Mexican American woman living on the streets of New York. Once ambitious and proud, she has lost her child, her husband, her dignity--and now they want to take her sanity. After being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a time of sexual and racial equality, environmental purity, and unprecedented self-actualization. But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a society of grotesque exploitation in which the barrier between person and commodity has finally been eroded. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow. Praise for Woman on the Edge of Time "This is one of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning. Whether you are reading Marge Piercy's great work again or for the first time, it will remind you that we are creating the future with every choice we make."--Gloria Steinem "An ambitious, unusual novel about the possibilities for moral courage in contemporary society."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "A stunning, even astonishing novel . . . marvelous and compelling."--Publishers Weekly "Connie Ramos's world is cuttingly real."--Newsweek "Absorbing and exciting."--The New York Times Book Review From the Trade Paperback edition. No library descriptions found. |
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Mattapoisett is a brilliant utopian gem, eco-feminist, and I see echoes of this vision in a lot of modern SF with utopian threads.
Classic SF notes here:
http://positronchicago.blogspot.com/2015/08/classic-sci-fi-woman-on-edge-of-time... (