100 books like The Female Man

By Joanna Russ,

Here are 100 books that The Female Man fans have personally recommended if you like The Female Man. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of The Dispossessed

Larry Haley Author Of Escape To Cadrius: Life and Philosophy in a Distant Future

From my list on explore strange worlds and new societies.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.

Larry's book list on explore strange worlds and new societies

Larry Haley Why did Larry love this book?

I think this book is a masterful work that offers insights into the human experience. Through its richly imagined worlds and characters, the story invites readers to ponder timeless questions about society, relationships, individuality, and the pursuit of a better world.

I liked exploring the two worlds in the story, one a society where individual achievement is overshadowed by the collective good, and another was a portrayal of capitalism with hierarchy and stark social divisions. The protagonist finds himself alienated from both worlds, unable to reconcile his ideals with the realities he encounters. 

I liked the way the story confronts fundamental questions about the nature of society and the individual's place within it.

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked The Dispossessed as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the very best must-read novels of all time - with a new introduction by Roddy Doyle

'A well told tale signifying a good deal; one to be read again and again' THE TIMES

'The book I wish I had written ... It's so far away from my own imagination, I'd love to sit at my desk one day and discover that I could think and write like Ursula Le Guin' Roddy Doyle

'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous…


Book cover of Woman on the Edge of Time

Karin Schönpflug Author Of Feminism, Economics and Utopia: Time Travelling through Paradigms

From my list on utopian visions of feminist economics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied economics and found it incredibly boring, exclusive, and confusing at the same time. Eventually, I discovered feminist economics and realized that economics is loaded with crazy mathematical jargon aiming to hide exploitation processes such as unpaid work in the household, precarious production especially in former colonies of the “Global South”, as well as environmental destruction. I found that utopian and sci-fi novels are not only fun to read but may also carry antidotes to reshape traditional economic thinking. Check out my TEDx talk where I can tell you more about all this.

Karin's book list on utopian visions of feminist economics

Karin Schönpflug Why did Karin love this book?

This is an amazing book to really get sucked into.

Written in 1976, it is a fantasy to go hide in from today’s dystopia of post-COVID and early climate change. You can join 1960s Consuela Ramos in her escape from a forced hospitalization in a mental institution to a utopian world that she visits with Luciente, a time-traveler.

That future is full of amazing people who do not celebrate hierarchies of race and gender but live in anarchist poly-amorous villages where hard labor is performed by machines and babies are produced in breeders with biological components of three parents.

The book is rich in blueprints for liberated education, conflict resolution, socio-economic innovation, and relationships. The beautiful world is threatened by a wicked parallel future world that Consuela must help to prevent.

By Marge Piercy,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Woman on the Edge of Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'One of those rare novels that leave us different people at the end than we were at the beginning.' GLORIA STEINEM

'She is a serious writer who deserves the sort of considered attention which, too often, she does not get...' MARGARET ATWOOD
_______________________________________

Often compared to Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Naomi Alderman's The Power - Woman on the Edge of Time has been hailed as a classic of speculative science fiction. Disturbing and forward thinking, Marge Piercy's remarkable novel will speak to a new generation of readers.

Connie Ramos has been unjustly incarcerated in a mental institution with…


Book cover of The Left Hand of Darkness

Larry Haley Author Of Escape To Cadrius: Life and Philosophy in a Distant Future

From my list on explore strange worlds and new societies.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.

Larry's book list on explore strange worlds and new societies

Larry Haley Why did Larry love this book?

I felt a deep connection to the characters in this book as they go through a journey of intense struggle. It is a thorough exploration of another world, including both the good and darker aspects of human nature. When I finished this book, I felt I had returned from a great adventure to another land with characters that I had come to know well. The book has a timeless relevance with its insights into human nature and the corruption of power.

I think Le Guin's world-building is nothing short of remarkable. Through her meticulous attention to detail, she crafts a society unlike any other. The exploration of power and its corrupting influence is a central theme.

By Ursula K. Le Guin,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Left Hand of Darkness as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS

Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…


Book cover of A Wrinkle in Time

T. Alan Horne Author Of Secret Sky: The Young Universe

From my list on middle grade books that adults can appreciate.

Why am I passionate about this?

As an author of experimental and genre-bending books, I evangelize people not only to read more books but to read books outside of their comfort zone. And while it doesn’t take much work to get adult readers to consider Young Adult titles, getting them to read Middle-Grade books has been a much greater challenge, which is a shame because middle school has a lot to offer. Some of the best and most life-changing books exist within the Middle-Grade category. My own Middle-Grade books were written with readers of many age ranges in mind. 

T.'s book list on middle grade books that adults can appreciate

T. Alan Horne Why did T. love this book?

I can’t find a more deeply philosophical book, among all adult literature, to compare with the works of Madeleine L’Engle.

The protagonists of these stories may be children, but they live in a world of scientific supernature that blurs the lines between measurable, observable reality and mystic philosophy. Even before researching Madeleine L’Engle’s life, I could tell that she was a serious thinker.

Few books have had such a profound impact on the way I approach living in the “real” world of adults. Einstein would have loved this book.

By Madeleine L'Engle,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked A Wrinkle in Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 10, 11, 12, and 13.

What is this book about?

Puffin Classics: the definitive collection of timeless stories, for every child.

We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.

When Charles and Meg Murry go searching through a 'wrinkle in time' for their lost father, they find themselves on an evil planet where all life is enslaved by a huge pulsating brain known as 'It'.

Meg, Charles and their friend Calvin embark on a cosmic journey helped by the funny and mysterious trio of guardian angels, Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which. Together they must find the weapon that will defeat It.…


Book cover of Hyperion

Sergio Almécija Author Of Humans: Perspectives on Our Evolution from World Experts

From my list on the big picture of human nature and evolution.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have researched human origins professionally for almost decades by studying the trail of fossils that have survived millions of years. But, before then, and since I can remember, I’ve been a lover of adventure and science fiction stories in all formats: action movies (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future), TV shows (The X Files), novels (Jack London!), or anime and manga (Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Alita). So, I guess my mind constantly travels from the past to the future. I think this list will also work as a time machine for others.

Sergio's book list on the big picture of human nature and evolution

Sergio Almécija Why did Sergio love this book?

This book is a classic now and will still be one hundred years from now. It’s the only truly fiction book on this list, but it contains some of the deepest truths about human nature, the meaning of time, memory, and identity.

Different narrators tell their tragic stories, which converge in a beautifully wrapped-up end set in a dystopian future with an ongoing war among different species descent from modern Homo sapiens. What is not to love about it?

By Dan Simmons,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Hyperion as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A book of mystery, legend, romance and violence.


Book cover of Kindred

Hajar Yazdiha Author Of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement

From my list on understanding revisionist history politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied forty years of the political misuses of the memory of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as a sociologist at USC and the daughter of Iranian immigrants who has always been interested in questions of identity and belonging. My interest in civil rights struggles started early, growing up in Virginia, a state that celebrated the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I wanted to understand how revisionist histories could become the mainstream account of the past and how they mattered for the future of democracy.

Hajar's book list on understanding revisionist history politics

Hajar Yazdiha Why did Hajar love this book?

I am, to put it lightly, obsessed with the way Octavia Butler revolutionizes the timescape and invites us to speculate about worlds that could be. In this and so many of her books, her vision of Afrofuturism is one that reminds us that our ancestral pasts and our imagined futures are always connected. 

I thought a lot about the future when I wrote my book, and I share Butler’s conviction that there is collective healing and liberation in revisiting and reimagining the past.

I also love that my neighborhood library in Pasadena is the one Octavia Butler used to frequent!

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Kindred as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon…


Book cover of The Exile Waiting

Stephanie A. Smith Author Of Asteroidea

From my list on science fiction and fantasy about or by women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of English at the University of Florida, and an author of SF/F myself; I teach it both as a creative writer, and as a scholar of both American Literature and feminist thought. This is my subject and I am passionate about it, and I’ve been teaching SF/F, American literature of the 19th and 20th centuries for thirty years, so I know my topic well.

Stephanie's book list on science fiction and fantasy about or by women

Stephanie A. Smith Why did Stephanie love this book?

Vonda N. McIntyre is an often over-looked science fiction and alternate history author whose prose is lush, whose imagination is daunting, and who was unfailingly generous to the fan community, and to the community of writers she knew and supported; she was also my teacher, my mentor and my friend of thirty years, and she knew how to make you laugh! Exile is back in print after being out of print, and it is a terrifyingly beautiful, thought-provoking read.

By Vonda N. McIntyre,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Exile Waiting as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Exile Waiting was the first novel by the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelist Vonda N McIntyre, published in 1975. It introduces the world that McIntyre later made famous with her multi-award-winning Dreamsnake: a post-apocalyptic world in which Center, an enclosed domed city, is run by slave-owning families who control the planet's resources, and exile the dissidents.

It is an ordinary day. A transport arrives from off-world, piloted by two pseudosibs, a powerfully intelligent threat to Center's dominant families. A girl is punished for being in the wrong room under the gaze of the wrong person. A visiting stranger defends…


Book cover of The Caves of Steel

Larry Haley Author Of Escape To Cadrius: Life and Philosophy in a Distant Future

From my list on explore strange worlds and new societies.

Why am I passionate about this?

When I look at the challenges our world faces, I find myself imagining how things could be better. For years, I've been captivated by the solutions that could bring about a better future. Through science fiction, especially in the books on this list, I seek out visions of better societies and ideas that could help shape a more hopeful world.

Larry's book list on explore strange worlds and new societies

Larry Haley Why did Larry love this book?

I found this book to be a masterful blend of murder mystery and science fiction, taking us on a journey through a future world where robots are beginning to take over jobs. The ethical and social questions raised by the integration of robots into everyday life are more relevant today than they were when the book was first published in 1953.

I liked Asimov's insights into the effects of robotics, offering a reflection into our own world as the AI revolution unfolds. Asimov's writing style is engaging, balancing technical detail with compelling storytelling.

I enjoyed this book immensely, not just for its intriguing plot but also for its thought-provoking exploration of a future that in many ways feels increasingly plausible.

By Isaac Asimov,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Caves of Steel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Isaac Asimov's Robot series - from the iconic collection I, Robot to four classic novels - contains some of the most influential works in the history of science fiction. Establishing and testing the Three Laws of Robotics, they continue to shape the understanding and design of artificial intelligence to this day.

In the vast, domed cities of Earth, artificial intelligence is strictly controlled; in the distant Outer Worlds, colonists and robots live side by side.

A Spacer ambassador is found dead and detective Elijah Baley is assigned to find the killer. But with relations between the two cultures in the…


Book cover of The Fifth Sacred Thing

Karin Schönpflug Author Of Feminism, Economics and Utopia: Time Travelling through Paradigms

From my list on utopian visions of feminist economics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied economics and found it incredibly boring, exclusive, and confusing at the same time. Eventually, I discovered feminist economics and realized that economics is loaded with crazy mathematical jargon aiming to hide exploitation processes such as unpaid work in the household, precarious production especially in former colonies of the “Global South”, as well as environmental destruction. I found that utopian and sci-fi novels are not only fun to read but may also carry antidotes to reshape traditional economic thinking. Check out my TEDx talk where I can tell you more about all this.

Karin's book list on utopian visions of feminist economics

Karin Schönpflug Why did Karin love this book?

This 1993 fantasy novel is set in a future San Francisco, modelled on the Paris Commune, that has become a pagan queer feminist ecotopia that is under siege and threatened to be overrun by an army of war-faring fundamentalists.

It features great adventures of loveable characters and some brilliant ideas for creating alternative societies.

Techniques described in the book are highly subversive; it offers alternatives to valuing money and setting prices, practices to transform soldiers into military deserters, and generally seeks to unhinge democratic practices that will harm nature, plants, animals, children, women, and the old and weak.

I find this is a good read to cheer up and reclaim your trust in friendships. 

By Starhawk,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Fifth Sacred Thing as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An epic tale of freedom and slavery, love and war, and the potential futures of humankind tells of a twenty-first century California clan caught between two clashing worlds, one based on tolerance, the other on repression.

Declaration of the Four Sacred Things

The earth is a living, conscious being. In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water, and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that…


Book cover of Lilith's Brood

Ai Jiang Author Of I Am AI

From my list on reads for a glimpse at humanity.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on a diet of dystopian fiction, and when I first began taking craft more seriously and diving into short stories, that was the genre I found myself writing most. I suppose what draws me to the genre is how dystopian fiction has the ability to illuminate society’s faults and injustices and humanity as a whole, the bleak futures that it could create if certain ideologies were allowed to persist, the way individual behaviours and actions can well shape the future and dictate whether it becomes one filled with hope or one that falls into disaster. 

Ai's book list on reads for a glimpse at humanity

Ai Jiang Why did Ai love this book?

I recall reading this book during my undergraduate studies, and it was one of the ones I will never forget.

It speaks about the ways in which humans interact with alien species and how we might come to accept them despite our differences, what we can learn from them, and how it can reshape us for the better. This book explores identity and Otherness and whether we can coexist with a species other than ourselves. 

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Lilith's Brood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The acclaimed trilogy that comprises Lilith's Brood is Hugo and Nebula award-winner Octavia E. Butler at her best.

Presented for the first time in one volume with an introduction by Joan Slonczewski, Ph.D., Lilith's Brood is a profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing -- epic of human transformation.

Lilith Iyapo is in the Andes, mourning the death of her family, when war destroys Earth. Centuries later, she is resurrected -- by miraculously powerful unearthly beings, the Oankali. Driven by an irresistible need to heal others, the Oankali are rescuing our dying planet by merging genetically with mankind. But Lilith and…


Book cover of The Dispossessed
Book cover of Woman on the Edge of Time
Book cover of The Left Hand of Darkness

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Interested in gender roles, feminist economics, and feminism?

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