The first science fiction books that I purposefully picked up and read (at the age of 25—I’m a late bloomer) fell into two camps: cyberpunk and feminist SF. I loved the grittiness and the expositions on technology of cyberpunk; I was invigorated by the politics and thoughtful critiques of gender, race, sexuality, and class in feminist SF.
I began looking for stories that exemplified the best of both worlds, and, indeed, I found many, but nothing prepared me for the ground-shifting shock of Misha’s Red Spider White Web (1990). It’s been nearly eight years since I first read the boundary-crossing novel and I can vividly remember the feeling of being utterly shattered by Misha’s frenetic writing and her desperate, brilliant characters surviving a violent, brutal future world (but so close to our own that there is no comfort to be found when putting the book down).
