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The Next Big Thing: Space WenchesSeptember 11, 2008 Apologies for not posting this till now... I thought it had gone up on Monday like it was supposed to, but apparently I put the wrong date on it!In addition to the SF/F/H reviews, I also handle PW's mass market reviews. Recently I've received not one but two mass market titles--The Pirate Bride by Shannon Drake (HQN, November 2008) and What a Pirate Desires by Michelle Beattie (Berkley Sensation, December 2008)--where a woman disguises herself as a man and becomes a pirate in order to seek revenge on someone who destroyed her family. Along the way she falls for a good-hearted fellow who finds her out and is not so much shocked as impressed. I'm guessing these were written after the authors encountered the story of Grania ní Mhaille a.k.a. Granuaile a.ka. Grace O'Malley, the Irish "Pirate Queen" who was the terror of the seas in Elizabethan times. Grania, whose disguise lasted all of a couple of days before her father found her out and was not so much shocked as impressed, had no trouble finding men to warm her bed or kicking them out when she was done with them, which makes her an excellent role model for historical romance heroines. Morgan Llywelyn's Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas (Random House, 1987, reprinted several times since then by various publishers) is probably my favorite of Grania's many fictionalized biographies, but more recent efforts have included The Pirate Queen, one of the most hilariously awful musicals ever to be hurriedly yanked from a Broadway stage; The Pirate Queen, a children's book by Emily Arnold McCully (Putnam, 1995); The Ghost of Grania O'Malley by Michael Morpurgo (Mammoth, 2001); Granuaile: Ireland's Pirate Queen, 1530-1603 by Anne Chambers (Merlin Publishing, 2003); and The Pirate Queen: The Story of Grace O'Malley, Irish Pirate by Alan Gold (NAL, 2006). Clearly, masked she-pirates are hot! My question is, why aren't there any masked she-pirates in space? A Google search for "female space pirates" turns up very little. Elizabeth Moon, R.M. Meluch, and Lois McMaster Bujold--to name just a few--put women into space opera, but those female characters are all part of reasonably legitimate business or government ventures, and they feel no need to disguise themselves. In fact, despite the popularity of the old-fashioned sort of pirate (thanks in great part to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and Talk Like a Pirate Day), interstellar piracy as a whole seems to be on the decline. I can't remember the last time I saw a novel about genuine space pirates, as opposed to ex-military con artists or ex-con military operatives. I think the Next Big Thing will be blending the golden age of masked she-pirates with the golden age of science fiction to produce space wenches, who disguise themselves as men--or aliens, or robots, or even ninjas, their dreaded hereditary enemies--and find true love while seeking revenge and plunder among the stars. As always, if examples of this genre already exist--especially examples written since, say, 1960--do let me know! Posted by Rose Fox on September 11, 2008 | Comments (14)
September 11, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Janni commented: I haven't read it yet (it's on my list!), but David Lee Summer's <i>Space Pirates</i> anthology (Flying Pen Press, August 2008) strikes me as a likely candidate for at least a couple stories of this sort.
September 12, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Rose Fox commented: Thanks for the tip, Janni. Looks like Flying Pen only does digital review copies, which would explain why I haven't heard of the book before now. I'll keep an eye out for it.
September 12, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Blue Tyson commented: I can think of a couple :-
September 12, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Joel commented: Morn Hyland (or is it Highland I forget) from Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap Series" is a pirate. She might not exactly start out as one and while she's not pirating for the typical reasons, but she marauds and hijacks with the best of them.
September 12, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches mvg commented: The character of ship captain Sarah "Sally" Blythe in "Fireships," the 3rd & final book of David Drake's "Reaches" series would be a good candidate. Venus' opponents certainly view her (as they do all other Venusian spacefarers) as a pirate (the series is based in part on the age-of-sail exploits of Sir Franics Drake). She didn't need to disguise herself, but she did face boatloads of prejudice and hostility from her fellow spacers, product of their highly male-dominated society.
September 12, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Heather commented: SFR is a niche market right now so that might explain the lack of such characters. Personally I would love to read a story with a female space pirate too. Or watch a movie with one.
September 13, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches JOHN DOUGLAS commented: I'm pretty sure there weren't any women pirates and I can't recall for sure but I don't think there were any masks as diguises but there was one volume of the Piers Anthony series, Bio of a Space Tyrant, that went into a lot of detail about space pirates. Not exactly recent, though, probably dates to about 1985.
September 13, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches David Boop commented: Flying Pen Press doesn't do only digital. I believe that was posted when there was only a digital available. As acquitions editor for Space Pirates, I'd love to get you a copy, and an advance copy of Space Sirens, volume #2 of the series. (Volume #3 is Space Grunts FYI. Drop me a line at lac @ rmi dot net. Also, you can find out about my novel, She Murdered Me with Science, which has nothing to do with this thread, but gots to plug when I can. *wink*
September 15, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Paul commented: Tobias Buckell, Guest of Honor at next year's Odyssey Con in Madison WI www.oddcon.com, wrote Ragamuffin, which has pirates and strong! female characters.
September 15, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Jill Myles commented: It's a bit of an older book series, but Anne McCaffrey had space pirates in her Sassinak books. They're not quite 1960's though...more like 1970s ;)
September 20, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches fabledfigment commented: I second the Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony as a model for future space wenches.
September 25, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Susan Grant commented: Rose, I see this blog is an older one but hope you'll still see this comment--the book Im writing now features space pirates and a woman captain. I'd kept it under wraps, having only just agreed to a new deal with my publisher for more books in my Borderlands series. Moonstruck, which wasn't reviewed by PW but received a starred review from Library Journal features a pirate hero, so the set up is there in the "
September 25, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Susan Grant commented: world" I've created for this interstellar swashbuckling smart, capable take-no-prisoners female pirate. I was a USAF officer & pilot and model much of my shipboard stuff on my experience. I'm excited there IS an audience for this kind of story. I've been writing in a narrow (but enthusiastic)niche market for as long as I can remember).
September 25, 2008
In response to: The Next Big Thing: Space Wenches Susan Grant commented: I recently updated my homepage with the info for the book (The Warlords Daughter) that directly precedes the female pirate one I have mentioned here: www.susangrant.com
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