Suzy McKee Charnas

Life

Suzy McKee Charnas was born in Manhattan to two professional artists. Her father was an illustrator for Wonder Books, a company that made picture books for children, and her mother was a textile designer. Her parents divorced in her childhood. Charnas helped her mother raise one younger sister, who is six years younger than she is. Despite being from a low-income family, Charnas was able to pursue a prestigious education. She attended an arts high school in New York City and, influenced by her parents, even considered pursuing a career in the visual arts. She received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, where she majored in economics and history. She continued her education at New York University, where she earned a Master's degree in education. She has taught in Nigeria as a part of the Peace Corps.

Influences and themes

Charnas' work focuses on the sociological and the anthropological—rather than exclusively the technological—dimensions of science fiction. Her background in history and economics, as well as her experiences in Nigeria, have had a profound impact on her work. She had keenly explored the genres of Western, adventure, and science fiction in the books she had read earlier in her life, yet she realized that these books lacked strong female characters. She considers Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness to have been a major inspiration for the initiation of her writing career, as it was one of the first feminist novels she had encountered. Despite this, she did not intend to write feminist literature. Her work did not take a feminist slant until after the first draft of "Walk to the End of the World", which she had originally intended to be political satire.

Controversy

When Charnas tried to publish Motherlines, the second installment of the HOLDFAST series, she was met with some resistance. The company that had published Walk to the End of the World, Ballantine Books, rejected Motherlines because it was deemed inappropriate for what they considered to be their target science fiction audience: young boys. This was because the book contains no male characters, and there are some controversial sexual relationships. Charnas tried to get the work published several times. It was generally rejected not for the quality of the story, but rather its controversial, even radical, themes. One editor even said that he could accept the work- and even that it would be very successful- if all the female characters were changed to men. Charnas rejected this offer. The book was finally accepted after one year (which was a long time for science fiction in this era) by editor David Hartwell, who went on to publish several of Charnas' other works.