“Liked the alien sense of Emshwiller’s amphibious people. An explicitly feminist story which also has an underlying, rationalized yet subtle science-fictional rationale. I like the way Venus Rising can be read both metaphorically and as a ‘pure’ science fiction story.”

This story is in Flying Cups and Saucers.

“This taps into some basic male discomfort with what pregnancy does to women’s bodies (although there is no pregnancyper se in the story), and also with adolescent fears about adulthood, the perception of growing up as a loss of vitality and identity.”

This story is in Flying Cups and Saucers.

“A good science fiction novel about incest or the threat or possibility thereof. Moffett also does a good job of showing the connection-for many conservative Christians-between religion, consumerism, disrespect for the planet and fear of different people.”

“Moffett’s writing on gender issues, and on the future of humanity, is profoundly and insidiously pessimistic. Under the placid surface of Time, there’s a truly terrible, and grimly justified, vision of the relationship between the sexes.”

“Liked this book’s openly sexual interpretation of human power broking, and the way that sex-drive scrabbling for dominance is shown as being destructive on every possible level.”

“If this novel isn’t explicitly about gender roles, they certainly underlie and drive the characters and their interactions. This is rich, realistic, beautifully done science fiction with the kind of detail that makes one feel the writer has actually lived in the world he creates.”

“Thoughtful, philosophical, intelligent exploration of human/machine interfacing and transformations.”

“This book is a multiverse riff, strongly reminiscent of The Female Man and Woman on the Edge of Time, but the device is used for a personal, not a political story. It’s mildly yet pervasively eerie and disorienting.”

“Vonarburg’s writing has a seriousness of purpose that much American science fiction, even some of the best, lacks; moral issues and intellectual debates are an important and exciting part of her work. Change may be necessary, but one has a sense, in this novel, of how problematic it is and how much pain it can cause. One of the delights of this novel is that the reader learns about the protagonist’s world in much the way she does, first discovering her immediate environment and then, gradually, the world beyond it.