Woman on the Edge of Time

From the book cover
Woman on the Edge of Time is the fascinating story of Connie Ramos, a Chicana woman in her mid-thirties, living in New York and labeled insane, and committed to a mental institution. But the truth is that Connie is overwhelmingly sane, heroically sane, and tuned in to the future.

Connie is able to communicate with the year 2137. Two totally different ways of life are competing. One is beautiful - communal, nonsexist, environmentally pure, open to ritual and magic. The other is horror - totalitarian, exploitative, rigidly technological.

In Connie's struggle to keep the institution's doctors from forcing her into a brain control operation, we find the timeless struggle between beauty and terror, between good and evil... with an astonishing outcome.
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Baby Storm's parent would love the world in 2137, as depicted by Marge Piercy in this hybrid chic-lit science fiction novel. In this future people are very close to being genderless. Males and females still have the same external sex organs they have today, but women no longer give birth (all babies are created in incubators) and men can choose to breastfeed by taking lactate pills. Gender titles don't exist, everyone is referred to as 'per' short for person.  Bisexuality and homosexuality are on par with heterosexual relations.

Woman on the Edge of Time has been labelled an angry and violent text. I feel it's more honest and unpretentious than anything. Connie is angry and violent because society has backed her into a corner:

If only they had left me something!" she whispered. Still trembling, she thought, If only they had left me Martin, or Claud, or Angelina, if they had even left me Dolly and Nita, I would have minded my own business. I'd have bowed my head and kept down. I was not born and raised to fight battles, but to be modest and gentle and still. Only one person to love. Just one little corner of loving of my own. For that love I'd borne it all and I'd never have fought back. I would have obeyed. I would have agreed that I'm sick, that I'm sick to be hungry and sick to be lonely and sick to be robbed and used. But you were so greedy, so cruel! One of them, just one, you could have left me! But I have nothing. Why shouldn't I strike back?
Yet her hands shook with fear. She lay cold and trembling, all the night.

Connie is not a naturally violent or angry person. If she were, the thought of intentionally harming the people she thinks are going to cause her death would not keep her up at night trying to come up with non-violent solutions. This is a story about how society can bring out the worse in people, especially when money and technology are in play. The people on the edge of society feel the brunt of society's cruelty. Connie and the other patients who are subjected to the experimental surgery are either minorities, poor or homosexual.

Woman on the Edge of Time is one of the most enjoyable novels I've read in a while. I have no hesitation about recommending this novel. If all science fiction and fantasy novels were like this gripping tale of the future, science fiction and fantasy would be my favourite genre.

5
Next up: Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles