Gwyneth Jones on Joanna Russ

“She had much more intellectual training and intellectual capacity for thinking about science fiction than most writers ever bother with...I think it would be fair to say that she and Samuel Delany, between them, invented science fiction scholarship back in the ’60s and ’70s...In her science fiction reviews, she was always wanting the people she thought were good to be better, to be more intellectual and more challenging.”

“There was a hostility toward Joanna’s writing from male critics and male magazine editors, and men in general in science fiction. She had some friends, but quite a lot of the men in science fiction were appalled at the way that Joanna was challenging the norms of what women should be in science fiction.”