Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God is remarkable for its deft intertwining of many themes: not only the overt one of coming out, but many intricately (and inevitably) interlaced stories of alienation, a search for community and rebellion against how our society defines women.

A radical novel of love, gender, and being seen for who you are from the groundbreaking author of The Female Man. Meet Esther, an English professor. Since her divorce more than a decade ago, she has lived in a kind of limbo—a sexless, cold, and self-contained existence. Though surrounded by so-called intellectuals, she is still boxed into life according to her gender, expected to defer to her male colleagues and mocked for her feminist beliefs. But when Esther’s feelings for her friend Jean take a turn from the platonic to the passionate, a new world opens up before her. Lost in a tumult of lust and happiness, she is unprepared for the patriarchal voices in her own head that threaten to derail her newfound freedom. Societal chaos would ensue if she were to follow her heart. It would open the floodgates to boys wearing pink! And girls, blue! How would the world survive? In On Strike Against God, Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Joanna Russ turns from science fiction to 1970s small-town life, where desire simmers in the shadows, rebellion is taking root, and humor becomes a weapon against the status quo. “An engrossing, darkly funny, and genre-defying classic. Russ’s voice is raw and unfiltered here, delivering the same ironic humor, wry wit, and devastating insight into messy human conceptions of gender and sexuality that permeate her science fiction work. Perfect for fans of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado.” —Kameron Hurley, author of The Light Brigade “A master of putting the truth in fiction, from her SF to her realist work, and On Strike Against God is filled to the brim with honesty.” —Tor.com Praise for Joanna Russ “She was brilliant in a way that couldn’t be denied. . . . She was here to imagine, to invent wildly, and to undo the process, as one of her heroines puts it, of ‘learning to despise one’s self.’” —The New Yorker

Overly concerned about what people think of you? Edward T. Welch uncovers the spiritual dimension of people-pleasing—what the Bible calls fear of man—and points the way through a true knowledge of God, ourselves, and others.

One woman resists the demands of her fellow stranded survivors on an inhospitable planet in this “elegant and electric . . . tour-de-force” (Samuel R. Delany). In this stunning and boldly imagined novel, an explosion leaves the passengers of a starship marooned on a barren alien planet. Despite only a slim chance for survival, most of the strangers are determined to colonize their new home. But the civilization they hoped for rapidly descends into a harsh microcosm of a male-dominated society, with the females in the group relegated to the subservient position of baby-makers. One holdout wants to accept her fate realistically and prepare for death. But her desperate fellow survivors have no intention of honoring her individual right to choose. They’re prepared to force her to submit to their plan for reproduction—which will prove to be a grave mistake . . . In Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author Joanna Russ’s trailblazing body of work, “her genius flows and convinces, shames and alarms” (The Washington Post).

A call to action to address people's psychological and social motives for a belief in God, rather than debate the existence of God With every argument for theism long since discredited, the result is that atheism has become little more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. Thus, engaging in interminable debate with religious believers about the existence of God has become exactly the wrong way for nonbelievers to try to deal with misguided—and often dangerous—belief in a higher power. The key, author James Lindsay argues, is to stop that particular conversation. He demonstrates that whenever people say they believe in "God," they are really telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist, will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about, and act upon the troublesome notion called "God."

A new kind of sci-fi heroine, the tough-as-nails Alyx, is introduced in this Nebula Award finalist that Poul Anderson called an “extraordinary” novel. Set in a semi-utopian world, Joanna Russ’s groundbreaking debut novel is the story of Alyx, a female soldier, survival guide, and agent of the Trans-Temporal Authority. Displaced in time from her ancient Greece, Alyx is tasked with safely leading a group of pampered human vacationers—including some unconventional nuns and a detached teenager known as the Machine—across an uninhabited scenic terrain to a relief station. But the journey proves more challenging than anticipated as they confront one another’s failings; the physical dangers of an icy, hostile wilderness; and Alyx’s own personal demons. Long before the kick-ass heroines of current science fiction and fantasy, Russ unapologetically introduced readers to a short, strong, middle-aged (for her world/time) woman of twenty-six who knows how to survive but struggles with the emotional nuances of her charges and the confusion of her own mixed feelings. With iconic characters like Alyx, Russ “four decades ago helped deliver science fiction into the hands of the most alien creatures the genre had yet seen—women . . . [and] helped inaugurate the now flourishing tradition of feminist science fiction” (The New York Times).