Picnic on Paradise

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 vacationersincluding some unconventional nuns and a detached teenager known as the Machineacross 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 seenwomen ... [and] helped inaugurate the now flourishing tradition of feminist science fiction' (The New York Times).