C. L. Moore, ‘No Woman Born’ (1944).
Good Reads meta-data is 40 pages, rated 3.87 by 101 litizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: USA.
Verdict: Thoughtful.
Tagline: Abandon clichés all who read here.
A diva who was horribly disfigured and mutilated in a theatre fire, slowly is recovered, that is, remade into…? That is the question. On the one hand her brain has been placed in an artificial body, say like MurderBot as discussed elsewhere on this blog.
In that way her life was saved by the heroic efforts of a team of doctors and technicians, but now, how shall she/it live? That is another question.
A take on the mind/body problem, as well as personal identify and autonomy, especially for a woman. Some of the Good Reads reviewers, as usual, entirely miss the point.
A compelling if protracted story with an ending, happy or otherwise. I heard it commended by Gary Wolfe in a Wondrium lecture and sought it out. It took some seeking but I found it in a collection selling for $500 on Amazon and $5 on Abe Books.
Inspired by this reading I got another one of hers. To dodge the sexism of the age, she often wrote under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett or Lawrence O’Donnell.