Floating Worlds (Cecelia Holland, 1976)
This book popped up in a letter I read here in Oregon—basically somebody wondering if anybody else had read this book and saying it felt like a combination of Joanna Russ and Ursula K. Le Guin.1 So, well. I felt I had a duty. If somebody said that about a book now I’d write it off as hyperbole. This mention felt a little different. Now that I’ve read it, if I were trying to do a “it’s X meets Y” pitch for Floating Worlds, I would say: “It’s The Dispossessed meets Dune.”2
Before I actually discuss the book, though, I do want to say… sometimes a post about a forgotten book will have an air of “why did we all forget about this,” a push for revival, and so on. Why people forgot about Floating Worlds is actually very easy to answer: Holland only wrote one sci-fi book. Her publisher withdrew the hardcover from the Nebula nominations for unclear reasons,3 and when they resubmitted the paperback the book had lost its momentum. Also, the book is not revivabl…
