Proto-feminist sf
Somehow in discussions of early feminist sf it never occurs to me to mention John Wyndham's "Consider Her Ways," reprinted at Sci Fiction back in August.
It was originally published in 1956, in an odd little volume called Sometime, Never which consisted of three novellas: one by William (Lord of the Flies) Golding, one by Mervyn (Gormenghast) Peake, and one by John (Day of the Triffids) Wyndham. It portrays an all-female society; in that regard, it prefigures Tiptree's 1976 "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" and Russ's 1972 "When It Changed." It makes some interesting (if heavy-handed) political arguments about the oppression of women in modern society, but there's one thing it misses: it supposes that there can be no romantic (nor, presumably, sexual) interaction between women. (It even mentions Sappho in passing, but fails to follow up on that line of thought.)
Which makes me wonder about the development over time of single-sex societies in sf. If you don't count historical and mythological situations, when was the first fictional portrayal of such a society? Do later portrayals build on earlier ones? (Surely Russ and Tiptree and Tepper and others had read this Wyndham story; were their versions of all-female societies partly in reaction to Wyndham's?) Yet another thing I'd pursue if I were an academic: some sort of comparative study of such works, perhaps specifically heterocentrism and/or homophobia in such works. One would have to also look at Cordwainer Smith's "The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal," which portrays one of the few all-male societies I can think of in sf, and which, despite having one of my favorite framing devices of all time, is appallingly homophobic.
If anyone wants to read the political arguments in the Wyndham story without reading the entire 24,000-word (roughly) novella, part 3 of the 4-part presentation at Sci Fiction consists mostly of the political debate. But I think the rest of the story's worth reading too, even if it's a bit slow to start by modern standards.