burton@inuxg.UUCP (Thomas Burton) (11/28/83)
I have just completed reading "Benefits" by Zoe Fairbains, which was recommended to me by the proprietor of a "feminist family" bookstore. Anyway, the story takes place in England in the near future, where society and government have blamed the feminist movement for all the problems of the day. A new movement, called the Family Movement, gains control, and uses a program of Benefits (paid to mothers who stay home with their children) to keep women in their place. The program soon becomes a means for encouraging only the "right kinds" of people to have families, as England tries to join in the new Europa economic community with the one resource it has to offer - cheap labor. Zoe Fairbains writes well about people, and I was not turned off by any hard line feminist propaganda. She has a lot to say about both sides of the battle over equal rights for women; she criticizes the feminists as well as the "chauvenists". One point to be made: you might have to go to a "feminist bookstore" to find this one; I don't believe I've ever seen it in the mainstream bookstores (of course, I don't usually look in the section on Sex and Family, just the Literature and Science Fiction). This book would definitely fall under the SF category (for Speculative Fiction -- if Harlan Ellison is in the Science Fiction section, then Zoe Fairbains should be too). Doug Burton ATT-CP Indianapolis inuxg!burton