Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
Series: Native Tongue #1
Genres: Science Fiction, Feminist Fiction, Feminist Science Fiction, Linguistic Fiction, Dystopia Fiction
Published by The Feminist Press at CUNY on 2000 November 1
Format: Mass-Market Paperback
Pages: 327

Native Tongue is a fascinating treatment of what role linguistics might play in alien contact. Language issues are oft-neglected (not always, just often) in science fiction with good reason: the reader would get impatient with the delays in the “main story”. But in this novel, the linguists play a central role, and the issues and impacts of coping with the task of communicating with aliens are addressed.

Another significantly interesting aspect of this story is the setting itself. In this setting, laws were passed which set the civil rights of women back hundreds of years. The book examines aspects of the society that comes out of those laws about a hundred years later. It does so without being aggressively feminist and still keeps the concerns of the characters immediate rather than dramatic.

The characters, while interesting, do not feel fully developed to me…I like to have fairly extensive depth to characters, and these don’t meet that standard. Otherwise, the book is an excellent science fiction read.