A lost feminist masterwork by feminist and speculative fiction icon Joanna Russ about a lesbian’s coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s.

When Esther, an English professor living in 1970s small-town New York, has her first lesbian love affair, the fallout brings her everyday miseries into focus and sends her spiraling. Confronted with the homophobia of straight feminists and the misogyny of gay men, Esther is left to forge a language for her feminism and her burgeoning lesbian desire. A darkly comedic story of feminist love, hope, and reckoning, On Strike Against God’s call to readers —“Let’s be reasonable. Let’s demand the impossible”—rings urgently true today.

Originally published in 1980, On Strike Against God is the only realist novel by feminist science fiction icon Joanna Russ. This new critical edition includes previously unpublished alternate endings to the novel, letters between Joanna Russ and acclaimed poet Marilyn Hacker, and additional essays by Russ. Contemporary authors Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj discuss Russ’s continued impact, and an interview with science fiction luminary Samuel R. Delany reflects on Delany’s decades-long friendship with Russ. 

"A new critical edition of Joanna Russ's 1980 feminist novella On Strike Against God, supplemented with additional materials from Russ's archive. An introduction by Russ scholar Alec Pollak opens the edition, essays by contemporary writers Jeanne Thornton and Mary Anne Mohanraj grapple with Russ's enduring influence on feminist authors today, and an interview with Samuel R. Delany reflects on Delany's decades-long correspondence with Russ"--