["The Female Man" may be categorized as serious "women's lib S.F." The author Joanna Russ] has never been one to deny the importance of basic biological facts in determining sex roles; she also understands how easily such facts can be compensated for once their existence is acknowledged. For instance, her heroines tend to be castrating females in the most literal sense. They take for granted that Tarzan will never really consider Jane an equal as long as he feels he can beat up on her whenever he chooses. "The Female Man," which plays with a marked deck of alternative universes, offers no less than four heroines….

With her obvious grasp of the biological givens and her command of so many science-fictional weapons, Russ might have produced a truly provocative study of "woman's fate." Unfortunately, she keeps slipping into the easy rhetoric of mainstream feminist tracts. There are...