Angel Island Science Fiction for Women

Angel Island - Science Fiction for Women - By Inez Haynes Gillmore. Angel Island is a science fiction/fantasy novel by American feminist author, journalist and suffragette Inez Haynes Irwin, writing under the name Inez Haynes Gillmore. It was originally published by Henry Holt in January 1914. The novel is about a group of men shipwrecked on an island occupied by winged-women. Angel Island was reprinted in the February 1949 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, and again in 1978 by Arno Press. In 1988 in was republished by Plume as a "classic of early feminist literature" with an introductory essay by science fiction and fantasy author Ursula K. Le Guin. Five men are shipwrecked on an island in the Pacific Ocean while en route from America to the Orient. They are the only survivors, and their chances of being rescued are remote as a storm had driven their ship into uncharted waters before smashing it against rocks. The island is 20 miles long by 7 miles wide, and densely wooded with a freshwater lake in the center. After coming to terms with their predicament, the men begin collecting what they can from washed-up wreckage from the ship: food, clothes, tools and materials. They start building a camp near the beach and bemoan the fact that they are stuck on an island without women. But as the weeks pass, they begin the relish the absence of women and call the island an "Eveless Eden".