Our main character is Kay Zeldin, a history professor in Seattle. Twenty years before, she had been an agent for Security, intimately involved with her boss, Robert Sedgewick. She's about to be recalled to service, due to an alien invasion. With the arrival of the Marq'ssans, who destroy Earth's technology with a massive electromagnetic pulse known as the Blanket, the governments are forced to do as the invaders ask: send female delegates only, to learn of the aliens' demands. Zeldin, initially pro-Security, is sent to the Marq'ssan ship. After much exposure to the alien philosophies, she turns to their side. The first book ends with the establishment of various "Free Zones" around the globe, protected regions where mankind might begin to be liberated from its own false thinking.

As the second book opens, a year after the invasion, Kay and her fellows, most notably one Martha Greenglass, are attempting to construct a new equitable and sane society based on alien teachings and the best human traditions. Supported by Marq'ssan might, the Seattle Free Zone is a haven from the civil war raging across the rest of North America. But Kay cannot remain in safety. She has to venture forth to secure resources for the struggling mini-nation. On one such trip she is kidnapped by Sedgewick's second-in-command, a blatant sadist named Elizabeth Weatherall, who is aided by the toadying Allison Bennett. Locked in a high-security prison, Kay will be subject to Weatherall's intense brainwashing until death seems a welcome option.

Meanwhile, back in Seattle, Martha and the rest of the women's coordinating committee is forced to contend with many practical problems, such as a new cult that demands the right of unlimited breeding, and a female "Night Patrol" of dangerous vigilantes. When Martha's lover is proven to be one of the murderous Night Patrol, the personal and the political become an indivisible disturbing knot.

Meanwhile, the Marq'ssans lurk behind the scenes, their ultimate origins, motives and plans unknown.

Kinky polemics are not a rousing read

The lineage of engaged politico-feminist SF is a long and noble one. Just cataloguing some of the names of those who have worked in this vein is humbling: Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Sherri Tepper, James Tiptree, Margaret Atwood, Doris Lessing, Octavia Butler, Élisabeth Vonarburg. ... We're in the territory of classics here. L. Timmel Duchamp wants to occupy the same ground, but I fear her efforts fall short—at least on the basis of these first two volumes of her series.

What's the problem with these earnest but leaden novels?

Well, first of all there are the undeniable side effects of the history of their composition and delayed publication. As Duchamp relates in an afterword to the first book, they were composed during the early 1980s and revised 10 years ago, seeing publication only some two decades after their creation. As such, they exhibit a certain outmoded creakiness in the speculation department. Duchamp's 2077, even granted that it's a retrogressive dystopia, is less believably advanced than, say, the future of Neuromancer (1984), composed at roughly the same period. Cameras in Kay Zeldin's future still use analog film. CDs are the most advanced storage medium. There are no new cultural touchstones. And so forth. Likewise, all developments in feminism and the culture post-1985 are lacking.

But let's put this defect aside. After all, we can still read with pleasure Orwell's 1984 (1949), a book Duchamp seeks to emulate, despite Orwell's by-now antique tech. There are still many other problems here.

First is the utter lack of understanding Duchamp exhibits about the infrastructure of her—of any—technological civilization. For a writer who is intent on anatomizing society, this is fatal. The aliens completely wipe out all transportation, power, communication, data files, agriculture and utilities across the globe. This results in "thousands" of deaths, not billions. A year later, everything is puttering along as if it were 1930 and the Depression had just happened. Compare this to a similar scenario in S.M. Stirling's recent series, which resulted in the utter collapse of planetary society, and ask which is more realistic.

Again, let's put this aside as an arguable matter. We're still left with the worst aspects of the book: the boring, tendentious agitprop and the cardboard characters. These are insufferable.

Duchamp makes a host of bad decisions. She removes the aliens almost entirely from the second volume, giving us no chance to further understand them. She expects us to care about Kay's husband and his peril when he's been onstage about five seconds in both books. She spends hundreds of pages on Kay's brainwashing, a lame Story of O (1954) imitation without any kick of actual sex, when she could have detailed the brutalization in a fraction of the space. And so forth. All in frequently clumsy prose: "Martha put what her mother had called 'elbow grease' into her fingers, where the beans had burned to the bottom of the pan." And this next sentence represents a human, not an alien, talking: "'You know that in restaurants and in houses where people can afford such things there are lots of dishwashers that combine heat, chemicals and water to be extremely efficient ...'"

I am uncertain what normally infallible blurber Samuel Delany saw in this book that made him recommend it, other than good intentions. But being on the side of the angels is not the same as writing a compelling novel.