The Wanderground is a feminist classic that deserves a fresh reading. In these linked stories, Sally Gearhart portrays a futuristic lesbian utopia where women can communicate telepathically with each other, as well as with plants and animals. The women in the community of Wanderground raise children collectively, choose to die when they think it is time, and heal physical wounds by inducing their own bloodletting. While at first glance this book may appear to be a naive science fiction-romance, the ideas in it are quite prescient. Many of the terms in
The Wanderground--
learntogether,
listenspread--are compound words coined by Gearhart to suggest forms of communication that seemed impossible in the late 1970s, but that have become common in the age of the Internet. Gearhart's text foresaw that a world in which lesbians can live safely and independently is also a world in which communication does not require the physical presence of the body.
