The Gate to Women's Country

A 1988 novel by Sheri S. Tepper. A post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel set a couple of hundred years in the future after a nuclear war. Hundred of years after much of the land and most of the population are destroyed, a small community of survivors struggle to piece together a society that won't make the same mistakes. The community is divided into two parts: the Women's Country, who have faith in science; and the Men's Country, who have faith in combat.

---

The Gate To Women's Country contains examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Michael, Joshua, and Myra live alongside Chernon, Corrig, and Stavia.
• After the End
• Author Tract
• Beware the Nice Ones: Joshua and the servitors in general.
• Bittersweet Ending
• Black and Gray Morality
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Myra.
• Chekhov's Gun: The book about reindeer breeding.
• Circus Brat: The Bird family.
• Cure Your Gays: Before they're even born, by "correcting" any hormone imbalance in utero.
• Days of Future Past: The social structure of Women's Country borrows heavily from Ancient Greece.
• Dead Guy, Junior: Stavia's daughter Susannah is named for the Holyland woman who tried to help Stavia.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Corrig.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Women's Country keeps its weapons technology at the "swords and spears" level, out of fear that if one city had better weapons, it could start an arms race that would lead to another nuclear war.
• Feminist Fantasy
• Fiery Redhead: Myra.
• The Fundamentalist: The Holylanders are a whole society of them.
• Heir Club for Men: Played with. The women and men of the story live in different quarters, and when a male comes of age they must choose which quarter they permanently wish to live in. If they, for example, choose the men's quarter, then their mother can no longer claim them as an heir; if they choose the women's quarter, then the father no longer has fathership.
• How We Got Here
• Humans Are Bastards: And Women's Country intends to breed it out of them.
• In the Blood
• Jerkass: Most of the named warriors, to an absurd extent.
• Lady Land
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Joshua and Stavia.
• Monochrome Casting: It's pretty clear that the entire population of Women's Country is white. Might be justified by the fact that the Pacific Northwest was mostly white when the book was written, and three hundred years of isolation could have meant other races blended into the majority.
• Necessarily Evil: The Councilwomen, according to Morgot.
• No Woman's Land: Holyland, descended from the worst kind of Mormon fundamentalism.
• Show Within a Show: "Iphigenia at Illium".
• Single-Minded Twins: Kostia and Tonia.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Both the book and Women's Country itself are firmly on the cynicism side.
• Spider Sense
• Tap on the Head: Averted. Cappy Brome tries to play the trope straight when he whacks Stavia with a shovel, but ends up giving her a near-fatal brain injury.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Myra and Stavia.
• The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask: Morgot.
• Troubled but Cute: Chernon plays on this trope to woo Stavia.