Athena Andreadis

It took me several months to read this, starting with a NetGalley review copy and then from a copy I purchased when the review copy expired, but that doesn't reflect on the quality at all- it generally takes me quite a while to get through short story anthologies for some reason. This was a solid anthology, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for science fiction stories with plausible science or interesting imagined cultures (sometimes both).

Vandana Singh's "Sailing the Antarsa" is a show more lovely space exploration story that's definitely on my list of favorite short fiction, and though Nisi Shawl's "In Colors Everywhere" was a little hard to follow, being a sequel to a story I haven't read, a passing scene where the point of view character sees a person undressed and so doesn't know what gender they are made me question the way I think about gender and its relation to the body. Aliette de Bodard's "The Waiting Stars" was very good as I have come to expect from her Xuya stories, and Martha Wells' "Mimesis" has me looking forward to reading more about the Raksura in The Cloud Roads when I get there.

Melissa Scott's "Finders," one of my main reasons for picking the collection up, was a little disappointing (specifically the ending), but it had an interesting setting with one of the really neat technology ideas I like in Scott's work; Sue Lange's "Mission of Greed" and Jack McDevitt's "Cathedral" were the only stories in the collection that didn't really work for me. show less

An anthology of sf stories with non-male protagonists.
A mixed bag, really. Some good stories, some not-so-good, some clever and interesting, but a fair few unoriginal ones as well.
As usual, individual story ratings below:

- Dreaming The Dark, by Athena Andreadis
Too much of a rant about why more diversity is needed in sf, even if the editor is not wrong.

- Finders, by Melissa Scott (****)
A fairly long action-packed story in a world that clearly has a lot more back-story than is shown here.

- Bad show more Day on Boscobel, by Alexander Jablokov (***.5)

- In Colors Everywhere, by Nisi Shawl (***)

- Mission of Greed, by Sue Lange (**)

- Sailing the Antarsa, by Vandana Singh (****)
A poetic exploration of a beautiful universe.

- Landfall, by Joan Slonczewski (**)

- This Alakie and the Death of Dima, by Terry Boren (**)

- The Waiting Stars, by Aliette de Bodard (***)
Interesting start, disappointing finish.

- The Shape of Thought, by Ken Liu (***)
The characters are a bit one-dimensional but otherwise a fine story.

- Under Falna's Mask, by Alex Dally MacFarlane (***)

- Mimesis, by Martha Wells (****)

- Velocity's Ghost, by Kelly Jennings (***)

- Exit, Interrupted, by C. W. Johnson (***)

- Dagger and Mask, by Cat Rambo (***)

- Ouroboros, by Christine Lucas (**)

- Cathedral, by Jack McDevitt (****) show less

This is a collection of brilliant stories. I'd only read one of the authors here collected before (Martha Wells - her story was actually what led me to purchase the book), but I'm now going looking for several of the others. In particular Nisi Shawl, whose In Colours Everywhere caught my attention and left me with a lot of interesting thoughts and a desire to see more of this world. Vandana Singh's Sailing the Antarsa was an amazingly poetic exploration story, and another culture whose show more stories I would love to know better. Jack McDermitt's Cathedral put me back in touch with my own childhood dreams of space exploration, and Ken Liu's The Shape of Thought had me reflecting on communication and cultural contamination in ways I never have before. Martha Well's Raksura story Mimesis was everything I expected from her and more.

Terry Boren's This Alakie and the Death of Dima is the only I story I truly disliked, although a couple (Sue Lange's Mission of Greed and Kelly Jenning's Velocity's Ghost) left me fairly neutral.

Overall, though, an exceptional collection of stories. It's tales like this that remind me how thoroughly I lost my heart and mind to science fiction back when, and wonder why I lost touch with it to such an extent that so many of the authors are unfamiliar to me. And now I have several new authors to search out. show less

Most of the stories in this anthology reflect the theme admirably, and are in the good-t-excellent category. And most of these are at a minimum very good.

Both the introduction and the first story were excellent, and there were many other excellent stories throughout the volume. I'm giving it 5 stars on this account.

There were 3 stories I had problems with:

Cat Rambo's "Dagger and Mask" was an excellent story... but was almost 100% POV of a male character, which seemed to me to go against the show more grain of the anthology's theme.

And I plumb hated Terry Boren's "This Alakie and the Death of Dima". The set-up or world-building was completely obscure, and the story was written with such odd language that it made it pretty much impossible for me to figure out what was going on. Perhaps in something of novel length one could- if one cared to persist- learn how to read the really odd language... but in a short story which ALSO had a completely alien context- it was just incomprehensible, and even though I'm a completist, I gave up on this one about halfway through.

I also did not much like that Joan Slonczewski's "Landfall" was clearly a chapter in a novel; there was not a coherent plot arc in the selection, and one both starts and ends in the middle of things that are not at all explained. A chapter of a novel does not in general make a good short story.

Despite these 3 selections, the rest of the stories ranged from good to excellent, with most being at least very good. Very recommended if you are sick of the boy's club that often describes SF. show less