The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

I've had this book on my shelf for a long time but it hasn't been so long that the stories have become dated. That is sometimes the problem with older science fiction. It's probably a testament to these writers that their stories have stood the test of time.

The list of authors is pretty astounding. Probably the best known would be Ursula K. Le Guin who wrote speculative fiction for over 60 years. The story included here might have been one of the last she wrote since she died in 2018. I probably recognized less than half of the authors (Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okrafor, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, Hao Jingfang, Nancy Kress, Kameron Hurley, Nisi Shawl) so the rest were a welcome discovery for me. It was great that the editor chose show more writers from all over the world. There were writers from The Phillippines, India, New Zealand, England, Greece, Jamaica, France, China, Canada, Sweden, Australia, Argentina, Thailand, and, of course, the USA.

My favourite story was Astrophilia by Carrie Vaughan. It is a post-apocalyptic world where most people survive as farmers. They have to be profitable in order to be able to have children; until they are people have birth control implants. A young woman from a farm that was not profitable has just moved to one that is doing well. She is a skilled weaver so her contribution to the farm is valuable. The last thing she expects is to fall in love but the more she gets to know the woman with whom she shares a room, the more she is attracted to her. Their relationship blossoms, especially after she saves the telescope that is her lover's passion.

The most disturbing story was The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finlay in which a man who was always taking pictures and showing up at weddings and funerals is found dead by two young children. They realize that Sugar Daddy was responsible for holding their world together and his death and destruction of his documentation could spell the end unless they can save everything.

Some other authors I would like to read more of are: Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, E. Lily Yu, Genvieve Valentine, and Karin Tidbeck. Hope I can remember their names. show less

This book gets almost a solid 'WTF?'
I thought 3 stories good, and a few ok, the rest pretty much gave me a headache from my eyes being crinkled at the WTF'ness of them.

This was an interesting collection of stories. Some were not to my taste, but I really enjoyed the ones by Lucy Sussex, Alice Sola Kim, Nardi Okorafor, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Zen Cho, Carrie Vaughn, Hao Jingfang, Shira Linkin, Kameron Hurley, Aliette deBodard, and Cat Valente.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3715215.html

This one contains 33 excellent stories by women writers, a couple of which I already knew, some of which were new to me, all reprints and almost all good. A casual reference to a distant relative of mine in Karen Joy Fowler's "The Science of Herself" prompted me to do some family research; I particularly liked Ekaterina Sedia's "A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas"; but basically I was kicking myself for having acquired this way back in 2014 and not yet read it.

I can see why this was for sale second-hand. Most of the stories are dull, some not even remotely science-fiction. I would have felt aggrieved if I'd payed full price for this.

“Girl Hours” by Sofia Samatar - dreadful, amateurish
“Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang” by Kristin Mandigma - poor
“Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra” by Vandana Singh - dull, didn't finish
“The Queen of Erewhon” by Lucy Sussex - dull
“Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine’s Day” by Tori Truslow - dull
“Spider the Artist” by Nnedi Okorafor - ok
“The Science of Herself” by Karen Joy Fowler - dull
“The Other Graces” by Alice Sola Kim - quite good but would have worked just as well without the "science-fiction" element.
“Boojum” by show more Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette - already read, excellent
“The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul” by Natalia Theodoridou - dull
“Mountain Ways” by Ursula K. Le Guin - already read, dull
“Tan-Tan and Dry Bone” by Nalo Hopkinson - already read, ok
“The Four Generations of Chang E” by Zen Cho - dull
“Stay Thy Flight” by Élisabeth Vonarburg - don't care for her work so didn't read
“Astrophilia” by Carrie Vaughn - ok
“Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang - dull, didn't finish
“On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse” by Nicole Kornher-Stace - ok
“Valentines” by Shira Lipkin - excellent
“Dancing in the Shadow of the Once” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Ej-Es” by Nancy Kress - already read, ok
“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu - already read, dull
“The Death of Sugar Daddy” by Toiya Kristen Finley
“Enyo-Enyo” by Kameron Hurley
“Semiramis” by Genevieve Valentine
“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard - already read, excellent
“Down the Wall” by Greer Gilman - already read, dull
“Sing” by Karin Tidbeck - ok
“Good Boy” by Nisi Shawl - dull, didn't finish
“The Second Card of the Major Arcana” by Thoraiya Dyer
“A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Vector” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
“Concerning the Unchecked Growth of Cities” by Angélica Gorodischer
The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew” by Catherynne M. Valente show less