Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear: The Mother of All Anthologies

This book is subtitled "The mother of all anthologies" and it is, unsurprisingly, full of stories about mothers (in one way or another). There are overbearing mothers, disappointed mothers, controlling mothers, and at least two AI-run-amok mothers; I wish there were more good/nice/loving mothers, but maybe it's harder to make that dramatic. As with all anthologies, there are a mixture of stories, some good, some less so. My favorites were by Elizabeth Moon and Diane Duane.

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did - it's a real disappointment. Focussing on mothers as a theme for a science fiction collection should have produced some really interesting stories. Unfortunately this, it seems, is not a collection of previously-published stories but a commissioned anthology where someone decides on a theme and asks writers to produce stories around it.

Most of the writers (including many who I know are capable of much better) have taken a stereotypical or hackneyed view of the theme. The mothers here are sitcom characters, or mothers viewed through a simplistic child's lens - scolding mothers, ambitious mothers, caring mothers - but all of them are cardboard characters (as are most of the others.) The show more science fiction setting is often pointless or incidental and as such I think very few of these stories qualify as science fiction by the usual definitions. (And some are firmly in the genre of fantasy rather than SF.)

A handful of stories rise above this to the level of average but there is little or nothing to recommend this book. show less

Not the best anthology ever but by far one that was far more diverse in how each contributor approached the theme. Spies and poems and engineers and underwear lovers and cats...seriously, this had some out there stories.

I enjoyed this collection of science fiction stories with a maternal theme. My favorites included Jody Lynn Nye's "What's the Magic Word?" and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's "Don't Go Out in Holy Underwear."

An anthology collection with mothers as the main theme.

There really isn't much for me to say about this one. This is the sort of book that stopped me reading themed anthologies back in the day. There were way to many bad to weak stories to make up for the few good ones. I didn't hate this book, mostly I was just very disappointed in it.