cover image Women Destroy Science Fiction!

Women Destroy Science Fiction!

Edited by Christie Yant. Lightspeed (lightspeedmagazine.com), $15.99 trade paper (488p) ISBN 978-1-4995-0834-5

Responding to what Yant calls "the tired accusation that women (still) aren't writing %E2%80%98real' SF," this book-size special issue of the Hugo-nominated magazine Lightspeed bursts with worthy and often excellent fiction and essays. In Seanan McGuire's "Each to Each," women engineered to colonize the ocean, "the most valuable real estate in the world," transcend humanity while the land demands their loyalty. In K.C. Norton's "Canth", a woman pursues a submarine powered by her mother's heart. Amal El-Mohtar's "The Lonely Sea in the Sky," a tale of a scientist seduced by quantum-entangled diamonds, stylistically refracts like a gemstone, and Maria Dahvana Headley's progressively gonzo "Dim Sun" is an irreverent showdown in a celestial restaurant. N.K. Jemisin's "Walking Awake" freshens the familiar science-fictional territory of alien parasites. The anthology offers a generous helping of flash fiction, including Tina Connolly's "See DANGEROUS EARTH-POSSIBILES!," a riff on superhero origins, and Effie Seiberg's poignant "Ro-Sham-Bot." Also included are powerful reprints such as James Tiptree Jr.'s brilliant, difficult "Love is the Plan the Plan is Death" and personal meditations on what it means to be a female science fiction writer and consumer. Readers of any gender will savor these works and cheer the authors' triumphant refusal to be ignored or dismissed. (June)