Lisa Yaszek

The Future Is Female 2! 20 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women Writers of the 1970s

Shona Tiger

Thank you to NetGalley and to the Library of America for this wonderful eARC.

I’ve been reading a lot of women’s fiction lately—the proper definition, as in, fiction written by women, and not the other, silly definition. I have not, traditionally, been terribly interested in old sci-fi, finding it stilted, racist, and sexist. Admittedly, I had mostly been reading Western white men, and then the one book by Ursula the Great (which I loved). So I was curious to read this collection, particularly because these stories are from the Seventies, roughly at the beginning of second-wave feminism. Some of the authors included here are also quite famous, so this was a great way to be introduced to their writing.

Although I didn’t like every single story—usual when one reads an anthology—I found this collection refreshing and thoughtful in all of the right ways. Much more importantly, this was fun (sometimes laugh-out-loud funny). Women, girls and non-binary people are doing all kinds of things here: living, growing old, sometimes dying, existing, having offspring, growing up, saving the world or not, cleaning or not, pairing up or not, escaping, being adopted, migrating, leaving. So much womanhood, ordinary and extraordinary, presented in interesting ways.

I am a sci-fi fan, so this works out to be my kind of thing. If you’re not, you can still read this for what sci-fi is really good at: between its lines, challenging the status quo, which is what these authors achieved. Lisa Yaszek’s introduction to the anthology is also excellent. I will be reading the first volume (2018) for completeness.

These were my favourite stories:

Kate Wilhelm The Funeral (1972)
Miriam Allen Deford A Way Out (1973)
Vonda N. Mcintyre Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand (1973)
James Tiptree, Jr. The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)
Pamela Sargent If Ever I Should Leave You (1974/77)
Doris Piserchia Pale Hands (1974)
Ursula K. Le Guin The Day Before the Revolution (1974)
Eleanor Arnason The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons (1974)
Marta Randall A Scarab in the City of Time (1975)
Kathleen M. Sidney The Anthropologist (1975)
Raccoona Sheldon The Screwfly Solution (1977)

My rating: 8/10

The Future Is Female 2! 20 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women Writers of the 1970s

Reviews