The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin - by Lisa Yaszek (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Bending and stretching its conventions to imagine new, more feminist futures and new ways of experiencing gender, visionary women writers have been from the beginning an essential if often overlooked force in American science fiction. Two hundred years after Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, SF-expert Lisa Yaszek presents the best of this female tradition, from the pioneers of the Pulp Era to the radical innovators of the 1960s New Wave, in a landmark anthology that upends the common notion that SF was conceived by and for men. Here are 25 mind-blowing SF classics that still shock and inspire: Judith Merril and Wilmar H. Shiras's startling near-future stories of the children of the new atomic age; Carol Emshwiller and Sonya Dorman's haunting explorations of alien otherness; dystopian fables of consumerism and overpopulation by Elizabeth Mann Borgese and Alice Glaser; evocations of cosmic horror from Margaret St. Clair and Andrew North (Andre Norton); and much more. Other writers here take on some of SF's sexist clichâes and boldly rethink sex and gender from the ground up. C. L. Moore and Leslie Perri introduce courageous, unforgettable "sheroes"; Alice Eleanor Jones sounds a housewife's note of protest against the conformities of life in a postapocalyptic suburb; Leslie F. Stone envisions an interplanetary battle of the sexes, in which the matriarchs of Venus ward off unprovoked attacks by barbaric spacemen from Earth; John Jay Wells and Marion Zimmer Bradley wonder how future military men will feel about their pregnancies. The Future Is Female! is a star-spanning, soul-stirring, multidimensional voyage of literary-feminist exploration and recovery that will permanently alter your perceptions of American SF."--Publisher's website.

Book Synopsis

Space-opera heroines, gender-bending aliens, post-apocalyptic pregnancies, changeling children, interplanetary battles of the sexes, and much more: a groundbreaking new collection of classic American science fiction by women from the 1920s to the 1960s

SF-expert Lisa Yaszek presents the biggest and best survey of the female tradition in American science fiction ever published, a thrilling collection of twenty-five classic tales. From Pulp Era pioneers to New Wave experimentalists, here are over two dozen brilliant writers ripe for discovery and rediscovery, including Leslie F. Stone, Judith Merril, Leigh Brackett, Kit Reed, Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr., and Ursula K. Le Guin. Imagining strange worlds and unexpected futures, looking into and beyond new technologies and scientific discoveries, in utopian fantasies and tales of cosmic horror, these women created and shaped speculative fiction as surely as their male counterparts. Their provocative, mind-blowing stories combine to form a thrilling multidimensional voyage of literary-feminist exploration and recovery.

CONTENTS
Introduction by LISA YASZEK

CLARE WINGER HARRIS The Miracle of the Lily (1928)

LESLIE F. STONE The Conquest of Gola (1931)

C. L. MOORE The Black God's Kiss (1934)

LESLIE PERRI Space Episode (1941)

JUDITH MERRIL That Only a Mother (1948)

WILMAR H. SHIRAS In Hiding (1948)

KATHERINE MACLEAN Contagion (1950)

MARGARET ST. CLAIR The Inhabited Men (1951)

ZENNA HENDERSON Ararat (1952)

ANDREW NORTH All Cats Are Gray (1953)

ALICE ELEANOR JONES Created He Them (1955)

MILDRED CLINGERMAN Mr. Sakrison's Halt (1956)

LEIGH BRACKETT All the Colors of the Rainbow (1957)

CAROL EMSHWILLER Pelt (1958)

ROSEL GEORGE BROWN Car Pool (1959)

ELISABETH MANN BORGESE For Sale, Reasonable (1959)

DORIS PITKIN BUCK Birth of a Gardner (1961)

ALICE GLASER The Tunnel Ahead (1961)

KIT REED The New You (1962)

JOHN JAY WELLS & MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY Another Rib (1963)

SONYA DORMAN When I Was Miss Dow (1966)

KATE WILHELM Baby, You Were Great (1967)

JOANNA RUSS The Barbarian (1968)

JAMES TIPTREE JR. The Last Flight of Dr. Ain (1969)

URSULA K. LE GUIN Nine Lives (1969)

Review Quotes

"Make no mistake: The quality of the stories here is unassailable." -Kirkus Reviews

"Valuable ... educational and enjoyable, a significant retrospective of science fiction's foremothers." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An impressive and super fun-to-read collection that's well worth picking up, and what it will leave you with (other than the notion that the future ain't what it used to be) is the sense that women have always been into sci-fi--and they've been good at it." --Marie Claire

"Lisa Yaszek's fascinating and well-researched anthology presents a trove of writers who helped define the genre...what all the stories have in common is sheer readability and a delicious sense of discovery." --Gary K. Wolfe, The Chicago Tribune

About the Author

Lisa Yaszek, editor, is Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and past president of the Science Fiction Research Association. She is the author of Galactic Suburbia: Recovering Women's Science Fiction (2008), and coeditor of Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction (2016); she currently serves as a juror for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for the Best Speculative Story of the Year.