Scan barcode
A review by arachne_reads
The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women by Alex Dally MacFarlane
5.0
This collection is solid, a well-chosen list of some of the best SF I've set my eyeballs on. I think it was a bold move to lead the collection with verse (Girl Hours), but it set the tone for some strange and delicious pieces.
One of the bigger threads throughout many of the selected stories is the question of what happens to one's society and the culturally constructed self in the face of the colonial entity, the power which strips bare and forces new norms. The answers vary, each holding up a new facet when that thread reappears. And not all the works explore those waters. I think as a reader, this is what my antennae are extended to listen for, and so when I find such a rich array of them, that is where I am.
I have come away with some new favorite authors, and I must go inhale all the work in translation that I can find of Hao Jingfang, I have to roll around in Nnedi Okorafor (how, how have I not approached her work before? It was everywhere around me, and yet other things have just always risen to the top of my reading list), and devour all the fiction of E. Lily Yu.
One of the bigger threads throughout many of the selected stories is the question of what happens to one's society and the culturally constructed self in the face of the colonial entity, the power which strips bare and forces new norms. The answers vary, each holding up a new facet when that thread reappears. And not all the works explore those waters. I think as a reader, this is what my antennae are extended to listen for, and so when I find such a rich array of them, that is where I am.
I have come away with some new favorite authors, and I must go inhale all the work in translation that I can find of Hao Jingfang, I have to roll around in Nnedi Okorafor (how, how have I not approached her work before? It was everywhere around me, and yet other things have just always risen to the top of my reading list), and devour all the fiction of E. Lily Yu.