Scan barcode
marthe1998's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny
jonmhansen's review
3.0
Decent anthology. I rather liked Cassandra Khaw's story, "There Are Wolves in These Woods." YMMV.
leelulah's review
2.0
Free book!
Read for The Literary Life Podcast: 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge.
7. A Collection of Short Stories
The first two stories were good, but not much of it is..... well, not that groundbreaking. Becky Chambers' story was great as well.
I was thinking that Anne Charnock's story is potentially dangerous considering the mainstream "feminist" bent of the collection, given that she presents "bottle" babies, that is, babies developing in artificial wombs through normal, IVF or parthogenesis conceptions as victims of a selfish desire of parents who either wish to become single parents, have kids with no genetical trace of their own, such a desire is explicitly shown as eugenics and not altruistic at all. Sure, women are not used as "wombs" anymore (in reference to surrogacy).
Does that ease the feeling that this is business seeing kids as products and heavilly catering to consumer's needs, evading the responsibility when the background for adoption is too difficult to bear? Charnock's answer seems to be a resounding "no".
Read for The Literary Life Podcast: 20 for 2020 Reading Challenge.
7. A Collection of Short Stories
The first two stories were good, but not much of it is..... well, not that groundbreaking. Becky Chambers' story was great as well.
I was thinking that Anne Charnock's story is potentially dangerous considering the mainstream "feminist" bent of the collection, given that she presents "bottle" babies, that is, babies developing in artificial wombs through normal, IVF or parthogenesis conceptions as victims of a selfish desire of parents who either wish to become single parents, have kids with no genetical trace of their own, such a desire is explicitly shown as eugenics and not altruistic at all. Sure, women are not used as "wombs" anymore (in reference to surrogacy).
Does that ease the feeling that this is business seeing kids as products and heavilly catering to consumer's needs, evading the responsibility when the background for adoption is too difficult to bear? Charnock's answer seems to be a resounding "no".
vroodles's review
5.0
Every story in this anthology is an amazing hit, each one deserves a place on my favorites. Just pure, excellent, beautiful scifi.
octavia_cade's review
3.0
Honestly, I was expecting a little more from this. From the most literal perspective, I suppose it does what it says on the tin. This small anthology, consisting of six stories and a poem, is indeed a collection of sci-fi stories set in the future, and they are all written by women. That said, when you have a title like that, you are given to expect, I think, some sort of reason behind it. The introduction is all about encouraging diversity in tech, in getting more women into STEM, so you would think that the stories would have a strong focus on gender, on how women authors and characters both interact with potential futures; how they are affected by them, how they come up against expectation. And a couple of the stories - by Khaw and Ashby - do do this, but the rest are a little more mish-mash, and a little less concerned with theme. (This doesn't necessarily make these other stories bad. The one stand-out of the collection, "Chrysalis" by Becky Chambers, was excellent, but it was also a story where genders could have been changed without any impact on plot or theme.)
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the anthology, but if you're going to set up an anthology around a central conceit, as this does, don't go milquetoast on it... go the whole hog. An anthology like this should have been innovative and cutting and confronting, a range of stories with the punch of Khaw's... but it wasn't.
Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the anthology, but if you're going to set up an anthology around a central conceit, as this does, don't go milquetoast on it... go the whole hog. An anthology like this should have been innovative and cutting and confronting, a range of stories with the punch of Khaw's... but it wasn't.
sadie_slater's review
3.0
Women Invent the Future is an anthology of SF by women writers produced by the responsible technology think-tank doteveryone and made available for free, either as an ebook or as a print copy in return for postage. I can't remember exactly when I downloaded my copy, but I decided to give it a go this weekend as it was the first unread book on my Kindle and I thought it might be easier to read short stories than to try to concentrate on the plot of a novel while I was at Eastercon.
There are six stories and one poem in the anthology, as well as an introduction from space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock on women, science and science fiction. Madeline Ashby's 'A Cure for Jet Lag' is set at a party in a near-future Los Angeles and looks at business relationships in the world of tech start-ups; Anne Charnock's 'The Adoption' is about parenthood and the possibilities of reproductive technology; Becky Chambers' 'Chrysalis' is about a mother letting her daughter follow her dreams of space exploration; Liz Williams' 'In the God-Fields' is a sweeping post-human interstellar epic; and Walidah Imarisha's poem 'Androids Dream of Electric Freedom' is a re-imagining of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in verse. My favourite stories were Molly Flatt's 'A Darker Wave', an examination of the possibilities of neurotechnology which is also a reworking of Macbeth, and Cassandra Khaw's 'There are Wolves in These Woods', a lyrical fairy-tale about women using technology to identify and avoid predatory men.
There are six stories and one poem in the anthology, as well as an introduction from space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock on women, science and science fiction. Madeline Ashby's 'A Cure for Jet Lag' is set at a party in a near-future Los Angeles and looks at business relationships in the world of tech start-ups; Anne Charnock's 'The Adoption' is about parenthood and the possibilities of reproductive technology; Becky Chambers' 'Chrysalis' is about a mother letting her daughter follow her dreams of space exploration; Liz Williams' 'In the God-Fields' is a sweeping post-human interstellar epic; and Walidah Imarisha's poem 'Androids Dream of Electric Freedom' is a re-imagining of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in verse. My favourite stories were Molly Flatt's 'A Darker Wave', an examination of the possibilities of neurotechnology which is also a reworking of Macbeth, and Cassandra Khaw's 'There are Wolves in These Woods', a lyrical fairy-tale about women using technology to identify and avoid predatory men.
dansumption's review
5.0
I loved this short anthology of stories (and one poem) by women authors. As science fiction's artefacts, technologies, and ways of perceiving the future start to leak into our present—from Star Trek's communicators to the interfaces used in The Minority Report, from mass surveillance of China's citizens to attempts to colonise Mars—this collection aims to bring womens' imaginings of the future to this so-far almost exclusively male canon.
It is far more than tokenism though. The stories are some of the best Sci-Fi I have read recently. They all differ greatly from one-another, in setting, style and vision. My favourite of the lot is Cassandra Khaw's There Are Wolves In These Woods, which envisages an illegal, neurally implanted, women-only social network, which allows women to keep one another warned about and protected from potential predators.
The book is available as a free download from http://doteveryone.org.uk/ and it's well worth anyone's time to download and read it.
It is far more than tokenism though. The stories are some of the best Sci-Fi I have read recently. They all differ greatly from one-another, in setting, style and vision. My favourite of the lot is Cassandra Khaw's There Are Wolves In These Woods, which envisages an illegal, neurally implanted, women-only social network, which allows women to keep one another warned about and protected from potential predators.
The book is available as a free download from http://doteveryone.org.uk/ and it's well worth anyone's time to download and read it.