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A review by sadie_slater
Women Invent the Future: A Science Fiction Anthology by Becky Chambers, Walidah Imarisha, Liz Williams, Maggie Aderin-Pocock, Madeline Ashby, Cassandra Khaw, Anne Charnock, Molly Flatt
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.