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A review by pastathief
Fat Girl in a Strange Land by Rick Silva, Sabrina Vourvoulias, Jennifer Brozek, Katharine Elmer, Bonnie Ferrante, Josh Roseman, Barbara Krasnoff, Brian Jungwiwattanaporn, Anna Caro, A.J. Fitzwater, Nicole Prestin, Kay T. Holt, Lauren C. Teffeau, Bart R. Leib, Pete Patch Alberti
2.0
As with all collections of short stories, this one is variable. There were a few stories that I really enjoyed, which is why I couldn't quite give it one star. However, when it "missed", at least for me, it missed by a lot.
I bought this as part of an ebook bundle at WisCon (a feminist SF/F convention). Because of the context, the normal wariness I might have had was dulled, and I expected a great set of stories about fat women being awesome, probably in space (the cover features a spacesuited woman).
Unfortunately, what I got instead was mostly depressing stories about people hating their fatness, achieving things (when they did achieve things) despite being fat instead of just while being fat, and a whole heap of stereotypes about fat people. I started getting the vibe that none or few of the authors were actually fat women, and instead this is what you'd get if you asked a bunch of people to posit what it's like to be a fat person. Virtually every character in the book is friendless, single, lonely, despised by everyone around them, deeply unhappy, and eats to compensate for it.
And that's just the ones that are just disappointing as opposed to those that are actively offensive. Such as the story about two fat women being hired to perform covert operations in virtual reality because in the VR world they're to infiltrate, key assets are (for whatever reason) always modelled as copious amounts of decadent food, and the military special ops agents, being health nuts, wouldn't be able to force themselves to eat and eat enough, even in a simulation, whereas the military figures these women will be all-star eaters. And, of course, they are -- their first mission involves one of them fending off a virtual snake while the other eats and entire cake. Of course, the defender eventually decides that her gun isn't effective enough and just eats the snake. And so on.
There's another story, even earlier on, that's entirely about a person who has to gain weight for a specific mission that occurs on a very cold planet and about how much they hate being fat. It ends not with them coming to terms with it, but with them finally getting through the mission and being intensely relieved to be losing the weight again, while pitying whoever gets assigned to the duty next for having to go through the ordeal.
So... yeah. Overall I was not pleased with this collection at all, despite a few gems. I've still got a few other collections from the same publisher to check out. I'm hoping they'll be better.
I bought this as part of an ebook bundle at WisCon (a feminist SF/F convention). Because of the context, the normal wariness I might have had was dulled, and I expected a great set of stories about fat women being awesome, probably in space (the cover features a spacesuited woman).
Unfortunately, what I got instead was mostly depressing stories about people hating their fatness, achieving things (when they did achieve things) despite being fat instead of just while being fat, and a whole heap of stereotypes about fat people. I started getting the vibe that none or few of the authors were actually fat women, and instead this is what you'd get if you asked a bunch of people to posit what it's like to be a fat person. Virtually every character in the book is friendless, single, lonely, despised by everyone around them, deeply unhappy, and eats to compensate for it.
And that's just the ones that are just disappointing as opposed to those that are actively offensive. Such as the story about two fat women being hired to perform covert operations in virtual reality because in the VR world they're to infiltrate, key assets are (for whatever reason) always modelled as copious amounts of decadent food, and the military special ops agents, being health nuts, wouldn't be able to force themselves to eat and eat enough, even in a simulation, whereas the military figures these women will be all-star eaters. And, of course, they are -- their first mission involves one of them fending off a virtual snake while the other eats and entire cake. Of course, the defender eventually decides that her gun isn't effective enough and just eats the snake. And so on.
There's another story, even earlier on, that's entirely about a person who has to gain weight for a specific mission that occurs on a very cold planet and about how much they hate being fat. It ends not with them coming to terms with it, but with them finally getting through the mission and being intensely relieved to be losing the weight again, while pitying whoever gets assigned to the duty next for having to go through the ordeal.
So... yeah. Overall I was not pleased with this collection at all, despite a few gems. I've still got a few other collections from the same publisher to check out. I'm hoping they'll be better.