The Future Is Female! 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin: A Library of America Special Publication (Hardcover)

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)

Reviews

“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.