Issue 22: Women Destroy [Retro\ Sci-Fi!!!

[Table of Contents with links follows editorial]

Editorial:

To write as a woman is to invite speculation even to this day, so it is only fitting that women write speculative fiction. Back in the early days of science fiction, in order to get published or taken seriously, many women had to either use male pen names (James Tiptree, Jr.) or vague and indeterminate initials (C.L. Moore). I myself use the elusive mixture of a non-binary abbreviation, and I’ve recently added my childhood nickname to my spec fic submissions. In this issue we have a writer who uses a male pen name, and I have written and published under a male pseudonym as well (Ramsey Lyons was one of my monikers from my early writing days). 

There were those sheroes who used their own names (Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ) and we are grateful for all of these pioneering women writers who broke the stereotypes and norms of gender roles to be able to present their stories of other worlds. Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree, Jr.) for the longest time had a special Hugo Award named in her honor for fiction that told gender in new and interesting ways. Her short story “Love is the Plan the Plan is Death” is one of the most gripping accounts of alien survival I’ve ever read, and also one with hot (but kind of violent) alien sex. She published this story in 1973, when women were starting to become more widely published, but the stories from her heyday in sci-fi were some wonderful works of gender rights philosophy (many attributed her work as male writing from feminist perspectives). 

I have always wanted to do a tribute to these early women science fiction writers. And I decided it would publish in February, the month the Tiptree Award (now called the Otherwise award) was first established in February 1991, introduced as a new science fiction award category at WisCon (the world’s largest feminist-oriented science fiction convention)

In this issue we have women writers writing women futures from all kinds of points of view. An ageless eternal oracle sick to death of men of war. A space captain who always gets her man, whether he likes it or not. A futuristic female Sam Spade; and another future rookie cop who needs to solve a strange murder. A female robot who is a femme fatale. There’s something for everyone to like: dark fantasy, space detectives, steampunk, and there may be a space werewolf (the origin of the name of this magazine comes from a “werewolf in space” idea I had...once upon a fullish moon). 

I hope you enjoy these stories from the pens of women speculative fiction authors. I know I did. 

~M.X. Reo Kelly

Table of Contents:


The Stories:


Manifest Destiny and the Iceland Girl, by B.J. Thrower
Negotiations, by Sonia Focke
The Last Sybil, by Russell Hemmell
A Cracked Teapot, by Sherry Shahan
Decade City Blues, by Amanda Ellis
The Clockwork Gorilla, by Rainie Zenith
The Lady Anarchist Café, by Lorraine Schein
Black Hole Versus Banoffee Pie, by Maureen Bowden
Don’t Hate Me ‘Cause I’m Beautiful, by Rebecca Fraser
The Unfolding, by M A Smith
To Catch a Chameleon, by Lisa Timpf
Garnet City, by Monica Joyce Evans
Favor, by Shannon Phillips
Captain's Claim, by Susan Murrie Macdonald
From Above, by Donna J. W. Munro

Editor's Picks:

Negotiations, by Sonia Focke
The Last Sybil, by Russell Hemmel
Manifest Destiny and the Iceland Girl, by B.J. Thrower
A Cracked Teapot, by Sherry Shahan
Favor, by Shannon Phillips
From Above, by Donna J. W. Munro