Lightspeed Magazine, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue (Lightspeed Magazine, #49)

It could be said that women invented science fiction; after all, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is considered by many to be the first science fiction novel. Yet some readers seem to have this funny idea that women don’t, or can’t, write science fiction. Some have even gone so far as to accuse women of destroying science fiction with their girl cooties. So to help prove how silly that notion is, LIGHTSPEED's June 2014 issue is a Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue and has a guest editor at the helm.

The issue features original fiction by Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, N.K. Jemisin, Carrie Vaughn, Maria Dahvana Headley, Amal El-Mohtar, and many more. All together there's more than 180,000 words of material, including: 11 original short stories, 15 original flash fiction stories, 4 short story reprints and a novella reprint, 7 nonfiction articles, and 28 personal essays by women about their experiences reading and writing science fiction.

Table of Contents

FROM THE EDITORS

Editorial, June 2014: Women Destroy Science Fiction!

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES — edited by Christie Yant

Each to Each by Seanan McGuire
A Word Shaped Like Bones by Kris Millering
Cuts Both Ways by Heather Clitheroe
Walking Awake by N.K. Jemisin
The Case of the Passionless Bees by Rhonda Eikamp
In the Image of Man by Gabriella Stalker
The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick by Charlie Jane Anders
Dim Sun by Maria Dahvana Headley
The Lonely Sea in the Sky by Amal El-Mohtar
A Burglary, Addressed By a Young Lady by Elizabeth Porter Birdsall
Canth by K.C. Norton

REPRINTS — selected by Rachel Swirsky

Like Daughter by Tananarive Due
Love is the Plan the Plan is Death by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
The Great Loneliness by Maria Romasco Moore
Knapsack Poems by Eleanor Arnason
The Cost to Be Wise by Maureen F. McHugh (novella)

ORIGINAL FLASH FICTION — edited by Robyn Lupo

Salvage by Carrie Vaughn
A Guide to Grief by Emily Fox
See DANGEROUS EARTH-POSSIBLES! by Tina Connolly
A Debt Repaid by Marina J. Lostetter
The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced by Sarah Pinsker
#TrainFightTuesday by Vanessa Torline
The Hymn of Ordeal, No. 23 by Rhiannon Rasmussen
Emoticon by Anaid Perez
The Mouths by Ellen Denham
M1A by Kim Winternheimer
Standard Deviant by Holly Schofield
Getting on in Years by Cathy Humble
Ro-Sham-Bot by Effie Seiberg
Everything That Has Already Been Said by Samantha Murray
The Lies We Tell Our Children by Katherine Crighton

NONFICTION — edited by Wendy N. Wagner

Artists Spotlight by Galen Dara
Illusion, Expectation, and World Domination Through Bake Sales by Pat Murphy
Women Remember by Mary Robinette Kowal
Interview: Kelly Sue DeConnick by Jennifer Willis
How to Engineer a Self-Rescuing Princess by Stina Leicht
The Status Quo Cannot Hold by Tracie Welser
Screaming Together: Making Women’s Voices Heard by Nisi Shawl

PERSONAL ESSAYS — edited by Wendy N. Wagner

We are the Fifty Percent by Rachel Swirsky
Science Fiction: You’re Doin’ It Wrong by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Join Us in the Future Marissa Lingen
Are We There Yet? by Sheila Finch
Not a Spaceship, Robot, or Zombie in Sight by Anne Charnock
Writing Among the Beginning of Women by Amy Sterling Casil
Toward a Better Future by Nancy Jane Moore
We Are the Army of Women Destroying SF by Sandra Wickham
Read SF and You’ve Got a Posse by Gail Marsella
Stomp All Over That by O. J. Cade
For the Trailblazers by Kristi Charish
Women are the Future of Science Fiction by Juliette Wade
We Have Always Fought by Kameron Hurley
Writing Stories, Wrinkling Time by Kat Howard
Where Are My SF Books? by DeAnna Knippling
Reading the Library Alphabetically by Liz Argall
Stepping Through a Portal by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
The Wendybird by Stina Leicht
I Wanted to be the First Woman on the Moon by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
Never Think of Yourself as Less by Helena Bell
An ABC of Kickass by Jude Griffin
Stocking Stuffers by Anaea Lay
Breaching the Gap by Brooke Bolander
Women Who Are More Than Strong by Georgina Kamsika
A Science-Fictional Woman by Cheryl Morgan
Your Future is Out of Date, Pat Murphy
Stray Outside the Lines by E. Catherine Tobler
My Love Can Destroy by Seanan McGuire

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS — edited by Jude Griffin

Seanan McGuire
Kris Millering
Heather Clitheroe
N.K. Jemisin
Rhonda Eikamp
Tananarive Due
Gabriella Stalker
Charlie Jane Anders
Maria Dahvana Headley
Amal El-Mohtar
Elizabeth Porter Birdsall
K.C. Norton
Eleanor Arnason
Maria Romasco Moore
Maureen McHugh