![]() ![]() In her introduction to the anthology, editor Alex Dally MacFarlane states that she wanted to take a snapshot of where science fiction – and by implication, science fiction written by women – is at at the present moment, the multiplicity and variety of worlds it seeks to inhabit. The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women does all these things. The individual pieces should be strong in themselves, but they should also add up to something. For me, an anthology should say something – about the theme or title of the book, about the writers who’ve been gathered together. What you get is a kind of grab-bag of odds and ends, with no real sense that the stories belong together, or make a coherent statement as a group. My own pet peeve with anthologies is that they often lack cohesion. You get a couple of truly standout stories, a turkey or two maybe, and a whole bunch of what you might call so-so stories, enjoyable enough at the time of reading but not all that memorable. One of the problems with many anthologies – and the reason, I guess, why people often admit to only dipping into them rather than reading them through from cover to cover as unified texts – is that of unevenness. ![]()
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