New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow

by Forrest J. Ackerman (Editor), Janrae Frank (Editor), Jean Marie Stine (Editor)

The New Eves, the brave and innovative women writers of science fiction, have been challenging their readers for more than half a century to postulate a different kind of society, one where visionary women are nourished with forbidden knowledge and become the powerful leaders of a new kind of civilization.

Contains:
Friend island / Francis Stevens --
The man of stone / Hazel Heald --
The conquest of Gola / Leslie F. Stone --
Honeycombed satellite / Helen Weinbaum --
Space episode / Leslie Perri --
Water pirate / Leigh Brackett --
Aleph sub one / Margaret St. Clair --
Throwback / Miriam Allen deFord --
The Putnam tradition / Sonya Dorman --
All cats are gray / Andre Norton --
Subcommittee / Zenna Henderson --
Idol's eye / Carol Emshwiller --
The last day / Helen Clarkson --
The lady was a tramp / Judith Merril --
A peculiar people / Betsy Curtis --
The captain's mate / Evelyn E. Smith --
Sense of duty / Phyllis Eisenstein --
Bluewater dreams / Sydney J. Van Scyoc --
Death between the stars / Marion Zimmer Bradley --
The snows are melted, the snows are gone / James Tiptree, Jr. --
The last days of the captain / Kate Wilhelm --
Changeling / Anne McCaffrey --
Fears / Pamela Sargent --
Gleepsite / Joanna Russ --
Winter's king / Ursula K. Le Guin --
Symphony for a lost traveller / Lee Killough --
Speech sounds / Octavia E. Butler --
The missionary's child / Maureen F. McHugh --
A long way home / Shelia Finch --
The lake was full of artificial things / Karen Joy Fowler --
California dreamer / Mary Rosenblum --
Down behind Cuba lake / Nancy Kress --

Genres: Science Fiction, Anthologies, Short Stories, Womens, Feminism, Science Fiction Fantasy, Gender

427 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Forrest J Ackerman (born Forrest James Ackerman; November 24, 1916 – December 4, 2008) was an American collector of science fiction books and movie memorabilia and a science fiction fan. He was, for over seven decades, one of science fiction's staunchest spokesmen and promoters.

Ackerman was a Los Angeles, California-based magazine editor, science fiction writer and literary agent, a founder of science fiction fandom, a leading expert on science fiction and fantasy films, and possibly the world's most avid collector of genre books and movie memorabilia. He was the editor and principal writer of the American magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, as well as an actor, from the 1950s into the 1980s, and appears in two documentaries related to this period in popular culture: writer and filmmaker Jason V. Brock's The Ackermonster Chronicles!, (a 2012 documentary about Ackerman) and Charles Beaumont: The Life of Twilight Zone's Magic Man, about the late author Charles Beaumont, a former client of The Ackerman Agency.

Also called "Forry," "The Ackermonster," "4e" and "4SJ," Ackerman was central to the formation, organization, and spread of science fiction fandom, and a key figure in the wider cultural perception of science fiction as a literary, art and film genre. Famous for his word play and neologisms, he coined the genre nickname "sci-fi". In 1953, he was voted "#1 Fan Personality" by the members of the World Science Fiction Society, a unique Hugo Award never granted to anyone else.

He was also among the first and most outspoken advocates of Esperanto in the science fiction community.

Ackerman was born Forrest James Ackerman (though he would refer to himself from the early 1930s on as "Forrest J Ackerman" with no period after the middle initial), on November 24, 1916, in Los Angeles, to Carroll Cridland (née Wyman; 1883–1977) and William Schilling Ackerman (1892–1951). His father was from New York and his mother was from Ohio (the daughter of architect George Wyman); she was nine years older than William.[13] He attended the University of California at Berkeley for a year (1934–1935), worked as a movie projectionist, and spent three years in the U.S. Army after enlisting on August 15, 1942.

He was married to teacher and translator Wendayne (Wendy) Wahrman (1912–1990) until her death. Her original first name was Matilda; Forry created "Wendayne" for her. Wendayne suffered a serious head injury when she was violently mugged while on a trip to Europe in 1990, and the injury soon after led to her death.

Ackerman was fluent in the international language Esperanto, and claimed to have walked down Hollywood Boulevard arm-in-arm with Leo G. Carroll singing La Espero, the hymn of Esperanto.

Ackerman was an atheist.

More: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0009969/

http://fancyclopedia.org/forrest-j-ac...

http://www.amazon.com/Forrest-J.-Acke...

http://content.time.com/time/magazine...

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh why oh did I let go of my hardcover of this?! I recall that I enjoyed it then, and as I've become a much more experienced reader since then I want to try again, to get even more out of it. I'll have to break my budget and buy this and/or Future Eves: Classic Science Fiction about Women by Women, I guess!

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. It's a collection of a bunch of science fiction stories by women that I haven't already read in every other such anthology. With the exception of three stories (one being "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler), these stories were new to me.

However, most of the stories left me cold. The attempt to choose unfamiliar stories seems to have meant choosing less awesome stories. To my taste, the stories in the final section devoted to "The 80s and Beyond" were the best (including Lee Killough's "Symphony for a Lost Traveler," Maureen F. McHugh's "The Missionary's Child," and Karen Joy Fowler's "The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things"), but this is only a small portion of the book.

The biggest problem I had with this book, though, was not in the choice of stories included. The editing is just terrible. And it is terrible on multiple levels. The copyediting is terrible: there are so many typos, not just in the introductions to the stories but in the stories themselves, some of them even inhibiting the clarity of the narrative. The fact-checking is terrible: several stories are placed in one chronological section (say the 1960s and 1970s) but really belong in another, authors' names are misspelled or misrepresented, and some publication dates for stories are just wrong. And the writing is bad, too. On top of all of that, in a book devoted to women writers of science fiction, the presentation of feminism hews frighteningly close to negative anti-feminist stereotypes.

In short, I wouldn't recommend this book. If you are looking for less commonly anthologized science fiction stories by women writers, you might find something worth reading here (I don't pretend that my tastes in SF are the same as everyone else's), but beware: its myriad mistakes make this a sometimes frustrating read, an unreliable source on some points, and considerably less worthy of the time and effort required to read it than are most anthologies.

[Janel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes authors fall into the trap of trying to flesh out every character. Forrest J. Ackerman managed to avoid this pitfall, and New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow benefitted from this restraint.

[Bee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read:

Leslie Perri - Space Episode - 3/5

[Raja99]

I have not read the entire book; I merely checked it out of the library to read "Honeycombed Satellite", a planetary adventure story by Helen Weinbaum.

I hadn't heard of Helen Weinbaum before. To quote the intro to "Honeycombed Satellite", "After the death of her brother, Stanley Weinbaum, in 1935, his sister Helen finished one of his uncompleted works, 'Tidal Moon', and then apparently bit by the writing bug went on to produce a half-dozen stories under her own name."

The story was enjoyable, and I'm tempted to pick up the anthology; it contains some excellent work. However, I'm a little put off by some seeming mistakes in the introductions; for instance, James Tiptree Jr. is stated to be "a pseudonym for the indisputably female Alice Racoona Sheldon". Tiptree's real (married) name was Alice Bradley Sheldon; as far as I know, "Racoona" was just a pseudonym she made up.

[Ralph McEwen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good selection of short stories by women authors.

[Foxtower · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the earlier stories better, but overall a nice collection of stories!

[Ginger Heskett]

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14339257