The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers

by Mike Ashley (Editor)

Featuring hard-to-find short stories published between 1873 and 1930, this original anthology spotlights a variety of important sci-fi pioneers, including Ethel Watts Mumford, Edith Nesbit, and Clare Winger Harris. Imaginative scenarios include a feminist society in another dimension, the east/west division of the United States with men and women on opposite sides, a man who converts himself into a cyborg, a drug that confers superhuman qualities, and many other curious situations.
Editor Mike Ashley provides an informative introduction to the stories. Highlights include "When Time Turned" (1901), which centers on a grieving widower who contrives to relive his life backwards; "The Painter of Dead Women" (1910), the tale of a woman in thrall to a Svengali-like character who promises to preserve her beauty forever; "The Automaton Ear" (1876), in which an inventor struggles to create a machine to detect sounds from the distant past; "Ely's Automatic Housemaid" (1899), a lighthearted fable concerning a robot housemaid; and ten other captivating tales.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction, Feminism, Classics

244 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 17, 2015

About the author

Michael Raymond Donald Ashley is the author and editor of over sixty books that in total have sold over a million copies worldwide. He lives in Chatham, Kent.

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

An anthology of early speculative fiction by women. While this is a public-domain collection, I hadn't encountered any of these stories before, and they're not all easy to find - so this is definitely a worthwhile publication.
Not only interesting for historic value; the vast majority of the selections are highly entertaining.

*** When Time Turned - Ethel Watts Mumford (1901)
An early example (if not the earliest?) of a story where a man purports to experience life lived in reverse.

**** The Painter of Dead Women - Edna W. Underwood (1910)
A vivid tale of a woman who finds herself tricked into the hands of a modern-day Bluebeard. The imagery here is strikingly beautiful, and the threat horrific. Extra points for a self-reliant heroine with a cool head and a quick mind - but an over-simple resolution keeps it from a full five stars.

*** The Automaton Ear (1873) - Florence McLandburgh
A brilliant but eccentric professor has an idea to create a device that will enable the listener to hear all the sounds of the world, by picking up on the faint echoes and waves remaining of the past's noises, both sublime and discordant. Obsession with the device and its use overtakes him, leading to decline... and madness?

**** Ely's Automatic Housemaid (1899) - Elizabeth W. Bellamy
The pitfalls of robotic domestic servants... quite a humorous piece.

*** The Ray of Displacement (1903) - Harriet Prescott Spofford
Likely influenced by H.G. Wells' 'Invisible Man' (1897). The inventor here devises an innovation that not only allows him to pass unseen - it also allows him the ability to pass right through matter. However, when he's jailed after an incident when he accidentally dematerializes an acquaintance's diamond, he refuses to walk through the walls of the jail until his reputation is rehabilitated. However, his stubbornness may have consequences for more than just himself.

*** Those Fatal Filaments (1903) - Mabel Ernestine Abbott
An inventor comes up with a new kind of telephone - one that not only transmits a person's voice, but also their unspoken thoughts. But when he tests the device in his home, he hears things from his family that aren't quite what he expected.
(Yeah, I agree with the author - this is not a device that would be adopted by the general public.)

**** The Third Drug (1908) - Edith Nesbit
When a depressed man fleeing some murderous street thugs ducks into a dark courtyard and slams the door behind him, little does he realize that he may have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. A 'good Samaritan,' his seeming savior, may have an agenda of his own (and quite a horrific agenda it is.) Shades of Frankenstein, here...

** A Divided Republic: An Allegory of the Future (1887) - Lillie Devereux Blake
As a story, this piece of writing is honestly not excellent. However, as an historical document and direct insight into political thoughts at the time of its writing - it's brilliant and hilarious.
Blake was a political activist working for women's suffrage. (I'm in favor.) She was clearly also a member of the Temperance movement. (I'm not in favor.) In this call to activism, the women of the United States take a tip from Lysistrata, and take it one step further. Until women are granted suffrage (and various other political concessions) they all remove themselves to Washington State. Without women, men sink into a disorganized and filthy mess. Meanwhile, women set up a peaceful and Utopian society full of excellent schools, free cultural events, scientific and technical advancement, and reasonable prices! (And all the homes designed by women architects have plenty of closets.)
However, both men and women are a little lonely...
There is definitely some deft skewering of newsworthy figures of the time - some of the references (Henry James, for example) I got, others went right past me.
Obviously, this piece is satirical, but it still depends on one holding the belief that women are inherently peace-loving enlightened beings, the holders of culture - while men are inherently 'low' creatures lacking natural refinements.

**** Via the Hewitt Ray (1930) - M.F. Rupert
This is a thoroughly enjoyable pulp sci-fi tale. You can freely peruse a scanned copy of the whole magazine it was first published in, here: http://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36261 (Everyone should really check out the cool illustration on page 370.)
When her father disappears, a young airline pilot, Lucile, discovers a letter left for her describing how he's used a ray to beam himself into another dimension to find out who's been sending the mysterious messages he's been picking up on his instruments.
Our airline pilot is not inclined toward physics, but luckily she has a close friend, Marion, who's a scientist. Within ten minutes, she's arrived via aircar, and the two women set out to figure things out.
With Marion's expertise, soon Lucile is travelling into another dimension with a copy of her father's ray machine, with the goal of getting him back home.
However, in a strange and alien land, it appears that Lucile and her father may have ended up on opposite sides of an incipient war.
The story is quite silly... but it's also very enjoyable. Reminded me quite a bit of an early Star Trek episode, in some ways...

*** The Great Beast of Kafue (1917) - Clotide Graves
A colonial African hunter tells his young son about his pursuit of a legendary monster, akin to that of Loch Ness.
The writing is high-quality, and the setting comes through with a vivid sense of place (even though I don't believe that the author ever visited Africa). Unfortunately, unpleasant and offensive stereotypes also some through in a couple of places in the story.
Still, the story retains its power as a discussion around the symbolism and significance of the hunt, balanced by an emerging sense of empathy.

**** Friend Island (1917) - Francis Stevens (Gertrude Barrows Bennett)
In a future where women have naturally become the dominant sex, an old salt - a weathered sailor woman - tells the tale of the time she was a castaway on a very, very unusual island.
Let's just say - the dynamic here is pretty far from Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. Good fun, and a nice illustration of reaping what you sow.

*** The Artificial Man (1929) - Clare Winger Harris
A handsome football jock has always believed that mind and body are inextricably intertwined. His fit and attractive body indicates a fit and intelligent mind. When a double-whammy of terrible accidents destroys that body, his beliefs lead to a terrifying result. (Imagine if The Six Million Dollar Man was a horror story.)
(As an aside... I guess the 'German doctors will do anything' trope existed even before WWII!)

* Creatures of the Light (1930) - Sophie Wenzel Ellis
Sorry, but this one's a flop.
This might be the most unconvincing (and just flat-out wrong) romance ever set to paper. A man is lured in by a hunchbacked German doctor with an aim toward breeding a superior race. (Yes, again with the German doctors - I simply had no idea that this was a popular trope prior to WWII!)
The way the story is constructed; all of the characters' actions were completely unconvincing to me.
The doctor has 'improved' a random woman by use of his Life Ray, intending her to breed with the selected narrator. Upon viewing a photograph of this woman, our narrator falls instantly in love with her, and out of love with his intelligent, but not-beautiful fiancée.
However, a ubermensch created by the doctor's breeding programs also has his eye on the same woman - and will stop at nothing to seize her.
Meanwhile, a super-woman, also a result of the breeding programs, decides that she wants our narrator.
The author posits that "perfection" is unappealing, which is why neither the regular man nor the super-man want the super-woman.
However, the 'improved' woman that everyone's after isn't shown in a very flattering light. The reader fails to understand her appeal.
(We also aren't given any reason as to why she would put up with any of these plans for her, or reciprocate anyone's affection). The off-screen jilted fiancée gets short shrift.

*** The Flying Teuton (1917) - Alice Brown
Written during WWI, the author imagines a future directly after a peace accord has been reached - where a divine curse has been laid upon German naval affairs.
Told from the point of view of an American on a German mercantile vessel en route to New York, we see his confusion and fear as he and the ship he's on encounter what seem to be a series of ghost ships, which refuse to answer their hails - which indeed, seem to pass right through them as if they are nothing but spectral hallucinations.
Some very eerie moments, but I didn't feel that the resolution was as strong as it could've been.

Many thanks to Dover and NetGalley for bringing these almost-forgotten works to my attention. As always my opinions are my own.

[Carly · Rating 4 out of 5]

“One reason why we say so few women wrote science fiction in the early days: it’s because we’ve simply forgotten them.”

When I saw an anthology of early female-authored scifi on Netgalley, I knew I had to grab it. While I'm well aware of the female participants in the golden age of detective fiction, I had no idea that they women were also so active in early science fiction. All the stories are in the public domain, but I think the stories are more approachable here, as Ashley starts each story with a short biography of the author. Ashley has compiled an interesting collection: most of the stories were written before the turn of the century through the first war, at a time in which science and technology were radically transforming everyday life. Perhaps because of this, the common theme in most of the stories is the threat of technology. Almost every story treats technological advancement almost biblically, as the fruit of forbidden knowledge: an advancement that raises humanity too close to God and inevitably leads to disaster.

The other fascinating aspect, to me at least, was the predominance of the male perspective. Ten of the fourteen stories feature a male protagonist and narrator. The remainder constitutes a male narrator but female protagonist/storyteller, a female following her scientist father, a female narrator captured by a creepy serial killer, and and an omniscient perspective that focuses mainly on the female characters. This last, "Divided Republic--An Allegory of the Future" by Lillie Devereux Blake, is so outspokenly and rather absurdly pro-feminist that it could have been written by Ariadne Oliver, Mrs. Rachel Lynde, or Amelia Peabody. Written in 1887, it neatly predicts both the initial rejection of suffrage and the legislation and subsequent failure of Prohibition, at which point the women go on strike and start their own county. It's an entertaining little tale, but also rather problematic. Even as Blake agitates for equality, she strongly stereotypes the sexes into rigid and restrictive gender roles, casting women as the docile peacemakers and men as sinful, noisy, and active.

"Friend Island" by Francis Stevens is not much more subtle, but far more interesting. It features a world where "woman's superiority to man" has been recognized and women hold all the powerful positions in the story. A man interviews a female sailor about her experiences, and she tells him a yarn about a sentient floating island. The gender power dynamics are all the more interesting because they aren't the focus of the story itself.

"The Painter of Dead Women" by Edna W Underwood, on the other hand, is a critique of the gender norms of the time. The only story in the collection completely narrated by a woman, it explores society's obsession with female beauty. As one character puts it,

"Death … is the thing most to be desired by beautiful women. It saves them from something worse--old age. An ugly woman can afford to live; a beautiful woman can not. The real object of life is to ripen the body to its limit of physical perfection, and then, just as you would a perfect fruit, pluck and preserve it. Death sets the definite seal upon its perfection."

The story itself is classic horror, with a twist that was viscerally reminiscent of Gunther von Hagens' exceedingly creepy Body Worlds.

The last story involving a female narrator, "Via the Hewitt Ray" by M. F. Rupert, is more a classic adventure story that reminded me quite a bit of Wells' Time Machine. A (male) scientist travels to another dimension via his invention of the eponymous Hewitt Ray. After he disappears, his worried daughter sets off to rescue him. In the other dimension, she meets several different races, including one ruled by women, and finds herself in the middle of a bitter conflict between the different races. I had trouble interpreting Rupert's feelings about the society she creates; the female protagonist is horrified by the dominant females' treatment of men and seems not to mind her "kindly" father's patronizing attitudes to her. At first, I thought the story was going to be a commentary on tragic misunderstandings due to physical differences, and was rather disturbed when much to the contrary, the "happy ending" turns out to involve utterly remorseless genocide.

Every story in the collection, apart from these four, portrays a male protagonist acting within a man's world. As previously noted, most of the remainder provide a sense of technology as reaching outside of the natural order of things. There are only a few exceptions. The first story in the collection, "When Time Turned" by Ethel Watts Mumford, features a man who is traveling backwards in time. Although interesting, I got very hung up on some of the conflicting details--for example, the narrator comments that he looks to be about 50 when he is suppose to be 23. I can't imagine how that would work when he turned back into a baby, but an interesting idea nonetheless. "The Great Beast of Kafue" by Clotilde Graves is more fantasy or horror than scifi and involves a mysterious monster in a Zambian lake. The most interesting part of the story, in my opinion, was the biography of Graves herself: even though she lived in the late Victorian era, she apparently often dressed as a man and smoked in public. It is fitting that her story is equally unconventional. "The Flying Teuton" by Alice Brown provides a fascinating portrait of American pacifist view on the Great War. Written before the outcome of the Treaty of Versailles, it postulates rather more forgiving Allies who promote healing in Europe rather than punishment. Unfortunately, the sea is rather less forgiving. It provides an interesting glimpse of rather hopeful views of the time, though I would have called it "The Flying Deutschman."

The remainder of the stories all deal in technological advancement gone awry, ranging from "Ely's Automatic Housemaid" by Elizabeth W Bellamy, an amusing little comedy about robotic "Electric Automatic Household Beneficent Geniuses" running amok, to "Those Fatal Filaments" by Mabel Ernestine Abbott, a succinct little tale about how a thought-reading "thinkaphone" can cause more misunderstandings than it cures, to the "Ray of Displacement" by Harriet Prescott Spofford, an odd little story in which the protagonist discovers a new "Y-ray" that can make people invisible and temporarily intangible. Unfortunately for the protagonist, the malice of an old acquaintance leads him to be locked up in prison, where he meets the unsubtly-named chaplain, "St. Angel," who helps him to utilize his invention to gain his freedom. Some of the stories were ridiculously unscientific, even for the knowledge of the time. The premise of "The Automaton Ear" by Florence McLandburgh is that all sounds last forever, growing fainter as they travel endlessly around the globe. The idea is more romantic than feasible--after all, if every sound is permanent, how does the scientist and his machine manage to capture only a pleasant medley of famous speeches, world-class opera, and birdsong?

Many of the stories involve a quest for immortality. In "The Third Drug" by Edith Nesbit, life and death are inextricably tied, and immortality can be found only in their intersection. I've always loved E.E. Nesbit, and was amazed by the difference in tone of this creepy little tale. For me, the most disturbing aspect was the way in which the antagonist twists the Christian doctrine of the talents:

"I have not buried my talent. I have been faithful. I have laid down all--love, and joy, and pity, and the little beautiful things  of life--all, all, on the altar of science, and seen them consume away. I deserve my heaven, if ever man did."

Like immortality, eugenics was a disturbingly common theme in the stories. It is most overt in "Creatures of the LIght" by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, which also happened to be both my least favourite and the longest story in the collection. When the (incredibly handsome, intelligent, and athletic) hero sees the picture of a beautiful woman, he suffers from an immediate, passionate, and reciprocated case of Instalove that pits him against the superhuman outcome of a scientist's eugenics experiment. (He also immediately decides to dump his good-natured, intelligent, but insufficiently attractive fiance, although I'm not sure he ever gets around to telling her.) The story not only involves a fatuous and ridiculous bit of InstaLove; it also contains a secret laboratory in the Arctic, time-travelling villains, a superhuman seductress, and a Death Ray. The message is as ill-considered as the rest: even though the (incredibly beautiful) characters conclude that "perfection" is not to be desired, the story ends with everyone cheering about how events brought together "a perfect man and a perfect woman" which will have "furthered natural evolution." Yuck.

The story that stayed with me the longest was "The Artificial Man" by Clare Winger Harris, which explores the relationship between the physical form and the intangible self. After a terrible accident that left him with an artificial leg, the main character sets out to find out "by how slender a thread body and soul can hang together" by replacing as much of his body as possible with artificial parts. Although the message is more dogmatic than we would accept in our age of biomechanical enhancement, I think the idea is as fascinating and troubling now as it was back then. I'm currently reading Richard Morgan's Artificial Carbon, and was startled by the similarity of the theme: in a world where the physical form can be replaced by computers and machinery, where does the indivisible "self" lie?
Overall, I greatly appreciated the opportunity to widen my knowledge of early scifi. While the stories themselves are dated, they provide an interesting glimpse of another time, a point where, like the present moment, the influx of technology rapidly transformed not only everyday life, but also society's hopes and fears.

~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Dover Publications, in exchange for my honest review.~~

Cross-posted on BookLikes.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who's interested both in early SF and women writers, I leapt at the opportunity to review this (via Netgalley). It didn't disappoint, although for some reason I had misunderstood and was expecting specifically feminist fiction. It's "feminine", not "feminist". There are a couple of proto-feminist stories, but most of the stories, written between 1873 and 1930, read very much like stories by men of the time.

The viewpoint (whether first or third person) is almost always a man's, notably, with a couple of exceptions. Did genre stories from a female POV not sell, or did the women of the time just not think of writing them?

The quality of the stories is generally high, though there is one - the fantasy of a frustrated suffragist in which all the women of the USA migrate to the west and set up their own republic there - which is almost entirely in "tell" mode, and more interesting because of its content than its form. The editing is good, with only five mostly minor errors that I noticed - not always the case with these collections of older works, which are often scanned from spotty pages and end up full of typos.

Overall, I notice a greater focus on relationships in many of the stories than is the case with stories by men of the time, something that's also apparent in the great C.L. Moore. I don't think I'm just reading that in. A lot of the SF stories by men of the 1870s to 1930s read as if written by adolescents, as far as the emotional background and connection of the characters is concerned. Many (not all) of these stories do considerably better - though not all of them were published in the pulp ghetto where SF was increasingly herded, a number of them appearing in more "literary" magazines.

Story by story, here's how it went down.

"When Time Turned" by Ethel Watts Mumford, 1901: Benjamin Button 20 years earlier, with an elderly man who is experiencing his life backwards. Not just a novelty "wouldn't it be rum if" story, but a moving account of the man's loves and losses, joys and sorrows. Told from the viewpoint of a (male) observer.

"The Painter of Dead Women" by Edna W. Underwood, 1910: Unusual among the stories in this volume, particularly the early ones, in that it's told from a woman's point of view (in first person), and the woman is very much a protagonist - as much as it looks as if she's going to be a victim.

"The Automaton Ear" by Florence McLandburgh, 1873: The oldest story in the book, and (like the first two) with a strong thread of insanity running through it. A scientist is obsessed with the idea of recapturing the sounds of the past. Male narrator, first person.

"Ely's Automatic Housemaid" by Elizabeth W. Bellamy, 1899: A technology-gone-wrong funny story, a genre still very much alive today. The frustrations of a middle-class household in getting competent servants seem to be solved when the (male) first-person narrator's friend offers them a pair of automatons. His wife and daughter don't do much, compared to him and his son.

"The Ray of Displacement" by Harriett Prescott Spofford, 1903: Male first-person narrator, a scientist, develops a ray which can make him able to pass through solid objects and, at a different setting, to become invisible. Many writers of the time (or of 30 years later) would have just infodumped about how cool this was, but Spofford manages a gripping story full of drama, injustice, revenge and a glorious and disturbing twist.

"Those Fatal Filaments" by Mabel Ernestine Abbott, 1903: Male first-person narrator, an engineer, develops a thought-reading device, and instead of infodumping about how cool it is, Abbott manages a gripping story of emotional and relational near-tragedy.

"The Third Drug" by Edith Nesbit (as E. Bland), 1908: E. Nesbit is the only author in the volume that I'd heard of (she wrote some classic children's stories which are still enjoyed today). This one has a male protagonist, is told in tight third-person, and is an action-packed adventure in early-20th-century Paris involving a mad scientist.

"A Divided Republic" by Lillie Devereux Blake, 1887: Subtitled "An Allegory of the Future," but not actually an allegory, this is the story I mentioned before, mostly in "tell" rather than "show" mode and without depth to the characters, but told to convey ideas rather than to entertain. The women of America all pack up and move west when the men refuse to grant them the vote (something which, in fact, took another 30 years). "It must not be supposed that their departure took place without protest on the part of the men. Some of them were greatly dismayed when they heard that wife and daughters were going away, and attempted remonstrance," she remarks with delightful gravity. There are several burns directed at various named men of the time who, apparently, were known as opponents of female suffrage of one kind or another.

"Via the Hewitt Ray" by M.F. Rupert, 1930: The second story in the book to have a female point-of-view character (and first-person narrator), this one depicts a female-dominated society in the fourth dimension. It's no utopia - the women are depicted as cold-hearted and cruel to the men and to their enemies. Yet the protagonist, a liberated young woman pilot of the relatively near future (when the story was written), who has gone to the fourth dimension to rescue her scientist father, joins gleefully in a genocidal attack on another race, justifying her participation by observing that the enemies were not much like her so it didn't bother her. The 1930s, eh?

"The Great Beast of Kafue" by Clotilde Graves (as Richard Dehan), 1917: From the first-person POV of a young boy, this could easily have just been a Great White Hunter in Africa story, but it manages to be a tale of deep emotional loss and the wounds that inflicts.

"Friend Island" by Francis Stevens, 1918: A story by a woman (Gertrude Barrows Bennett), using a man's name, told from the POV of a male narrator who is, however, only there to mediate the story of a woman, a female mariner in a time when women are dominant and have most of the seagoing jobs. Like a lot of early fiction that imagines a female-dominated society - including "A Divided Republic," but definitely not including "Via the Hewitt Ray" - it assumes that if women took men's roles society would become gentler and more civilised. Even in the "shabby little tea shops frequented by able sailoresses of the poorer type," we see "spruce, smiling young maidens... despite their profession, very neat in gold-braided blue knickers and boleros," and the chronicler treats the raconteur to tea and macaroons, not alcohol.

"The Artificial Man" by Clare Winger Harris, 1929: One of a couple of stories in this volume which raise the question of outward appearance versus moral virtue. Harris was the first woman to sell a story to the world's first SF magazine, Amazing Stories, and this story is among the first to depict a cyborg (not by that name). The moral decline of a man who replaces parts of himself with machinery raises all kinds of questions and is dramatically told, with love and friendship among the casualties of his fall.

"Creatures of the Light" by Sophie Wenzel Ellis, 1930: This is the second story dealing with outward vs inward perfection, in which an outwardly perfected man's inner contempt for "lesser" beings, including his Igor-like creator, brings tragedy and destruction to an attempted utopia. The hero is also good-looking, though he affects to despise his own looks; yet he struggles only briefly with abandoning his brilliant but plain fiancee for someone much more outwardly attractive.

"The Flying Teuton" by Alice Brown, 1917: A story set after World War I, written and published during the war, in which a kind of divine punishment falls on Germany and the allied nations, in sympathy, make a fair and lasting peace. Again, the viewpoint character is male, as are all of the characters.

I went into this collection expecting stories which were historically interesting, but not necessarily, by modern standards, particularly good (solely because of their age). What I found were some excellently-written and engaging stories that deserve a wider audience.

[Tiara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Crossposted @ Fantasy Book Care for Women in SF&F Month

Before beginning, I’d like to say that this post is equal parts a love letter to science fiction and a review of the book The Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers edited by Mike Ashley, which the publisher provided me in exchange for an honest review.

Science fiction has always been a huge part of my life. From grand stories about future civilizations with technology I could only imagine to your every day comics about mutants and superbeings who police their cities, these stories are rooted firmly in my heart.

While other little girls wanted to be princesses and frolic in medieval castles (not that there’s anything at all wrong with that either), I wanted to be some space pirate raiding unknown galaxies or maybe an intergalactic bioengineer creating the latest organic technovirus or maybe I wanted to be one of the first humans to make contact with a new alien race or maybe I just wanted powers like my favorite member of the X-Men (Storm). Science fiction opened up a world of endless possibilities for me. From a very early age, science fiction stories showed me there was nothing I couldn’t achieve and there was nothing I couldn’t be.

Science fiction isn’t just about radical stories set in the future with aliens and a lot of hard science talk that’s hard to follow. Science fiction can be as simple as writing about how a flu pandemic has devastated the earth as in Emily St. John Mandel’s beautifully tragic science fiction novel, Station Eleven, or something as bold as Lois McMaster Bujold’s Falling Free, part of Bujold’s space opera the Vorkosigan Saga, which follows a human space engineer as he navigates life and morality with a group of humanoids coldly classified as “post fetal experimental tissue cultures.”

I always cite my favorite Ray Bradbury quote when discussing science fiction and what it means to me:

“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it’s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself… Science fiction is central to everything we’ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Science fiction is what inspired me to pursue tech related activities, hobbies, and studies, and there’s no end to my love of science and technology as we advance further and further. This love is something I’ve passed on to my own daughter as she gets starry-eyed about the world of Mass Effect‘s Commander Shepard or begs me to read Sanity & Tallulah: Plucky Teen Girl Space Detectives just one more time.

Diversity in the various medias I consume, from books to video games, is important to me, and as a mother of a young girl, it’s become doubly important to me that she sees representation of herself in these things, especially in areas considered “male dominated” as science fiction. I want her to see that women have always been involved in helping to shape the world of science fiction as a genre. I want her to know there have always been women who have gotten lost in the world of science fiction and that women will always have a growing impact on the genre in years to come, including her.

There seems to be some debate that women have only started writing science fiction in recent years discounting the effort of such women as Mary Shelley who wrote Frankenstein in 1818 or Jane Loudon who penned The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century in 1827. While there may be fewer female writers in science fiction, there have still been considerable contributions made by women that are a foothold to modern writers, and they shouldn’t be ignored or forgotten for what they’ve contributed. That’s why it’s so important that we have books such as The Feminine Future that are dedicated to bringing women pioneers in the genre to the forefront.

The Feminine Future is a collection of short stories by women writers mostly pre-1920. Each story gives a brief history of its author’s life, if she went on to write more science fiction (or just more works in general), and a brief glimpse of what the story is about. Many of these women, I hadn’t heard about before (like Mabel Ernestine Abbott) or I know them from other literary works (like Edith Nesbit who wrote many children’s books). These stories range from lighthearted future visions to stories that question the reliability, if not the sanity, of its character.

This book presented a wide range of themes and ideas. Along with the science fiction, you find many other literary elements weaved into these stories such as horror and the supernatural. There are stories that explore life happening in reverse with a deeply human explanation, predating F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Benjamin Button.” You have stories with the burgeonings of hard science stories such as Harriet Prescott Spofford’s “The Ray of Displacement” that toys with atomic theory. There are stories about experimental drugs creating superhumans (“The Third Drug” by Edith Nesbit), stories that explore Utopian feminist societies (“A Divided Republic” by Lillie Devereaux Blake), stories about suspended animation and telepathy (“The Painter of Dead Women” by Edna W. Underwood), stories about cyborgs (“The Artificial Man” by Clare Winger Harris), and even humorous stories about “Automatic-Electric Machine Servants” (“Ely’s Automatic Housemaid” by Elizabeth W. Bellamy).

My personal favorite in the bunch was a story called “The Automaton Ear” by Florence McLandburgh. This was a dark, lyrical story that asked, “What if sound is never lost?” The protagonist of this story believes that sound is diffused to a point where it is no longer able to be heard by the normal ear. Subsequently, he ignores the visual beauty of the world as he tries to regain these sounds. This story was an unsettling, psychological romp that left the readers to decide if the protagonist was brilliant or mad.

Despite how readers feel about the stories, there’s no denying that in this book you see hints of the modern stories that we’ve read, and it’s a shame that many of these writers’ offerings have been lost to time. Many of these women were considered bold and imaginative for the subjects they tackled in these stories, as many of these concepts were rarely explored or new. Any argument that women are not interested in reading or writing about science fiction is debunked a multitude of times by our historical sisters in this book. As with any anthology, the stories can be hit or miss, but I appreciate the effort made to bring these women, some very obscure, to the attention of science fiction fans.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mike Ashley’s had an impressive career in science fiction as an editor and anthologist, from writing the four-volume History of the Science Fiction Magazine in the 1970s to editing the Mammoth Book of anthology series today. It seems he and I share some of the same values based on his introduction; he puts forth two popular genre misconceptions that this volume hopes to correct. First, that science fiction is a genre of just fanciful adventure stories, with its bug-eyed monsters and super-scientists jaunting across space and time. And second, that women writing science fiction is a newer development. Indeed, if you judge science fiction by the average “best-of” list and SF reader’s expectations, Ursula Le Guin was one of the first women to write in the genre. The Feminine Future collects fourteen science fiction stories by women writers, all of them written before the term “science fiction” was coined—even predating Gernsback’s ye olde “scientifiction.” These stories fall across the era of proto-SF, from contemporaries to Verne’s and Wells’ scientific romances all the way to early pulp SF tales in the ’20s and ’30s.

Full disclosure: I received an eARC from Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an open and honest review.

The stories in this volume deal with the same themes that early science fiction would investigate over and over again: many of them follow the same pattern of “introduce a creative scientific idea and examine its effects on society/its users.” The difference is most of these stories were written decades before Hugo Gernsback named it “scientifiction” and proved there was enough of a market for this type of material to support monthly pulp magazines. Other stories take even more inventive approaches, dealing with ideas and concepts that are still original and fresh today. Some reflect issues of their day, reacting to Woman’s Suffrage, or impacted by The Boer War or World War One. Mike Ashley should be commended for finding these gems which were overlooked for so long; that they include such a variety of themes and styles is impressive.

As with all collections, this is a mixed bag, and not every story will appeal to every reader. That’s precisely why I like it: this book shows how diverse science fiction was even in its earlier days. It covers the breadth of the early genre from adventure stories (“Via the Hewitt Ray”), to stories that blend horror and science (“Painter of Dead Women,” “The Third Drug”), to feminist utopias (“Divided Republic” and “Hewitt Ray”) or wild invention stories (“Automaton Ear,” “Automatic Housemaid,” “Fatal Filaments,” etc). Some of the stories are similar in theme or feel, but all of them are unique, different takes on the same concept of scientific invention and discovery changing the world. In some cases it’s for the better, in others for the worse, and in a few it’s good old fashioned comedy. My favorites lean towards adventure and the macabre, and include “The Great Beast of Kafue,” “Via The Hewitt Ray,” “Friend Island,” “The Painter of Dead Women,” “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid,” and “The Third Drug.”

Readers not as familiar with pre-modernist literature may be put off by some of the artistic preferences of the age, like the awkward framing device in “When Time Turned,” or the distant and passive prose in “A Divided Republic.” I cut my teeth reading Wells, Verne, and Haggard, and still found some of the stories a bit dry and plodding for my taste. And the individual pieces have not always withstood the passage of time. But for anyone with a serious interest in science fiction’s history and origins, and those readers fascinated by genre gender studies, this slim volume fills an important gap in SF’s history. (What’s worse is that many readers remain unaware such a void exists.) It addresses shortcomings in perception and misconception that the average reader may have regarding early SF and the women who wrote it. The Feminine Future amounts to more than the sum of its parts: it’s a piece of science fiction history that is oft overlooked by most fans, a rich sample from an esoteric and overlooked niche. And I give it a high recommendation because of that.

(Full story-by-story review found here.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Periodically, I seize on the notion that I want to read the forgotten pioneers of science fiction, see the works and the minds upon whose shoulders others have built, etc. What I usually forget, until I'm actually reading such a collection, is that I typically find them more interesting from a historical and cultural perspective than I do fun to read. This collection stands out for being quite early --most of the stories are pre-1920s-- and it's a good collection that covers a range of subjects and approaches.

That said, wow, early 20th century. How had I forgotten the faith in the myriad health benefits of radiation, or how incredibly prevalent the pursuit of super-humans and the notion of finding or making the perfect man and woman was? (OMG does salivating over the new concept of eugenics look really bad in the 20/20 vision of hindsight.) Never mind mankind's manifest destiny as Lord over all the Earth, entitled by his clear superiority to do as he wills with all he surveys, etc., etc. ad nauseam. (The consistently gendered pronouns standing in for a whole species here are not accidental.) And the gender essentialism. So. much. gender. essentialism.

So pervasive is the quaint Victorian notion that women are intrinsically more peaceful and benevolent, temperant and law-abiding, that hardly anyone, even at their most inventively speculative, manages to imagine a world in which women holding power would behave as anything other than demure, sensible ladies as they blandly but efficiently run things. (Even for Victorians, this view required great swaths of classism and willingness to overlook vast evidence to the contrary --the trick, apparently, is to never let your gaze wander from the aristocracy when assessing the Woman Question.) It would be a little less annoying if there weren't people still wedded to these ideas well into the 21st century, but I digress.

I get that it was all new for its time and that the ideas with which I'm so casually familiar came about through a lot of successive readers and writers considering and responding to these works and creating their own, not to mention seeing how sterilizing undesirables to create a master race worked out (Hitler and nazi ideology owe more of a huge, revolting debt to American eugenecists than many people realize).

I can tell that my critique here is really of an era of thought rather than the book itself, so I'll try to get to the point. I think it's an important collection, and it does a good job at what it sets out to do, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily great fun to read. Some of the stories I had to force my way through, most were somewhere between "huh, neat" and "just okay."

I enjoyed The Third Drug by Edith Nesbit, but my favorite story in the collection by a wide margin was Friend Island, by Francis Stevens. I liked it so much that I'm going to look up other stuff she's done --at least her most well-known work, The Heads of Cerberus, is on Project Gutenberg.

I'm going to go through and post some of my highlights and margin-mutterings, which may give you a better feel for the book itself than this review has done.

[Lauren Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got a full dose of early pulp science fiction with this, and concluded that it's definitely not my thing. Sometimes it's silly in a fun sort of way, but mostly I just find it silly. Depending on your reasons for wanting to read this, it might also be worth noting that, although all the stories are written by women, only a few of them address feminist or gender issues. Most of them have male protagonists, and some don't have any female characters at all. Which is not to say that I think female writers have a duty to write feminist stories; I don't. It's just that the title of this anthology suggests that the stories will be gender-conscious, when it's really more like a collection of pulp sf that happens to be written by women, without any particular theme. If, like me, you're interested in the gender stuff but you're not really a fan of pulp, it might not appeal to you either.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mike Ashley is rapidly becoming one of my favorite editors. Here we have a collection of sci-fi stories from the 19th century and early 20th century, (many the first to feature the standard tropes of today) all by women, as Ashely pushes hard against the myth that women were late to the sci-fi game.


‘When Time Turned’ by Ethel Watts Mumford
It ends up not being really sci-fi any more than ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ is sci-fi, but, like that story, it makes an interesting deep dive into what the mind can conjure when pushed by extreme emotion. Mumford probably should have sued Fitzgerald for copying her with ‘Benjamin Button.’

‘The Painter of Dead Women’ by Edna W. Underwood
The objectification of women, taken to its logical extreme, makes for one of the most brilliant and disturbing horror stories I’ve ever come across. The ending wrapped things up way too quickly, but the villain’s murderous monologues and the heroine’s nerves of steel left me swooning with admiration.

‘The Automaton Ear’ by Florence McLandburgh
This plays with very early ideas about sound waves and string theory, diving into the idea that everything – even the past – can be heard with the right instrument. Too bad the main character is so annoying.

‘Ely’s Automatic Housemaid’ by Elizabeth W. Bellamy
It’s presented as a slapstick comedy as a new invention goes horribly wrong, creating copious amounts of domestic chaos, which should always be good for a laugh – but there is a lot of screaming and bruises here, showing from the very beginning, even amongst all that Victorian optimism, just how wrong technology can go. I did like how it showcases the sour effects of men mansplaining and interfering with things they know nothing about. Very thought provoking that one of the first robots in literature is portrayed as a female servant.

‘The Ray of Displacement’ by Harriet Prescott Spofford
The story explores ideas about sub-atomic particles we will later see play out to much more dramatic effect in Antman and the Wasp, but here the Victorian idea that principles and morals are more important than getting anything done inhibits the possibility of any real action.

‘Those Fatal Filaments’ by Mabel Ernestine Abbott
An inventor creates a machine that lets you hear people’s thoughts. And then he’s surprised that he doesn’t like what he hears! Hah!

‘The Third Drug’ by Edith Nesbit
A mad scientist is pursuing better living through chemistry, like so many superhero stories to follow. Honestly, given both the sheer amount of drugs and the setting of Paris at night, I was reminded strongly of the drug fueled scene in Killing Zoe.

‘A Divided Republic – An Allegory of the Future’ by Lille Devereux Blake
A well done Victorian retelling of Lysistrata, in which the women of America have had enough and take the radical action of leaving and forming their own country. The now all-male America quickly descends into dirty chaos, while the new all-female country is almost utopian – except for the subtext that makes clear women miss the d-. (Obviously the story assumes hetero-normality, but I really shouldn’t hold that against it, all things considered.) It’s a complete 180 to current dystopias like The Handmaid Tale, but is still addressing the same issues. And wow the comments about border defense were depressingly still relevant.

‘Via the Hewitt Ray’ by M. F. Rupert
An adventure to another universe is exactly that for the main character. An adventure. She doesn't stop to think that the world where all the rules are different could be either a warning or a blueprint, she just goes on her merry way, enjoying her "souvenir". Honestly, since we're in a mirror-verse and all, all the named characters (and there are more than few) deserve some time in the Agony Booth. I loved the world building though, both of the alternate universe and the futuristic version of ours. Cool to see so many Star Trek ideas played with early on in the genre.

‘The Great Beast of Kafue’ by Clotilde Graves
Its The Lost World meets all of Burroughs books meets a lot of colonial Africa politics. A monster hunt set in an uncomfortably real setting where author and main character have no idea how much worse its going to get.

‘Friend Island’ by Francis Stevens
A sea yarn of a gender flipped Life of Pi set in a world where it is simply taken for granted that men are lesser creatures and a woman who takes her own place in the world for granted has to learn fast when she ends up in a Lost style situation. 100% in agreement with her about that idiot Nelson. Good for her.

‘The Artificial Man’ by Clare Winger Harris
Actually, the whole story reads today as a metaphor on cyber stalking and cyber bullying, as a man uses technology to show how much "better" he is than his ex-girlfriend and her current boyfriend. At least he gets what he was due, which is more than can be said of most his type now.

‘Creatures of the Light’ by Sophie Wenzel Ellis
In which we find when you tell people that they are beautiful and smart and perfect, they can turn into real jerks.

‘The Flying Teuton’ by Alice Brown
The story gave me a horrible desire to chuckle cruelly and tell the characters, 'Oh, you thought WWI was bad? Just wait for round two!'

[fromcouchtomoon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sampling of female-written SF from 1873-1930, some good, some not so good, but all centering on ideas still employed by current SF authors: reverse aging, sentient landscapes, alternate worlds, etc. The author bios that precede each tale make even the most dated tales worth reading.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you enjoy classic SF, or the history of literature, this is a great little collection which shows some of the earliest SF stories written by female authors long forgotten, a couple you might recognize with some surprise and some all but anonymous. They feature now-classic elements like time or dimensional travel, flying cars, philosophical interpretations of life and death, obsessions leading to innovations, humorous folly, wonderous machines and alternative history. Sometimes the science is tossed in casually, at other times it's the focus of the story. A number examined social issues: futuristic warfare, politics, and types of suffrage, each fictional society turning out differently but still clearly showing the ingrained roles of the time.

I suggest you read each introduction after the story rather than before it. They are wonderful for giving context to the story and life to the author, but some included real spoilers that - at least in one instance - ruined the natural discovery within the story. That was annoying, but a bigger peeve is the book's title which really irritates me for some reason. It's not a "feminine future", it's just one envisioned by women. It's somewhat notable that despite all the stories being written by women, most of the protagonists are men. Not only that, but most of the women - even the protagonists - stay within traditional societal mores.

Some of the stories reminded me of the adult fiction by authors like Roald Dahl, where the reader is left questioning or slightly shocked by implications, others were more philosophical in nature, or simply sad, but as with all good science-fiction these stories reveal the deeply-held beliefs, hopes and fears of the time... and dreams of the future.


Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall I enjoyed this collection. There are some problematic elements to some of the stories and most of them skew to the fantastical or horror than Science Fiction, but they are definitely interesting, well-written stories.

I will post more about the individual stories in a bit.

[Liz N · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only one story here, "The Third Drug," remotely appealed to me. I wish I could appreciate this collection for its historical context, at least. But clearly pulp sci-fi isn't my cuppa, and I can only read so many racist, misogynistic, utterly boring stories before I want to throw the book across the room. I wonder how different this book might have been in the hands of a woman, NB, or trans editor.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

True Rating: 4.5 stars.

There is a special pleasure in reading science fiction written in the early years of the genre, before scientific discoveries and technological advances made it more difficult to pen fantastic plots whose credibility could not be instantly discounted. Certainly, “modern” sci-fi can threaten the boundaries of plausibility, but it generally tends to stay within the realm of the possible. What crashes through those boundaries usually winds up being classified as fantasy. But in the old days, the landscape of possibility was as vast as the author's imagination, and writers might easily ignore category or sub-genre and take full advantage of the idea that a plot could not be too far-fetched to be believable.

This collection of stories, edited by award-winning anthologist Mike Ashley, not only brings together a nice set of fourteen mostly pre-pulp era science fiction tales, wherein anything goes, it adds a degree of significance by presenting only those written by women. That is, obviously, the reason for the book. As Ashley writes in his general introduction about the “forgotten pioneers” of the genre: “the…misconception is that until recently few women wrote science fiction”. He goes on to credit early female writers with helping to “define the nature of what science fiction is”.

Ashley prefaces each story with an overview of its author, touching on her life and work. Without fail, these brief bios are illuminating and often surprising. Of course, any anthology stands or falls on the quality of its stories. That’s no problem here. It isn’t necessary to pick favorites, as all hold the reader’s interest, but I especially enjoyed Edith Nesbit’s “The Third Drug” — that which grants godlike powers; Alice Brown’s “The Flying Teuton”, with its novel take on ghost ships; Clare Winger Harris’ “The Artificial Man”, a frightening, almost sickening, story about a man obsessed with turning himself into what we call today a cyborg; and Elizabeth Bellamy’s humorous “Ely’s Automatic Housemaid”, which features this clever description of an eccentric genius’ handwriting: “It was addressed…in the Archimedean script always so characteristic of him, combining, as it seemed to do, the principles of the screw and of the inclined plane”.

A purist would not label every story “science fiction”. But that, as Ashley mentions, is the other misconception he attempts to dispel — that the limitations on the genre have, in fact, changed and broadened over the years. In the end, though, it doesn’t matter how those borderline tales are classified, for each is imaginative and diverting. And after all, the bulk of the selections employ what would become traditional sci-fi themes. To again quote the editor, the stories included helped to “develop many of the basic ideas of science fiction — alternate worlds, other dimensions, invisibility, super-powers, shifts in time, automatons and cyborgs, thought-reading, immortality…”

Though the tales in The Feminine Future were written by women, it is interesting that so few have female protagonists, or antagonists, for that matter. Several of these involve societies where women have become the dominant sex; a clear reflection of the atmosphere among intelligent females of the day who were still in the first stages of the fight for equality. The fact that most have male leads also serves to demonstrate how severely restricted women were as to what they could do with their lives.

Each of these authors truly was a pioneer, and it’s unfortunate that most have been neglected, if not entirely forgotten. Science fiction wouldn’t be what it is today without their contributions, and The Feminine Future does a service to every fan of the genre. Additional collections along the lines of this first would be most welcome!

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that The Feminine Future sells for a meager $4.50 (at present, the eBook costs even less). If you appreciate early science fiction literature, or wish to expand your knowledge of the genre, then don’t hesitate to grab it!

[This review was originally published on Dawn Teresa's ReadLove blog, https://dawnreadlove.wordpress.com/ where it has the following Verdict:]

4.5 of 5 Hearts. An Entertaining Anthology of Early and Influential Sci-Fi. The Feminine Future is a collection of literate and imaginative pre-pulp science fiction stories by talented and unjustly neglected female authors. It should sit comfortably on the shelves of any true SF fan; indeed, it is a necessity for those shelves.

[Raj · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting collection of science fiction short stories, all written by women around the dawn of the genre: the tail end of the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries. I must confess to being completely unfamiliar with any of the authors, except Edith Nesbit, of Five Children and It fame, but it was interesting to see that women were writing in what is usually regarded as a very male-dominated genre and era right from the start. Some of these stories were published in the big magazines of the era (Amazing Stories, Astounding etc), others were published in mainstream publications and still others were published in author anthologies: the same routes to publication as we see today (plus ça change and all that). As the editor says in his introduction, these women were pioneers in the field, tackling themes that are still common in the genre today: time travel, alternative universes, cybernetics, robots and more.

The stories are as varied as you'd expect, ranging from grim stories of genocide (Via the Hewitt Ray) through whimsical stories about strange islands (Friend Island) to humorous stories of unhelpful household aids (Ely's Automatic Housemaid). Nothing particularly jumped out at me as a wonderful story that I must keep forever, but there were no real clunkers either, although you do have to remember that these are period stories and have to be read as such. Very interesting for the historical context but also enjoyable in itself.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting by dint of what it is but I felt that the selection of stories was pretty mixed in quality. Some were more enjoyable than others whether because of the quality of the writing, the era in which they were written, or the subject matter. "Via The Hewlitt Ray" and "Children of the Light," two of the longer stories, where (imo) the most enjoyable, which I think is partially because they featured more 'classic' sci-fi elements i.e. trips to other worlds via crazy inventions, as well as because they were written on the later side and thus the language was more familiar to me. Some stories I felt were total duds (did they put the story set during the Boer War in there just to show that People From The Past Were Racist, or was that supposed to be a good story? Because I wouldn't even count it as sci-fi let alone very well written). I would recommend overall in terms of getting a glimpse into the development of the genre/women's concerns (as if they're a monolith lol) in science fiction/lives of women writers of this era - but don't expect it to be scintillating. ALSO: I enjoyed the little editorial intros to each story, but if you're compiling a 'feminist' collection of short stories by female authors, WHY WOULDN'T YOU HIRE A FEMALE EDITOR?? Nothing against this Mike dude he did a decent job but WHY?

[Faith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall Impressions 3 stars
I don't much care for the "classic" style of writing; I like my plots dense and my pacing energetic and while I appreciate lovely prose, it's not necessarily my priority. The value of this collection for me is therefore mostly in its historical significance -- though several of the stories were enjoyable.

When Time Turned, Ethel Watts Mumford 3 stars
Notable for being an early (the earliest?) portrayal of the "life lived in reverse" concept, but Mumford doesn't really do anything with it so as a piece of fiction it's just sort of blah.

The Painter of Dead Women, Edna W. Underwood 4 stars
Points for extremely vivid descriptions (maybe even trending toward the purple?) and for the heroine rescuing herself. The resolution is unsatisfying, though, and the ending rather abrupt.

The Automaton Ear, Florence McLandburgh 3 stars
Some pretty writing, but I'm not a fan of "and it was all a dream" (or paranoid delusion) endings. (Side note: I had the strongest case of deja vu while reading this story. Had I read it before??)

Ely's Automatic Housemaid, Elizabeth W. Bellamy 4 stars
An amusing tale, with some exceedingly charming lines sprinkled throughout. A slight story, but an enjoyable one.

The Ray of Displacement, Harriet Prescott Spofford 2.5 stars
I didn't really like this one -- it was a bit difficult to follow and just not that enjoyable.

Those Fatal Filaments, Mabel Ernestine Abbott 3.5 stars
Predictably, being able to hear people's thoughts is actually not a very good idea. Solid story, though!

The Third Drug, Edith Nesbit 4 stars
Creepy! A little Frankenstein-esque. I did keep laughing at the "say such-and-such and do so-and-so", but it's a lovely little story. Unsurprising, as Nesbit's childrens fiction is wonderful.

A Divided Republic -- An Allegory of the Future, Lillie Devereaux Blake 2 stars
I think placing this work in context it is probably significant, but the hyper-gender-essentialist concept doesn't hold up well today.

Via the Hewitt Ray, M. F. Rupert 4 stars
A very fun adventure story - and a female protagonist! A couple of the lines made me side-eye, but overall it was strong.

The Great Beast of Kafue, Clotilde Graves 3.5 stars
A good story, though it doesn't feel very 'science fiction' to me. But beautifully written, and a strongly developed theme.

Friend Island, Francis Stevens 4 stars
This was sweet, and I laughed at the last line.

The Artificial Man, Clare Winger Harris 3 stars
Also creepy. A couple of plot points didn't make sense to me (why were his limbs now running on electricity when before he just controlled them naturally?), but it was fine.

Creatures of the Light, Sophie Wenzel Ellis 1 star
...what the fuck. This story is a mess: the plot makes no sense, all the amazing women are throwing themselves on our pretty-but-otherwise-not-special protagonist, everyone seems to be falling in love by looking at photographs -- and there's a lovely dash of eugenics on the side. No thanks.

The Flying Teuton, Alice Brown 3 stars
Not a standout entry, but fine enough. I'm not really sure why this one was chosen to end the collection.

[Natalie Carey · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with most anthologies, some of these stories were really good, and some were just meh. The collection is good overall though, and I think it is definitely important to illustrate the history of women writing science fiction, as well as the fact that some of these stories came before well known stories by men that have similar ideas/plots. And yet these women's stories have gone largely unknown.

I also really enjoyed the brief biographies of each author preceding their story. I will definitely be seeking out more writing from the authors of the stories I did enjoy.

[Aya · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a collection of sci-fi short novels. These were written in the pre-1920s. I think short stories have a disadvantage of expressing complicated thoughts through the story due to the limited words. Also, most of the stories lacked the details of explanation about scientific elements in the story. I could expect this from the time when it was written but if I could be less merciful about how entertaining or enjoyable the stories were, I would say it wasn’t for me at all. I couldn’t find any short stories I liked.

[Jamesboggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most solid short story collections I have ever read. The stories are diverse in style and premise; this book contains scientific romance, social satire, a horror story in the vein of Frankenstein, weird fiction, and a pulp adventure or two. I enjoyed all but one of these stories. I recommend this collection to anyone who enjoys late 19th and early 20th century writing.

[Autumn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great collection of early sci-fi! I really enjoyed most of these short stories.
"The Creatures of Light" was my favorite. It had this horrific Brave New World meets Adam and Eve scenario that was well done. I also enjoyed "Via The Hewitt Ray" which postulates how society would be tiered if ran by only women.

[Alison · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't by any means perfect, but it was so fascinating and rewarding to read these stories by women that prove we were there, and have always been there, for everything. The collection has everything: adventure, horror, wild inventions, prophecy, all the variety of sci-fi you could want. There were stories that read just like any Burroughs; there were stories of depth and illumination; there were wildly feminist stories and some that were decidedly not. There was a bit more eugenics than the modern reader would likely appreciate. It's not a collection you can read straight through without needing breaks. But each story, with their excellent short introductions, showed again and again how we only think women weren't in sci-fi because we've allowed ourselves to forget it.

[jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great anthology that I am really glad to own. Even though I didn’t love all of the stories in this, the collection as a whole gets a very well deserved 4 stars for three main reasons: 1) Girl Power!, 2) I loved the way each story was preluded by Ashley with a bit of background on the author, a mention of their other works and where they had previously been collected etc., and 3) This anthology has introduced me to a bunch of fantastic female writers, that I may never have come across otherwise.

All in all, a very well put together collection. ‘The Feminine Future’ showcases some wonderful early women writers that were nailing the sci-fi genre just as well as (if not better than) their male counterparts, but weren't given as much of the limelight.

For my own reference I have mapped out below each story and the star rating I have given them. But it may be interesting for any of you who are considering picking this up (you should!), to see which ones were my favourites.

For the record, all were very well written but some of the lower ratings were simply down to personal taste! The stories are listed in the order of how they appeared in this collection (and the order in which I read them):

‘When Time Turned’ by Ethel Watts Mumford – 4 stars
‘The Painter of Dead Women’ by Edna W. Underwood – 4 stars
‘The Automaton Ear’ by Florence McLandburgh – 3.5 stars
‘Ely’s Automatic Housemaid’ by Elizabeth W. Bellamy – 3 stars
‘The Ray of Displacement’ by Harriet Prescott Spofford – 2.5 stars
‘Those Fatal Filaments’ by Mabel Ernestine Abbott – 4 stars
‘The Third Drug’ by Edith Nesbit – 4.5 stars
‘A Divided Republic – An Allegory of the Future’ by Lille Devereux Blake – 4.5 stars
‘Via the Hewitt Ray’ by M. F. Rupert – 4.5 stars
‘The Great Beast of Kafue’ by Clotilde Graves – 1.5 stars
‘Friend Island’ by Francis Stevens – 4 stars
‘The Artificial Man’ by Clare Winger Harris – 5 stars
‘Creatures of the Light’ by Sophie Wenzel Ellis – 4.5 stars
‘The Flying Teuton’ by Alice Brown – 1.5 stars

[tyto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The stories in this collection are all in the public domain, but this is a well curated collection that brings together a great collection of early science fiction stories written by women. I really didn't have a clue about how innovative some of these writers were, and the stories were entertaining and fun. A great collection for science fiction fans.

[Bri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Friend Island by Francis Stevens is so worth the read. It's so worth it to just find it online and give it a read even if you don't read this book.

[Elizabeth]

As seen on Science Book a Day: http://sciencebookaday.com/2015/07/07...