MacFarlane, Alex Dally (ed.) - The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women / МакФарлейн, Алекс Дэлли (ред.) - Большая книга НФ, написанной женщинами [2014, EPUB, ENG]

Introduction by Alex Dally MacFarlane Girl Hours by Sofia Samatar Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-Realist Aswang by Kristin Mandigma Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra / Сутра млечного пути by Vandana Singh The Queen of Erewhon by Lucy Sussex Tomorrow Is Saint Valentine's Day by Tori Truslow Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor The Science of Herself by Karen Joy Fowler The Other Graces by Alice Sola Kim Boojum / Буджум by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul by Natalia Theodoridou Mountain Ways / Законы гор by Ursula K. Le Guin Tan-Tan and Dry Bone by Nalo Hopkinson The Four Generations of Chang E by Zen Cho Stay Thy Flight by Élisabeth Vonarburg Astrophilia by Carrie Vaughn Invisible Planets by Hao Jingfang On the Leitmotif of the Trickster Constellation in Northern Hemispheric Star Charts, Post-Apocalypse by Nicole Kornher-Stace Valentines by Shira Lipkin Dancing in the Shadow of the Once by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz Ej-Es / ЭЙ-ЭС by Nancy Kress The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees / Осы-картографы и пчёлы-анархисты by E. Lily Yu The Death of Sugar Daddy by Toiya Kristen Finley Enyo-Enyo by Kameron Hurley Semiramis by Genevieve Valentine Immersion / Погружение by Aliette de Bodard Down the Wall by Greer Gilman Sing by Karin Tidbeck Good Boy by Nisi Shawl The Second Card of the Major Arcana by Thoraiya Dyer A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas by Ekaterina Sedia Vector by Benjanun Sriduangkaew Concerning the Unchecked Growth of Cities by Angélica Gorodischer The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew by Catherynne M. Valente

Jesse, come home There’s a hole in the bed where we slept Now it’s growing cold Hey Jesse, your face in the place where we lay by the hearth, all apart it hangs on my heart … Jesse, I’m lonely Come home.

—“Jesse,” Janis Ian, 1972

“Why did you first enter the Corps?” Lolimel asked her as they sat at the back of the shuttle, just before landing. Mia looked at the young man helplessly, because how could you answer a question like that? Especially when it was asked by the idealistic and worshipful new recruits, too ignorant to know what a waste of time worship was, let alone simplistic questions. “Many reasons,” Mia said gravely, vaguely. He looked like so many medicians she had worked with, for so many decades on so many planets … intense, thick-haired, genemod beautiful, a little insane. You had to be a little insane to leave Earth for the Corps, knowing that when (if) you ever returned, all you had known would have been dust for centuries. He was more persistent than most. “What reasons?” “The same as yours, Lolimel,” she said, trying to keep her voice gentle. “Now be quiet, please, we’re entering the atmosphere.” “Yes, but—” “Be quiet.” Entry was so much easier on him than on her; he had not got bones weakened from decades in space. They did weaken, no matter what exercise one took or what supplements or what gene therapy. Mia leaned back in her shuttle chair and closed her eyes. Ten minutes, maybe, of aerobraking and descent; surely she could stand ten minutes. Or not. The heaviness began, abruptly increased. Worse on her eyeballs, as always; she didn’t have good eye-socket muscles, had never had them. Such an odd weakness. Well, not for long; this was her last flight. At the next station, she’d retire. She was already well over age, and her body felt it. Only her body? No, her mind, too. At the moment, for instance, she couldn’t remember the name of the planet they were hurtling toward. She recalled its catalogue number, but not whatever its colonists, who were not answering hails from ship, had called it. “Why did you join the Corps?” “Many reasons.” And so few of them fulfilled. But that was not a thing you told the young. ...