Women Destroy Science Fiction

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I’ve been retweeting a lot from Lightspeed Magazine this last month.  Lightspeed Magazine was running a campaign on Kickstarter entitled Women Destroy Science Fiction, which ended yesterday.  Everyday, Lightspeed was sending essays from women science fiction writers, who spoke about their experiences, both good and bad, writing in the genre.  In a way, I’m a bit sad that the campaign is over (although happy that they wildly exceeded their goal) because I’m going to miss the daily essays.  But now that the campaign is over, I thought I’d share my favourite essays here:

• “I Wanted to be the First Woman on the Moon” by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
• “Stray Outside the Lines” by E. Catherine Tobler
• “Your Future is Out of Date” by Pat Murphy
• “Are We There Yet?” by Sheila Finch
• “Writing Stories, Wrinkling Time” by Kat Howard
• “Reading the Library Alphabetically” by Liz Argall
• “Stepping Through a Portal” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
• “Stocking Stuffers” by Anaea Lay
• “Never Think of Yourself as Less” by Helena Bell
• “Where Are My SF Books?” by DeAnn Knippling
• “Women Who Are More Than Strong” by Georgina Kamsika
• “The Wendybird” by Stina Leicht
• “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” by Kameron Hurley (reprint)
• “Read SF and You’ve Got a Posse” by Gail Marsella
• “Women are the Future of Science Fiction” by Juliette Wade
• “Science Fiction: You’re Doin’ It Wrong” by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
• “We Are the Army of Women Destroying SF” by Sandra Wickham
• “We Are the Fifty Percent” by Rachel Swirsky

I realize that the list is a bit long (I just listed off 18 essays), but I thought they were all really great.  I loved hearing how different authors found their way into science fiction (for a really funny one, read Stina Leicht’s “The Wendybird”).  All of the essays (including the ones I didn’t highlight here) are going to be included in the Women Destroy Science Fiction issue.  If you missed the Kickstarter, be sure to check out Lightspeed’s website, where they will let you preorder the special issue in the near future.

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