As it points out, ‘‘For your information, I only eat babies whose parents are far too entrenched in the oppressive capitalist superstructure to expect them to be redeemed as good dialectical materialists.’’ It’s better to think of the ‘‘SF’’ in the title as ‘‘speculative fiction’’ rather than a narrower definition of science fiction, especially once you read the second story ‘‘Excerpt From a Letter from a Social-Realist Aswang’’, in which a very self-important aswang (a vampire-like creature from Filipino folklore) lectures its correspondent on revolutionary political thought. If the anthology’s cover had you thinking that this would be a collection of straight-up science fiction stories, this would be your first indication that it is going to be something different. It was originally published in Stone Telling: The Magazine of Boundary-Crossing Poetry. Certainly there is also something of an entry ramp here: the opening story is Sofia Samatar’s ‘‘Girl Hours’’, which occupies a space halfway between a poem and a short story. Although one would expect the stories in an anthology titled The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women to be worlds away from a Lethem collection, they may have more in common with Lucky Alan than with stories found in an issue of Analog.
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