I finished this book a few weeks ago but completely forgot to talk about it here. Where did I remember to talk about it? That’s for Loba to know and you to figure out.

This was a delightful find that I stumbled upon while perusing the sci-fi section of the local library. Yes, I know that I said I was going to make this year all about reading my own books. But…it’s the library. And there are so many books there. And they know my name, and they call out to me when I haven’t visited them in a while.

So, Women Writing Science Fiction as Men might sound like the most boring title imaginable for an anthology…and really, it is pretty damned boring. But that should in no way reflect poorly on the anthology itself. Edited by Mike Resnick, this collection of 16 short stories, all written by women authors, is a fascinating exercise in creativity as well as an interesting commentary on gender relations, particularly within a genre that continues to be so intrinsically male-oriented (minus sad attempts at luring women in with “space drama” a la Caprica, which now officially feels more like betrayal than entertainment).

The crux of this anthology’s challenge was this: The women who wrote the short stories had to present a sci-fi story from the perspective of a male character. And the male character had to be so decidedly male as to be irreplaceable by a female protagonist. So no gender-generic storytelling here.

Were the women who accepted this challenge successful? Well, it was definitely a mixed bag of success and failure. And even those who succeeded did so in such a way that was either completely spoofing the challenge or was somewhat foggy on the whole “male-only perspective” requirement. In fact, one writer presented a story that was narrated by a woman. I’m still not sure as to how that one slipped by, but it did.

All in all, however, this is an intriguing anthology. True, the tongue-in-cheek takes on the challenge were sometimes a bit too goofy or stereotypical in presentation, but even some of those were funny enough to be forgiven their male caricatures. Plus, several of the stories were serious attempts at tackling this challenge, and they were the ones that shone brightest among the mix. Although even those beg the question, did the women writers truly succeed at writing believably from the male perspective? Or did they simply succeed at writing as women perceive men to behave? I’d love to hear from men who read this anthology and find out what they think of these writers and their attempts at capturing the essence of “maleness” in their stories.

Final Verdict: True, this was a library book that I had to return once I was finished with it, but the first thing I did once I got home was find a copy for myself at Amazon Marketplace. Found one for 98 cents. W00ts. I also discovered that there is another anthology edited by Resnick called Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. I was pleased enough with the first anthology that I checked out the description of this one on a whim. I was sold the instant I read that Robert J. Sawyer and David Gerrold were two of the contributors, and I bought a copy of this through Marketplace as well. Was there some kind of subliminal message to be learned that the price for a used copy of this book was 25 percent more than the anthology by the women writers? Nah…