Reading: Women Invent the Future

Women Invent the Future is an anthology of SF by women writers produced by the responsible technology think-tank doteveryone and made available for free, either as an ebook or as a print copy in return for postage. I can't remember exactly when I downloaded my copy, but I decided to give it a go this weekend as it was the first unread book on my Kindle and I thought it might be easier to read short stories than to try to concentrate on the plot of a novel while I was at Eastercon.

There are six stories and one poem in the anthology, as well as an introduction from space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock on women, science and science fiction. Madeline Ashby's 'A Cure for Jet Lag' is set at a party in a near-future Los Angeles and looks at business relationships in the world of tech start-ups; Anne Charnock's 'The Adoption' is about parenthood and the possibilities of reproductive technology; Becky Chambers' 'Chrysalis' is about a mother letting her daughter follow her dreams of space exploration; Liz Williams' 'In the God-Fields' is a sweeping post-human interstellar epic; and Walidah Imarisha's poem 'Androids Dream of Electric Freedom' is a re-imagining of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in verse. My favourite stories were Molly Flatt's 'A Darker Wave', an examination of the possibilities of neurotechnology which is also a reworking of Macbeth, and Cassandra Khaw's 'There are Wolves in These Woods', a lyrical fairy-tale about women using technology to identify and avoid predatory men.

Walking: Wytham Woods and the Thames Path

I thought that a walk would probably be the ideal thing to do today to reboot my brain back into normal mode after Eastercon. We went to Wytham Woods to see if the bluebells were out yet, and did a walk I've been wanting to do for a while, through the woods to Swinford Toll Bridge and then along the Thames Path to Godstow before heading back across the fields to go back into the woods at the south-eastern gate and heading back to the car park.



I'd thought that it would be a really nice circuit, and I wasn't disappointed. The bluebells were indeed out, and the woods looked lovely, and that turns out to be a lovely peaceful stretch of the Thames Path (as long as you can ignore the increasing noise from the A34, obviously). It was pretty much dead on seven miles, with a reasonable amount of elevation (walking has made me realise that while Oxford itself is on the floor of the river valley, it's actually ringed with quite hilly hills, and Wytham Hill is 165m which, while obviously nothing by the standards of the Lake District or the Highlands, isn't actually too shabby), on a lovely sunny day.

Eastercon

Setting off for Eastercon on Friday I felt roughly equal parts terrified and excited, but I had a fantastic time and ended up feeling rather sorry that Easter being so late meant that this week is week 0 of term so I couldn't stay until today and take Tuesday off to recover (though by the time I left yesterday afternoon I was feeling tired enough that I was probably ready to come home).

I went to lots of interesting panels, and really liked how much of the content was focused on books, rather than the more media-centred content at Nine Worlds. Particular favourites included the art of reviewing, #ownvoices, maps and landscapes in fantasy, decolonising SFF and the Moomins; I only went to one panel that I really wasn't impressed with, on romance in SFF, which suffered from poor moderation and an unwillingness to explore the topic more widely, but I wasn't too sorry to leave it early given that romance in literature is something I have a fairly hit-and-miss relationship with anyway (and I had an excellent conversation about romance in SFF with the people I was sitting with before the panel started).

It was also really good to spend time socialising: with people I already knew but don't see in person nearly often enough; with people I hadn't met before; and, best of all, with people I have known online for a very long time but had never managed to meet in person before (in once case, someone who is almost my oldest internet acquaintance who I was absolutely thrilled to finally meet). The membership skews much older than Nine Worlds, so rather than feeling like one of the oldies I was firmly in the middle, age-wise, and in a lot of ways I felt much more like I belonged than I have done at Nine Worlds. I think there's a strong probability that I will be going again next year. If I do, I think I would probably stay in the con hotel; I'd picked the Ibis over the road this time on the grounds that it was close enough to get to easily but might give me a bit of space if I needed it, but I didn't really take advantage of the space and it did strike me that if I'd been in the con hotel I could have nipped upstairs to make tea between panels rather than paying £3 for a teabag and some hot water in the hotel bar...