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His name was Jai Vedh, he was an Earthman. But his ship had blown up on a star voyage and now he was a castaway on an uncharted Earthlike planet. The human colony there had developed telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation and the damnedest social system you could imagine had grown out of those abilities.

Five elegant stories from Hugo and Nebula award-winning author Joanna Russ, in the form of a history lesson to a child of the future. A medieval abbess defends her community against Viking invasion; a young girl sails on a 19th-century clipper bound for America with a guardian who is not what 'he' seems; a time traveller disguises herself as a male god on an errand of mercy in a feudal past; an author evokes the plot of a Gothic romance between two women.

The stories are as much about the nature of sf as they are about the imagined & fantastical worlds they describe. Russ once more draws on her talent for vivid characterisation to involve us in worlds not our own, exploring gender and power relationships in past & future to illuminate our own time.

Table of Contents:

• Souls - (1982) - novella
• The Mystery of the Young Gentleman - (1982) - novelette
• Bodies - (1984) - novelette
• What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma? - (1983) - novelette
• Everyday Depressions - (1984) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, January 1996. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 2 (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions 2 (1972), edited by Robert Silverberg. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2 (1973), edited by Terry Carr
• Women of Wonder (1975), edited by Pamela Sargent
• Alpha 9 (1978), edited by Robert Silverberg
• The Best of New Dimensions (1979), edited by Robert Silverberg
• The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited by David G. Hartwell
• Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Women of Wonder: The Classic Years: SF by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent
• Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois

The story is included in the collection The Zanzibar Cat (1983).

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Universe 1 (1971), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthology Nebula Award Stories Seven (1972), edited by Lloyd Biggle, Jr. It is included in the collection The Zanzibar Cat (1983).

Hugo and Locus Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1982. The story can also be found in the anthologies The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, The Best Science Fiction of the Year #12 (1983), edited by Terry Carr, The Nebula Awards #18 (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg, The New Hugo Winners: (1983-85) (1989), edited by Isaac Asimov, Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (1994), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Visions of Wonder (1996) edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf. It is included in the collection Extra(ordinary) People (1984) and is half of Tor Double #11: Houston, Houston, Do You Read?/Souls (1989), with James Tiptree, Jr.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1979. The story can be found in the anthologies The 1980 Annual World's Best SF (1980), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Fantasy Annual III (1981), edited by Terry Carr and Nebula Winners Fifteen (1981), edited by Frank Herbert. It is included in the collection The Zanzibar Cat (1983).

Table of Contents:

• The Little Dirty Girl - (1982) - novelette
• Sword Blades and Poppy Seed - (1983) - shortstory
• Main Street: 1953 - (1987) - shortstory
• How Dorothy Kept Away the Spring - (1977) - shortstory
• This Afternoon - (1987) - shortstory
• This Night, at My Fire - (1966) - shortstory
• "I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket... But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life!" - (1964) - shortstory
• Come Closer - (1965) - shortstory
• It's Important to Believe - (1987) - shortstory
• Mr. Wilde's Second Chance - (1966) - shortstory
• Window Dressing - (1970) - shortstory
• Existence - (1975) - shortstory
• Foul Fowl - (1987) - shortstory
• A Short and Happy Life - (1969) - shortstory
• The Throaways - (1987) - shortstory
• The Cliches from Outer Space - (1984) - shortstory
• Elf Hill - (1982) - shortstory
• Nor Custom Stale - (1959) - shortstory
• The Experimenter - (1975) - novelette
• Reasonable People - (1974) - shortstory
• Life in a Furniture Store - (1987) - shortstory
• The View from This Window - (1970) - novelette
• Old Pictures - (1987) - essay
• Visiting - (1967) - shortstory
• Visiting Day - (1970) - shortstory
• The Autobiography of My Mother - (1975) - shortstory
• Old Thoughts, Old Presences - (1975) - shortstory
• Daddy's Girl - (1975) - shortstory

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Speculations (1982), edited by Isaac Asimov and Alice Laurance. It is included in the collection Extra(ordinary) People (1984).

Irene, a female galactic agent, rescues a young woman, Zubeydeh, from a male dominant culture of a colonized planet, Ala-ed-deen, where women are kept in purdah.

Contents:

• The Zanzibar Cat - interior artwork by Dennis Neal Smith
• Foreword (The Zanzibar Cat) - essay by Marge Piercy
• When It Changed - (1972) - shortstory
• The Extraordinary Voyages of Amélie Bertrand - (1979) - shortstory
• The Soul of a Servant - (1973) - shortstory
• Gleepsite - (1971) - shortstory
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - shortstory
• My Dear Emily - (1962) - shortstory
• The New Men - (1966) - shortstory
• My Boat - (1976) - shortstory
• Useful Phrases for the Tourist - (1972) - shortstory
• Corruption - (1976) - shortstory
• There Is Another Shore, You Know, Upon the Other Side - (1963) - shortstory
• A Game of Vlet - (1974) - shortstory
• How Dorothy Kept Away the Spring - (1977) - shortstory
• Poor Man, Beggar Man - (1971) - novelette
• Old Thoughts, Old Presences - (1975) - shortstory
• The Zanzibar Cat - (1971) - shortstory

Classic essays on science fiction and feminism by Nebula and Hugo award-winning Joanna Russ. Here she ranges from a consideration of the aesthetic of science fiction to a reading of the lesbian identity of Willa Cather. To Write Like a Woman includes essays on horror stories and the supernatural, feminist utopias, popular literature for women (the "modern gothic"), and the feminist education of graduate students in English.

This story, about an all-female society suddenly faced with the presence of men, is one of the most famous tales in science fiction.

It has been collected in The Zanzibar Cat (1983) and anthologized in Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), Nebula Award Stories 8 (1973), The New Women of Wonder (1978), The Best of the Nebulas (1989), The Road to Science Fiction 3: From Heinlein to Here (1979), Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015) and The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016).

Read this story online for free at the Sci Fiction archive.

In 1959, at the age of 22, Joanna Russ published her first science fiction story, "Nor Custom Stale," in The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy. In the forty-five years since, Russ has continued to write some of the most popular, creative, and important novels and stories in science fiction. She was a central figure, along with contemporaries Ursula K. Le Guin and James Tiptree, in revolutionizing science fiction in the 1960s and 1970s, and her 1970 novel, The Female Man, is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential depictions of a feminist utopia in the entire genre.

The Country You Have Never Seen gathers Joanna Russ's most important essays and reviews, revealing the vital part she played over the years in the never-ending conversation among writers and fans about the roles, boundaries, and potential of science fiction. Spanning her entire career, the collection shines a light on Russ's role in the development of new wave science fiction and feminist science fiction, while at the same time providing fascinating insight into her own development as a writer.

The story takes the form of an audio diary kept by the unnamed protagonist. A group of people, with no technical skills and scant supplies, are stranded on a planet and debate how to survive. The men in the group are dedicated to colonizing and populating the planet, but the unnamed female protagonist, who does not believe that long-term survival is possible, resists being made pregnant by them. Tensions escalate into violence, until finally she is forced to kill the other survivors in order to defend herself against rape. Left alone, she becomes increasingly philosophical, recounting her personal history in political agitation and attempting to chart the days and seasons even as she begins to hallucinate from hunger and loneliness. She experiences visions, first of the people she killed, and then of people from her past. Finally, weak from hunger, she resolves to kill herself.

The Future--and the planet Paradise is ruptured by war. Trans-Temporal Agent Alyx is specially transported from the past to guide eight VIPs to safety. Tough, resourceful and experienced in the hard hand-to-hand fighting of Earth's barbaric past, she is ideal for the assignment.

But the greatest hazards to the trip lie not within the mysterious forces that clash around them, but at the heart of the group itself...

Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Samuel R. Delany
• Picnic on Paradise - (1968) - novel
• The Second Inquisition - (1970) - novelette
• The Barbarian - (1968) - novelette
• Bluestocking - (1967) - novelette (variant of The Adventuress)
• I Thought She Was Afeard Till She Stroked My Beard - (1967) - novelette (variant of I Gave Her Sack and Sherry)

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 6 (1970), edtied by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the anhologies Nebula Award Stories Six (1971), edited by Clifford D. Simak and More Women of Wonder (1976), edited by Pamela Sargent. It is included in the collection The Adventures of Alyx (1976).

It's influenced William Gibson and been listed as one of the ten essential works of science fiction. Most importantly, Joanna Russ's THE FEMALE MAN is a suspenseful, surprising and darkly witty chronicle of what happens when Jeannine, Janet, Joanna, and Jael--four alternate selves from drastically different realities--meet.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?:

The Astronauts had the "right stuff" to deal... with almost anything....

A US spacecraft with an all male crew is thrown forward in time to an Earth where all men have died from a plague.

Souls:

The Vikings Thought the sacking would be easy - but the Abbess was more than she seemed!