SF Women on the Cutting Edge

Tippi N Blevins: "I found myself in the same garden, only by then night had fallen like a dark, concealing cloak. Frogs sang noctural songs from the tiny pond and a warm wind ruffled the uppermost mango leaves. There, in the countryside, the stars shone like a million carp in the stellar waters of the sky."

Lela E Buis: "Standing their under the hot sun, I tried not to stare at her breasts, the way they shifted under her tee, the way the nipples hardened and strained at the knit. Tight jeans, tucked into calf-high boots, hair a dark braid that swung to her waist. An oval face with a spray of freckles over her nose -- I wondered if her body would look the same"

Emily Alward: "When you ship out on a Lyrican Sisterhood craft, you work. That's almost all you can do. The ships are cramped and grimly functional, and the normal duty hours are twelve hours on, twelve hours off, relentlessly for weeks in the weary sameness of space. Our messhall is a closet half the size of a cruiser captain's ready room. It's a long way from the efficiency and comfort of corporate merchant ships, or from the respect you automatically gain by serving in the Stellar Navy."

"A very long way."