Painted portrait of Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley, the world's first science fiction author. Portrait painted by Richard Rothwell.

100 great science fiction stories written by women

Painted portrait of Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley, the world’s first science fiction author. Portrait by Richard Rothwell, 1840.

Yesterday one of our spectacular student researchers, Zac Heth, alerted us to this great blog post by the science fiction author and reviewer Ian Sales: a list of 100 great science fiction short stories written by women. Sales wrote the list in response to the classic 1978 anthology 100 Great Science Fiction Stories, which contained only 5 stories by women, “to demonstrate that women have been writing good science fiction since the beginnings of the genre.”

My favorite part of this list is that Sales (who wins my unofficial science fiction MVP award for this week) includes links to help you locate the anthologies, periodicals or archives where each story can be found, or links to the full text of each story online. Happy reading!