This was a very interesting book. I really liked the concept, and some of the stories were really good. My favorite stories were:

Thumping the Weaver by Susan R. Matthews
A Good Idea at the Time by Karen E. Taylor and
Jesus Freaks by Jennifer Roberson.

These are the three that stick out, but really all of them were interesting and enjoyable. :) ( )

This was a very interesting book. I really liked the concept, and some of the stories were really good. My favorite stories were:

Thumping the Weaver by Susan R. Matthews
A Good Idea at the Time by Karen E. Taylor and
Jesus Freaks by Jennifer Roberson.

These are the three that stick out, but really all of them were interesting and enjoyable. :) ( )

In his introduction, Mike Resnick set up two rules:

1. The story was to be narrated in the first person by a male character;
2. The story would be unworkable if the main character were changed into a woman;

The goal was for the female authors to write like a man, i.e., getting into the mindset of a man. I think that only five of the sixteen stories actually succeeded. Of these five, I liked "All My Children" by Leslie What, and Leah A. Zeldes grotesquely funny "Big" the best. I thought that "Homecoming" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and "Jesus Freaks" by Jennifer Roberson were promising, but fell flat in the end. I think that other people may like them; in particular I know few people who are bothered by the things that I didn't like in the latter.

Severna Parks' "Call for Submissions" failed the most objective rule: it is narrated by a woman. Although I loved Laura Resnick's "Licensed to Reclaim", I think that I would have assumed that it was written by a woman, unless it was written for the companion anthology, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women. I do think that it captures a certain male mindset, but from a woman's point of view. There are a couple more that are iffy in that regard.

As to requiring a male narrator, I am reminded that someone once remarked that there are only two gender-specific jobs: wet-nurse and sperm donor. I gather that most of these authors wouldn't agree. I think that ten or possibly eleven of the stories could have had a female narrator. In some cases, making the main character female would have required that the spouse be male, or in other cases, that they be a lesbian couple, but I consider that minor. The main characters fill roles that were traditionally male, but could certainly be held by a woman. Increasing the confusion, they often have a female partner or colleague, making it clear that they could have been women. Still, although I don't think they satisfied the criteria, I enjoyed "Better than Ants" by Barbara Galler-Smith; "A Good Idea at the Time" by Karen E. Taylor; "Blackbird, Fly!" by Linda J. Dunn. I thought that "Maxwell's Law" by Adrienne Gormley was fun, but the ending was a little flat; and "Diving After Reflected Woman" by Terry M. McGarry was very interesting if not exactly enjoyable.

I would say that in most cases, the authors do succeed in "writing like men" in that I wouldn't have been able to guess from the story that it was by a woman. Although this may seen odd in view of my coming remarks, almost all the authors write quite well in a technical wordsmith sort of way: they use words well, but I found most of the stories unsatisfying.

Normally, I don't like all the works in an anthology, and I don't really see that as a problem since authors are likely to be a diverse group. I won't say that these were bad stories in any cosmic sense: other people may like them just fine. What I found odd is that I usually didn't like the stories for the same reason: what one might call the "huh?" factor.

Janis Ian's story "Prayerville" is well written, poetic, and I thought was going to be moving. At one point a character says to the narrator: "'Now you understand, yes?' Yes, I understand." Well, I don't. I get the theme, but the story seems full of holes. It's not that I don't understand the "Joes", they're aliens after all, and an essential part of the story is the difficulty that humans have understanding them. The problem is that I can't make sense of the human characters. Why was the narrator human, never mind male or female? What about the children? After this epiphany, why does he gets on the bus like nothing happened? The answer to the first question is of course that the author wanted a character to whom explanations would need to be made - if you have to explain it, it didn't work. It was the same with many of the other stories: I felt there was too much left out, or the stories simply didn't have a satisfying ending. This of course, is quite subjective, so I am sure that many people will love stories I found disappointing.

To sum it up, there are some good stories here, it's a worthwhile anthology for people who like science fiction short stories. I don't think it succeeded at its stated goal, however. ( )