In the field of mad science, women have for too long been ignored, their triumphs misattributed to mere men. Society has seen the laboratory as the province of men. Jacob's Ladder electric arcs, death rays, even test tubes have phallic connotations, subliminally reinforcing the patriarchy. The mother of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, advocated that women appear more masculine to earn respect. If Marie Curie had been allowed to develop her Atomic Gendarmerie for the Institut du radium, surely she would have been awarded her third Nobel Prize, for Peace. Thankfully, the women working to dangerous and/or questionable ends in the pages of Daughters of Frankenstein are unafraid of the patriarchy--indeed, as lesbian mad scientists, they prefer the company and comforts of their own gender. Androids? Pfeh, the gynoid is superior. Etheric dynamos have a more pleasing design, one that is vulvar, than Tesla coils. Eighteen imaginative, if not insane, women; eighteen stories told by some of the finest writers working in queer speculative fiction: Traci Castleberry, Sean Eads, Gemma Files, Amy Griswold, and Melissa Scott.
Daughters of Frankenstein
Hardback, 304 pages
Cover art by Ben Baldwin
Cover and interior design by Inkspiral Design"A lively and engrossing collection of female-driven fiction." - Kirkus Reviews
"This intersection of mad science and lesbian leanings is entertaining and wonderfully weird." - Publishers Weekly
"All together, a pleasant summer read delivering exactly what it says on the tin. If this is up your alley, you’ll probably quite like it: weird, fun, playful, and full of lesbians doing mad science and breaking out of social conventions." - Lee Mandelo for Reactor
"Here is a collection of science fiction and fantasy that offers you everything from ice weasels to shrunken immortality to robots to probability-calculating mutants, and on top of that you can be assured every time you start a story that it will be full of women and at least several of them will be queer. This is no small thing." - AfterEllen
