There is some good stuff in here, although it's very Anglo-centric. The Le Guin is fabulous. Fay Weldon, as always, failed to live up to the warmth and heart in Letters to Alice; Tiptree is Tiptree-awesome.

Also, the biography of Leonora Carrington makes the entire book worth it: "During the War she suffered a breakdown and was rescued from a Madrid asylum by her former nanny, who arrived in a submarine." ( )

Not all to my taste but with a collection of this size and breadth there is plenty to satisfy. Lovely to reread Leigh Brackett's "The Lake of the Gone Forever". Le Guin's "Sur", though to my mind not really speculative fiction of any sort, is a wonderful tale, and Octavia Butler as always is excellent. On one hand I demur at including so many non-genre writers in collections which claim to represent a genre, but on the other hand I am grateful to have read Muriel Spark's gem, "Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse". ( )

Sources and Acknowledgements;
Introduction by Joanna Russ;
Editors' Note.
"The Demon Lover" by Elizabeth Bowen;
"The Tooth" by Shirley Jackson;
"The Lake of the Gone Forever" by Leigh Brackett;
"The Old Man" by Daphne du Maurier;
"My Flannel Knickers" by Leonara Carrington;
"The Anything Box" by Zenna Henderson;
"Miss Pinkerton's Apocalypse" by Muriel Spark;
"A Bright Green Field" by Anna Kavan;
"The Ship who Sang" by Anne McCaffrey;
"Marmalade Wine" by Joan Aiken;
"The Fall of Frency Steiner" by Hilary Bailey;
"Cynosure" by Kit Reed;
"The Wall" by Josephine Saxton;
"The Foot" by Christine Brooke-Rose;
"Baby, You were Great" by Kate Wilhelm;
"The Second Inquisition" by Joanna Russ;
"Murder, 1986" by P. D. James;
"The Milk of Paradise" by James Tiptree, Jr.;
"When It Happens" by Margaret Atwood;
"Angel, All Innocence" by Fay Weldon;
"Night-Side" by Joyce Carol Oates;
"Fireflood" by Vonda N. McIntyre;
"Wives" by Lisa Tuttle;
"Red as Blood" by Tanith Lee;
"Sur" by Ursula K. Le Guin;
"Peter and the Wolf" by Angela Carter;
"The Pits beneath the World" by Mary Gentle;
"Two Sheep" by Janet Frame;
"Relics" by Zoe Fairbairns;
"The Evening and the Morning and the Night" by Octavia E. Butler;
"(Learning about) Machine Sex" by Candas Jane Dorsey;
"Prodigal Pudding" by Suniti Namjoshi;
"Boobs" by Suzy McKee Charnas;
"If the Word was to the Wise" by Carol Emshwiller;
"Trial by Teaspoon" by Lynda Rajan;
"In the Green Shade of a Bee-Loud Glade" by L. A. Hall;
"Death in the Egg" by Ann Oakley;
"Kay and Phil" by Lucy Sussex; and
Notes on the Authors.
( )