Imagine it, if you can bear to look back: long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the writing of science fiction was dominated by men, or what Ursula K. Le Guin once described as a ‘baboon patriarchy’ – its female characters figments of adolescent fantasy, awaiting rescue in bronze brassieres, to be mansplained to about rocketry and ray guns. Now cut to the 1970s – the coming-of-age decade from which the 20 stories gathered here emerged – when it all changed.