Book Review: The Mile-Long Spaceship (variant title: Andover and the Android), Kate Wilhelm (1963)

(Richard Powers’ cover for the 1963 edition)

3/5 (collated rating: Average)

Kate Wilhelm, famous for her Hugo-winning masterwork Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), started her writing career with more modest works.  The Mile-Long Spaceship (1963) collects some of her earliest short stories from the late 50s and a few written for the collection in the early 60s — Clone, her first novel, co-written with Theodore L. Thomas would come out in 1965.  However, her best sci-fi was published in the late 60s to the mid-70s.  Before then her work tended to be straight-forward with an occasional interesting idea or poignant scene but generally unremarkable….

Three stories are worth reading in this collection: an early work of feminist science  Continue reading