The full name of this anthology is Trans-Galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories of Transgender and Nonbinary Adventures, which is a title almost long enough to be a short story of its own. It’s the seventh volume of the Bikes In Space series.
As editor Lydia Rogue says in their introduction, this book is meant for the trans and nonbinary community. Characters in each story are trans or nonbinary, as are their authors. You might think that the feminist sci-fi short stories featuring bicycles concept could be limiting, but its specificity gives the writers a jump-off point that they take in a wide variety of directions.
In these stories, there are intergalactic bike messengers, bounty hunters, magical graffiti artists, werewolves, and a kid trying to survive being sacrificed to a minotaur.
My favorites were Charlie Jane Anders’s “The Visitmothers,” Lydia Rogue’s “Unexpectedly Trans-Parent,” and Juliet Kemp’s “Riding for Luck,” though I found each of the stories unique and interesting.
I recommend this book if you’re looking for some creative short fiction unbound by gravity or gender.
(A quick disclosure: I have short stories in a couple of the other volumes in the Bikes In Space series, but had no involvement with this volume.)
