Book Review: Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology: Issue V

A unique collection of hauntingly engaging and imaginative stories

 

In addition to being entertaining, speculative fiction short stories can be an excellent way to process real life personal and societal issues through the prism of the fantastic. Will This Be a Problem? The Anthology: Issue V is an anthology of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror short stories, all by African writers. The collection, edited by Somto Ihezue and Olivia Kidula, varies from historical to contemporary, and includes a range of subtle nods or harshly direct commentary on society, religion, and politics. There are also thoughtful philosophical explorations, as well as straight, terrifying, wild adventures. All of stories are imaginative but also beautifully written and hauntingly engaging, incorporating elements of African culture, history, and spirituality.

At times, some of the selections raise an intriguing concept but then end abruptly, leaving the resolution to the reader’s imagination. Other stories dig deeply into complex situations offering interesting answers to philosophical questions. A standout in the collection is Kevin Rigathi’s twisty “If Memory Serves,” a story of science gone wrong in the commoditization of memory and culture. In this tale, a well-meaning scientist creates a way to extract traumatic memories from people but the result is not what he or society expects. In the vibe of the tv show Severance, the story explores the way good and bad memories shape our authentic selves and our defensive instincts. And it explores the way personal experiences can be exploited and cultures appropriated for dangerous purposes. “If Memory Serves” is an ideal companion piece to another story in the collection, the similarly haunting “The Market of Memories” by Azara Tswanya. “The Market of Memories” is the personal tale of a financially struggling woman who sells her memory of a beloved friend in exchange for money to feed her family. While wealthy people gorge on fetishized memories, the poor in her community lose more and more of themselves and their culture. 

That story is one of several that explore larger themes of colonization and cultural exploitation. “The Clans” by Tonny Ogwa is a tale of ancient clans blessed with superpowers from a powerful deity, however the arrival and ongoing influence of a European priest interferes with their powers and leads to unrest. For a more modern take on a similar theme, there is the uncomfortably relatable story “The Language We Have Learned to Carry in Our Skin” by Shingai Kagund. In this haunting story a young girl learns a disturbing secret about those in power and ponders this truth as she grows up to be a journalist and becomes exhausted by reporting on the never-ending violence and exploitation in our society. 

Some stories are more nihilistic such as Yvette Lisa Ndlovu’s “Dinosaurs Once Lived Here” which offers a sharp, cynical overview of the end of Earth. Among the more hopeful stories is one of my favorites in the collection, “Ash Baby” by Andrew Dkalira which offers a clever reimagining of the Biblical story of Job but, in this version, things are not as they seem. Another tragic but hopeful tale is Rutendo Chidzodzo’s “I’m Home,” a brief, second person narrative of a girl stolen by water spirits and the mother who grieves silently and prays for her return. 

The opening story in the anthology is “The Sirangori Fey Market” by Ephraim N. Orji. The story follows a woman who enters a forbidden marketplace filled with dangerous magical creatures as she seeks both answers and revenge for the death of a child. In another of my favorite tales, "Something Cruel" by Gabrielle Emem Harry, a trio of cynical but professional spiritual enforcers compete with each other to exact punishments on humans and each other as part of their obligations. The prose in this tale is smooth and inviting although the ending of this magical story is, more or less, left to the readers imagination. 

On the philosophical side, “Mr. Original Swag” by Victor Forna is told in the form of an interview that we can only hear one side of. Through the conversations we have a parable on the seductive nature of evil and in particular, the way it preys on the poor and vulnerable. At the other end of the spectrum is the very metaphysical “Commensalism, or the Labyrinth’s Vessels” by Albert Nkereuwem. As people look around at the many bad things in our world, some question why an all-powerful deity wouldn’t just stop humans from hurting each other and stop death, exploitation, environmental toxins and diseases. Wouldn’t it be better to just control humanity’s toxic behavior so that the earth and everyone in it is safe? This story offers a thoughtful vision of what it might look like if human beings no longer had free will to make bad choices and were instead controlled in a Borg-style hive mind. The effect is clever, poignant, and full of irony. The collection also includes Alex Tamei’s post-apocalyptic “A Song of Ruin,” Lucille Sambo’s alien adventure “Scales and Arabesques,” Matseliso Motsoane’s quirky “Baby Potion,” and Khaya Maseko’s time-distortion tale, “Acceptance.”

The final story in the collection, “Why Donkeys Have 44 Teeth” by Peter Nena, is an example of intriguing narrative pacing. The tale starts out creepily and slowly as a little boy ponders an odd dream about a talking donkey. But the story picks up speed as a horrific murder mystery and more dreams accelerate the tale. Then, like wheels on a rollercoaster, the story soon descend into horrific mayhem. This is another tale that leaves the ultimate ending to the reader’s imagination but the accelerating pace will leave you breathless and terrified with its old fashioned horror intensity. 

Despite some tales with abrupt endings, the solid prose and strong African cultural influence makes the book a highly enjoyable read. “Will This Be a Problem” is a uniquely satisfying anthology of fantastical stories. The collection has a strong range of tales, each with gorgeous writing and twisted adventures that will leave you intrigued or terrified, or both. In the end, the collection is less of an escape, and more of a truly unique exploration.

--

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Highlights:

• Solid writing across a range of stories
• Some abrupt endings
• Mind bending exploration of philosophical and social issues

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne

A curious experiment in probing the minds of fans

More or less a year and a half ago, the North American Jules Verne Society posted a call for submissions to a planned anthology of short stories inspired by Verne's oeuvre. These could be sequels, prequels, sidequels, or original pieces using the same vibe or setting. The result is the book Extraordinary Visions, which contains thirteen stories from across the Anglosphere.

What this collection contains is the purest form of fanfiction—and here I must be very clear that by "fanfiction" I don't mean anything derogatory. These stories consciously seek to honor and perpetuate Verne's style, buttressed by the state of scientific knowledge that existed during his lifetime. This is the highest form of flattery Verne could have hoped for from his readers; indeed, one can read Extraordinary Visions as a historical register of the state of English-speaking Verne fandom at this moment of the 21st century. However, in terms of literary quality, the success of the experiment is mixed.

The Dominion of All the Earth, by Joseph S. Walker, a belated epilogue to Journey to the Center of the Earth, suffers from too much loyalty to the original text. The dialogues try for antique but come off as stilted and verbose. The protagonist has done all his actions prior to the story proper, leaving him only with the role of sitting and listening to seven pages of exposition, and that's the end. If we judged this text by today's narrative conventions, the first criticism would be that this is not a protagonist propelling the action; this is a protagonist having the action dumped onto him.

However, when considered as what it really tries to be, an epilogue to the original novel, it fits perfectly. On its own, this story can't boast much in the way of structural quality (nor can the novel), but if we imagine this story printed at the end of the novel, extending the plot beyond its original non-ending, it helps it reach the completion Verne couldn't give it.

To Hold Back Time: A Baltimore Gun Club Adventure, by Michael Schulkins, more a stealth remake than a true sequel to The Purchase of the North Pole, also shows the limitations of prioritizing faithfulness to the original. In speech, mannerisms, personalities and interests, this story achieves a credible recreation of the Baltimore Gun Club, one of the most suffocatingly ultramasculine creations of literature. However, this outdated vision of scientific progress still finds resonance. The scenes where the Club's entrepreneuring gentlemen meet to plan the improvement of human life via the all-purpose power of firearms bring to mind today's equally overconfident tech bros, obsessed with moving fast and breaking things.

This time, the Club's big idea is to give themselves more free time each day "for extended gunnery practice" by slowing down the rotation of Earth. How, you ask? With huge, carefully positioned cannons, of course. The story delivers the bits of humor that can be expected from such a premise, but the plot follows the beats of The Purchase of the North Pole so closely that the reader will not be surprised to find a similar ending that happens for similar reasons, with the added disadvantage that this ending requires experienced cannoneers to commit an elementary mistake about how recoil works.

A Drama in Durango, by Alison L. Randall, is a more original story, even if it's partly inspired by A Drama in Livonia and less directly by Master Zacharius. Its protagonist is a fan of Verne's books who lives in the age of cowboys and uses the same logical methods of Verne's characters to solve the case of a wandering bank robber who turns out to be linked to a much larger conspiracy. The plot is woven impressively tight, with each step in the chain of secrets, betrayals, plans and counterplans fulfilling its function in harmonious order.

Old Soldiers, by Gustavo Bondoni, is rather problematic. It's set decades after the ending of The Steam House and deals with the reconstruction of its mechanical elephant so that it can be used in World War I. Although the idea of defending France from the Kaiser's troops with a steam-powered robot is a potent premise, that adventure is only reported in a late flashback by a minor character; we don't see it happen. The focus of the story is centered instead on an Indian man who worked as a servant of the British pilot of the Steam House, and who even in his last years continues to feel for his old master a reverence that is disturbing to read. The abusive power dynamic between colonizer and colonized is never addressed, and the rightness of arming the British Empire with a huge metallic fighting machine is simply taken for granted, as it was in the original novel. Add to these problems the two lead characters' fixation with manly emotionlessness and the story's unquestioned pro-militarism, and the result is a deeply uncomfortable read.

Want of Air, by Janice Rider, is another story about Verne fans. With a gentle touch over the wounds of grief, the author draws a poetic parallel between a widow and a son comforting each other during a winter night and an episode in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas where Nemo and his crew are trapped with only a few hours of oxygen left. This story gets the closest to the stated spirit of the anthology in that, instead of playing with Verne's fantastic machines, it goes straight to the more vital topic of readers' shared love for Verne and what that shared love can bring to your life.

Nellie and Jules Go Boating, by David A. Natale, alludes to a real-life incident. In 1889, American journalist Nellie Bly embarked on a solo trip around the world, in an (eventually successful) attempt to complete it faster than Verne's imagined 80 days. During one of the stops in her itinerary, she happened to be close to Verne's house in France, so of course she took the opportunity to meet him and discuss the adventure she was undergoing. No one knows what they said to each other. This story imagines what might have happened in those brief hours.

The premise is a good one, but the dialogues suffer from the frequent appearance of untranslated French in the middle of lines supposed to be transcribed in English for the reader. Also, for a story about a woman's determination, independence, and accomplishments, there's a bit too much of focus on Verne's relationship with his father. Those sections distract from the events that are actually of interest, and are written with less technical finesse than the rest of the text.

The Highest Loyalty, by Mike Adamson, is a standard rescue adventure starring Captain Nemo. He receives a call for help, he helps, the end. The briefly mentioned backstory, where the Nautilus was part of the Underground Railroad carrying Black people to freedom, would have been far more exciting to read than the plot that is instead told here.

Embrace of the Planets, by Brenda Carre, is a surreal potpourri of Verne references, as well as a multilayered dramedy about the stories we keep about ourselves and that not everyone deserves to hear. Bonus points for Doctor Who vibes.

Rust and Smoke, by Demetri Capetanopoulos, plays with the possibility that Captain Nemo's diaries might have been found ashore in Norway, but not recognized for what they were. This story carries a bittersweet aftertaste of how quickly the most precious memories can fade into the indifference of time.

Gabriel at the Jules Verne Traveling Adventure Show, by Joel Allegretti, captures with the sincerity that can only come from first-hand knowledge that primordial experience of being a child who meets the worlds born of Verne's imagination for the first time and naturally, as we all once did, wants to become part of them.

Tyranny Under the Sea, by Christopher M. Geeson, presents a terrifying scenario: what if a fragment of the Confederacy had survived in a secret city on the ocean floor? And what would a slave revolt look like in such a place?

Trumpets of Freedom, by Kelly A. Harmon, merges the plots of Robur the Conqueror and The Lighthouse at the End of the World into something less tragic than either. Vasquez, the lighthouse keeper, has built mechanical workers to help him with his daily tasks, which makes him exactly the type of unconventional thinker that Robur is eager to befriend.

Raise the Nautilus, by Eric Choi, is the blood-pumping adventure you want a collection like this to end with. The British Empire has its hands full, what with fighting the Kaiser in Europe, so what good would it do to send warships to the South Pacific in an improbable attempt to salvage what could remain of Captain Nemo's shipwrecked invention from the ruins of the Mysterious Island?

It is to be commended that this story takes the time to consider the moral tensions inherent to having British soldiers steal the life's work of an enemy of the British Empire. Unlike in World War II, the Great War had no good/bad divide: all parties were criminally culpable. The single-minded, never-ending pursuit of bigger and bigger guns is hinted at in some dialogues. However, the story stops short of attributing any tactical advantage to possession of the Nautilus; one central character explicitly predicts that, in the new kind of war that the 20th century has brought, even Nemo's advanced weaponry will make very little difference regardless of who captures it. So, in the end, the core question this story hinges on is not whether the British will remain unconquered by the Germans, but whether Nemo will remain unconquered by the British.

Extraordinary Visions is a worthy read despite the uneven selection it's composed of. It especially piques my curiosity that the most innovative, thoughtful and creative of its stories are those written by women. If I may be allowed a very rough generalization, the men wrote about interacting with Verne's settings and characters, while the women wrote about what Verne means. Verne himself might have felt more at home with the first style of writing, but both are compelling ways of exploring the legacy of one of science fiction's biggest forefathers.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Southard, Steven R. and Hardesty, Matthew T. [editors]. Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne [BearManor Media, 2023].

Review: Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology

An eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways

Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology is an anthology of short stories written by a range of authors in the African diaspora. Through the variety of writing styles, we get an eclectic collection of African-futuristic stories blending myth, magic, and technology in bold new ways. All of the tales are set in the “Sauútiverse,” a fictional star system inspired by African mythology and African-futuristic sci-fi. Most of the stories in the anthology are infused with evocative imagery and gorgeous, immersive lyrical prose.

The anthology opens with several layers of commentary on the creation and inspiration for the collection, followed by sections of explanatory discourse on the makeup of the Sauútiverse. Fans of detailed world-building might enjoy the deep dive into politics, mythology, magic, technology, and planetary ecology. But plot driven readers will prefer to skim the preliminary details and dive into the stories. Throughout the book, the stories vary from lyrical world-building to fast-paced adventures to introspective character narratives. Each tale is carefully woven and thoughtful but some are more philosophical and abstract while some are grounded in active struggles and adventures.

Each story is preceded by a backstory explanation passage which, like the prologues, may appeal to those who like technical details. However, this technique is distractingly lecture-like to readers who just want to dive in and escape to another world. The details from each preceding passage are helpful for understanding the context of the tale but the decision to speak directly to readers reminds us that this isn’t real. For those who prefer to be transported and immersed in a new reality, the information could be better woven into the introductory sentences of the story or provided by a recurring fictional storyteller sharing the information in between the tales.

Despite this shortcoming, many of the stories in the collection are fascinating, immersive, and engaging. A few stood out in particular for me.

In The Way of Baa'gh by Cheryl S. Ntumy, a crab-like creature tries to sabotage an alliance of his people with the humanoids. Unlike prior stories, this is a tale told from the point of view of humanity’s enemy, a monster who despises, fears, and misunderstands humans and remains determined to sabotage them when the humans and Baa’gh form an alliance to try to harness control of time. Through the protagonist we see humans as dangerous aliens. This clever literary technique allows the story to unfold in a unique and tragic way.

The Grove’s Lament by Tobias S. Buckell is the story of Ami-inata, one of several refugees rehabbing a wasteland and trying to protect the fragile ecosystem. But she must fight for her life when a chaotic scientist from their ruined world tries to reenact the same type of dangerous experiment that destroyed their home world. He is mystical and destructive but Ami-inata is practical and focused as they clash with the safety of their people in the balance.

Xhova by Adelehin Ijasan is one of many stories in the anthology which addresses the intersection of technology with spirituality and magic. A human child is raised by an android parent, Xhova, in a post-apocalyptic society where androids control the creation and raising of humans. Xhova has grown attached to his human child but testing reveals she possesses magic which dooms her to death and Xhova has to choose whether to save his human daughter. The story is told from Xhova's first-person perspective and also from his second person perspective to his daughter. As a result, it becomes an immersive confluence of mythology and technology.

My favorite tale in the collection is A City, a Desert, and All Their Dirges by Somto Ihezue and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. A young man, Ajubiju, is bored with his highly spiritual, rural, nomadic people. He gets a chance to change his destiny when he meets a high tech foreign entourage (the Lomanoo) to his community. Two of their high councilors have been murdered by spiritual means and, since they only have high tech at their disposal, they need a person from a magic community to help them solve the mystery. Ajubiju is tired of his isolated, spiritual nomadic life and craves adventure with the technologically advanced society so he defies his mother and breaks his spiritual bond with his people to leave. This story is a futuristic crime thriller set in a high-tech city. Ajubiju is the magic wielder brought in to find the spiritual assassin in a city of non-believers. While there he befriends a young woman, the sister of one of the targeted councilors, who finds him fascinating. The story is a page-turner, with chase scenes and plot twists worthy of a big-screen adventure, but it still manages to be poignant, tragic, and thoughtful in its exploration of grief and revenge.

Sina, the Child with No Echo by Eugen Bacon is set in a society where all humans have an “echo,” a form of spiritual/magical hearing essential to their culture. In the story, Sina is born without an echo and left by his parents to die in the woods as an infant. But he is rescued by his aunt, a village leader who raises Sina as her son and trains him to use his skills to hunt and forage. Sina’s sister, Rehama’re, is a year younger than him and raised by their parents as a replacement for him. Understandably this creates an awkward relationship when they encounter each other in the village. The background is an allegory for society’s willingness to accommodate physical disabilities while the main plot focuses on the two siblings joining forces against a creature who has been ravaging the village. Overall, the story is an exploration of the true meaning of “family” and the value of unequivocal love that inspires Sina’s journey to his own self-acknowledgment.

Some of the stories focus on the theme of false histories versus the pursuit of societal truth. In Undulation by Stephen Embleton, an orphaned girl is tasked with reciting the origin story of her people in special public ceremonies. She struggles when she senses the falseness hidden in the words even as she comes to terms with her own personal tragedies. Muting Echoes, Breaking Tradition by Eye Kaye Nwaogu is the story of an opposing pair of secret assassins who must decide if truth and friendship can overcome murderous commands and institutional lies in this star-crossed lovers story.

Overall, editor Wole Talabi has created a memorable collection of clever stories set in a vivid universe. Although the world-building can be exhausting, the payoff is worth it. The tales blend technology, magic, and spirituality in a way that will appeal to readers with an appetite for immersive and innovative storytelling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

Highlights

• Immersive imagery, gorgeous prose.

• Backstory overload.

• Engaging mix of magic, mythology, and high-tech futurism.

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: Out There Screaming

A clever take on the greatest horror of all: reality

As coldness creeps into the air and night arrives earlier, the days are perfect for ghost stories, monsters, and things out of the ordinary. Out There Screaming, An Anthology of New Black Horror is a collection of short stories edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams. The nineteen tales are penned by a selection of talented storytellers, including Hugo Award winning and popular favorites N.K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nalo Hopkinson. Each of the stories offers a clever take on the greatest horror of all: reality.

Out There Screaming opens with an introduction from Jordan Peele discussing a medieval torture device designed to make people feel forgotten and degraded. Centuries later, the real horror is the way society still does this to us. As expected from a story collection associated with Jordan Peele, the tales in Out There Screaming have abundant and clever social commentary, as well as thoughtful insights into the human condition in general.

As several of the narratives remind us, reality can be particularly horrific when you are a person of color—even without the fantastical elements. This is a recurring theme in many of the stories, but not in the way we are used to seeing such narratives play out in our media. From a Reconstruction era Black town to a modern-day motorist police stop, we see real-life horror entangled with supernatural forces. But the anthology also includes stories dealing, in a twisted way, with other topics such as grief, jealousy, addiction, self-identity, and belonging. In every adventure, it is clear that we have crossed over into an existence where things are more than they seem, with storytelling in the style of The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, and, of course, Get Out.

This is an anthology where every story delivers—some better than others, but all are memorable and powerful. A standout story in the collection is Eye & Tooth, about a pair of brother and sister monster hunters who meet their match during a job in Texas. The story hits many appealing elements, including sibling bonding, dramatic fight scenes, and even a bit of found family. A poignant entry is The Aesthete, a science fiction story that follows a day in the life of an artificially created young man who is constantly scrutinized on social media as a condition of his existence. It is a timely allegory for the constant pressure that young people face, in particular young Black men, and it is a story readers will think about long after finishing the collection. The book ends with a discussion in the form of a play that uses the script format to come full circle on the themes that started the collection.

Out There Screaming benefits from both the provocative style of storytelling and the fact that most of the tales have a very satisfying ending. Although some of the endings are also poignant, sad, or fully tragic, they all avoid traditional tropes of the martyred Black person or racism winning. The stories are primarily mind-bending and insightful rather than overtly slash and gore, although there is some slashing and gore, especially in The Norwood Trouble and A Grief of the Dead.

The anthology includes the following tales:

Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin – A racist cop sees car headlights as eyes watching him.

Eye & Tooth by Rebecca Roanhorse – Monster-hunting brother and sister meet their match.

Wandering Devil by Cadwell Turnbull – A man with abandonment issues tries to avoid commitment.

Invasion of the Baby Snatchers by Lesley Nneka Arimah – A government agent fights against shapeshifting aliens who use humans to breed destructive creatures.

The Other One by Violet Allen – Things take a macabre turn after a couple breaks up.

Lasirèn by Erin E. Adams – The hunt for her lost sister leads a girl to a confrontation with a water creature.

The Rider by Tananarive Due – In the 1960s, a pair of confident female freedom riders cross paths with a different kind of monster on their bus.

The Aesthete by Justin C. Key – An artificial human tries to find peace in a world of constant online observation and prejudice.

Pressure by Ezra Claytan Daniels – A man deals with the pressure of returning home to his family as another kind of pressure grows around them.

Dark Home by Nnedi Okorafor – After burying her father in his home country of Nigeria, a grieving daughter brings back more than she expects to her quiet New Mexico neighborhood.

Flicker by L. D. Lewis – A young woman watching the world collapse around her has a startling revelation.

The Most Strongest Obeah Woman in the World by Nalo Hopkinson – A Jamaican girl’s encounter with a monster leaves her changed.

The Norwood Trouble by Maurice Broaddus – When a peaceful thriving Black town is attacked by violent racists, the town leaders come up with a solution.

A Grief of the Dead by Rion Amilcar Scott – A man struggles with grief after the death of his twin brother.

A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree by Nicole D. Sconiers – Two dead young women from different decades haunt a dangerous stretch of highway.

An American Fable by Chesya Burke – A Black WWII soldier returning to his racist hometown encounters a strange little girl on the train.

Your Happy Place by Terence Taylor – A prison worker investigates the disappearances of inmates who are part of a special reprogramming project.

Hide & Seek by P. Djèlí Clark – Two brothers in a family of magic wielders try to survive the backlash of their mother’s erratic behavior.

Origin Story by Tochi Onyebuchi – A play about children understanding the role of race unfolds through the characters’ voices.

Despite the description of Out There Screaming as A New Anthology of Black Horror, the stories will appeal to non-horror fans who want twisty, clever analyses of our bizarre existence as humans in the current era. It is sometimes said that art will save the world. These stories might not save the world, but they might help you see it through a new lens, and hopefully feel more empowered.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

Highlights

· Clever social commentary

· Memorable stories

· Moderate, but present, horror violence

POSTED BY: Ann Michelle Harris – Multitasking, fiction writing Trekkie currently dreaming of her next beach vacation.

Review: Our Shadows Have Claws

A journey through the hidden corners of a continent's imagination

Edited by Yamile Saied Méndez and Amparo Ortiz, Our Shadows Have Claws is a bone-chilling anthology that gathers folk monsters from all corners of Latin America. Now, before I proceed to reviewing this book, I feel I have to insert an important note. At Nerds of a Feather, I've previously covered other collections of speculative short fiction from the Latin diaspora, which I'm always excited to do; I see it as my small contribution toward increasing the visibility of Latin authors. Like many contemporary writings by bilingual migrants, those stories contained bilingual dialogues; by now it's become increasingly accepted that people who publish in English and come from cultures where English is a foreign presence shouldn't have to treat their own mother tongue as the weird Other. As an aspiring writer myself, with English as my second language, I can appreciate the empowering effect of demanding English to accommodate our words instead of the other way around.

However, in Our Shadows Have Claws I find a substantially higher proportion of untranslated Spanish compared to previous collections I've reviewed, which will doubtlessly make the stories hard to follow for the monolingual reader. On discussing this point I must be mindful of my own position. I'm not a member of the diaspora, so I'm not qualified to evaluate the verisimilitude of Spanglish and successive code-switching in the context of the geographic settings where those dialogues occur. Speaking only for my experience as a reader, I had no difficulty with the book because I grew up with Spanish; your particular mileage may vary. The authors' (and editors') choice to include this much untranslated Spanish places the book in the middle of a conversation about intended audience, a conversation that was already intense back when Junot Díaz miraculously convinced The New Yorker to print his Spanglish untouched by the editorial hand.

All this is to say that Our Shadows Have Claws is unapologetically not meant for the incurious gringo. In a way, it's fitting for a collection of spooky fiction to make itself a bit elusive, partially out of the reach of unprepared eyes. So let's get to the stories.

The Nightingale and the Lark by Chantel Acevedo, about the doomed love between the respective descendants of a lineage of cryptid rescuers and a lineage of cryptid hunters, leans on Latin America's thorny baggage of civil wars to comment on the regrettable ease with which inherited grudges can continue to poison social ties.

I tracked my father the way I'd been taught to
track monsters—silently, on alert, like a woodland
creature. I could smell his aftershave, hear the faint
crackling sound his left ankle made every few steps,
spot the places on the earth where he'd knelt down.

¿Dónde Está el Duende? by Jenny Torres Sanchez, about a girl haunted by the sound of nighttime scratching during a visit to her profoundly disturbed cousin, takes advantage of the stylistic arsenal of first-person narration to draw the reader into the perspective of a second-generation immigrant gradually losing her memory and identity.

I don't know how much time has passed when I suddenly sense
something else in the room. A heavy, threatening presence that
thickens the air and makes my mind feel muggy. Some part of me
tries to scream, but my mouth won't open. My voice won't work.

El Viejo de la Bolsa by Alexandra Villasante, about an unofficial foster home that welcomes the children of missing political dissidents, makes Cold War dictatorships pass through the lens of allegory to portray with an understated expressiveness how the loss of basic civil rights can feel as dreadful as an urban legend told to make children behave.

Making people disappear is like balancing
an equation; one half is the taking of a person,
the other half is pretending not to see.

Beware the Empty Subway Car by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite, about a teenage mutant cannibal shapeshifter on the loose in Manhattan, deftly weaves together the desire for prey and the desire for human connection, thus subverting the power dynamic that occurs when comfortable New Yorkers choose not to see those in need among them.

As he shifts back in his seat to eat a slice, his scent
meets your nostrils. He smells sweet but not sickly so.
Your mouth waters. You take a bite of pizza and try
not to wonder what it would be like to do the same to him.

Dismembered by Ann Dávila Cardinal, about a grieving granddaughter who returns to a childhood home where things start to go bump in the night, suggests an original, gentler tweak on the trope of ghosts with unfinished business.

I was heading to my room, trying not to think about the fact
that I was alone in the house, when I heard a dragging sound
outside the front windows. Like someone was hauling a full
garbage bag across the gravel with long, scritching noises.

Blood Kin by Ari Tison, about a family physically and spiritually wounded by territorial encroachment on their Native reservation, balances the tragic tone of its ending with a resounding plea for drawing strength from the struggles of those who resisted colonization before us.

His eyes are horrified, and he begins to pull himself
away, half mauled. But I have no doubt what to do.
No doubt to finish. To let my ever-present fire pour on
him. I tear him apart. Limb by limb until he is no more.

La Boca del Lobo by M. García Peña, about a girl dangerously fascinated with a particular spot in the woods near her parents' former home, invites the reader to walk through her dreams and daydreams as she reconnects with her half-forgotten wild side.

A stabbing pain juts into my back reaching out
through my hands, my feet, my mouth. My body arches
forward, raising me up to my tiptoes, I feel the crack
of each individual finger breaking, shaping, growing.

Blood-Stained Hands Like Yours by Gabriela Martins, about a homeless orphan desperate to prevent her family curse from hurting the girl she loves, builds slowly toward a triumphant affirmation of our ability to redefine ourselves beyond the evil we've inherited.

She wakes up choking in sobs, overwhelmed by a heavy
smell she couldn't identify at first. She touches her face, and
it's slick, but… not with tears. Her fingers come away red.

The Boy from Hell by Amparo Ortiz, about a young slayer pursuing the clues to a vampire who's been stalking her classmates, proposes an interesting parallel between the abstruse politics of vampire clan rivalries and the equally arbitrary dynamics of Latin-on-Latin racism.

The deeper I get, the thicker the bushes are; there's
barely any space for solid footing. Cows moo at me a few
feet away. None have obvious bite marks, so I'm safe from
being attacked by four-legged bloodsucking mammals.

La Patasola by Racquel Marie, about an avenging spirit who seeks unfaithful men to brutally punish them, is curiously set far from the Colombian mountains where this folk monster is said to roam, which, for all the gore in its plot, suggests the comforting notion that the power of our stories can still sustain and protect us wherever we go.

She emerges from the shadows slowly, crawling across
the ground on her hands and foot. As grotesque as her
flesh is, her body moves fluidly. Like she learned to prowl
from the very pumas whose teeth tore her to shreds.

The Other Side of the Mountain by Claribel A. Ortega, about a young man who goes on a quest to rescue his sister from the witch who kidnapped her, plays with the standard hero's journey and puts it on its head, warning that in the jungle there are forces you can't defeat.

Her skin was not skin, but feathers. Her hair
stringy and thin against a visible scalp, with
large bulging eyes and lips sharp like a beak.
Her fingernails long and twisted like claws.

La Madrina by Yamile Saied Méndez, about a house built on the road between life and death, where a personified cosmic force gives succor to those uncertain of their journey, descends upon the reader like a soothing balm before sending us back on our quest.

I stumbled toward the witch light. Somewhere in
the brambles, I lost one of my shoes. Thorns tore
through my soles. Blood seeped through my nylons.
The earth drank it thirstily, like a payment for a grace.

Sugary Deaths by Lilliam Rivera, about an unrepenting womanizer who one day makes the poor choice of messing with the wrong girl, is a straightforward but impactful revenge fantasy set in the streets of a 1980s Nuyorican neighborhood.

Across the street, the stone gargoyles on her building stand
as they always have, but instead of their usual poses,
one holds a handkerchief as if crying, another appears
to be shouting, while another holds a spiked club.

Leave No Tracks by Julia Alvarez, about a secret community of river spirits with a natural defense against the exterior world, has in its biracial protagonist an example of how you can fight for your homeland and your heritage even if you already have a life settled far away from it.

When he saw me, he didn't chase after me.
Instead he sang me a song he made up on the spot.
Day after day he returned and sang it. That's
when I realized not all humans are inhuman.

The Hour of the Wolf by Courtney Alameda, about a high school mean girl haunted by a savage presence she unwittingly summoned, closes the book with a terrifying game of cat and mouse that honors the wave of supernatural flicks that swept the 1960s.

The Tukákame is a god of death and cruelty. At night, he
comes forth from the deep places of the earth to hunt, taking
the form of a wolf. But his true form is that of a skeleton,
and he garbs himself in the skins and bones of his victims.

A common thread in many of these stories is a warning to the gringos to not mess with what they don't understand. One by one, colonizers, exploiters, harassers, bigots and plain vanilla jerks meet their demise at the hands (or claws) of the beasts that roam our mountains and jungles. This is not only a collection that showcases our folk monsters, but one that explores the specific unequal relationship between the United States and Latin America. I'm usually not very moved by revenge fantasies, but there are some days when white Latinophobia gets so irritating I would just like to roar it into shreds. Perhaps you've heard of the classic Mexican Llorona. Now meet her extended family. Read, and tremble.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Méndez, Yamile Saied and Ortiz, Amparo [editors]. Our Shadows Have Claws [Algonquin Young Readers, 2022].

Microreview: This All Come Back Now edited by Mykaela Saunders

Mykaela Saunders lovingly curates a mixtape of Australian First Nations speculative fiction in this ground-breaking anthology.

Australia's speculative fiction scene has long been very white. Indigenous speculative fiction has been particularly hard to find... until now. Editor Mykaela Saunders has brought together what may be Australia's first anthology of First Nations speculative fiction. In doing so, she follows in the tradition of such anthologies as So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial science fiction and fantasy edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, and Walking the Clouds: An anthology of Indigenous science fiction edited by Grace L. Dillon.

This is a book worth reading simply for the introduction, or the Overture as it is called. Saunders frames the anthology as a mix tape, which I found to be a delightful concept. However, the Overture itself works as a sort of literature review, making it a good place for finding other resources (Australian and otherwise). It perhaps also gestures to the editor's academic background.

Saunders addresses the reasons for the dearth of Indigenous speculative fiction. To begin with, the term speculative fiction is a problematic one in relation to Indigenous writing. This broad category is largely defined as covering things that aren't considered real by Western cultures. However, some tropes popularly considered as speculative fiction are reality in an Indigenous worldview, such as the existence of ghosts, or time travel in a culture that experiences all time simultaneously.

Another reason for the difficulty in finding Indigenous speculative fiction is simply that Australian SFF publishers won't take it on... though I note that Australian SFF publishers have been in decline for a number of years, so any Australian author looking to be published on home turf is facing slim chances to begin with. Where Australian SFF publishers have turned Indigenous authors away, the Australian literary scene have been more welcoming. One does not need to look further than the reception of this anthology to see that playing out; most Australian literary review outlets have devoted space to discussing this book, while there have been crickets from speculative fiction outlets in Australia and beyond.

Awards, too, have tended to favour non-Indigenous writers of Indigenous stories, though there are signs this is starting to shift in the speculative fiction scene. Since the publication of this anthology, Lisa Fuller won two Aurealis Awards (Australia's premier juried speculative fiction award) for her story "Don't Look!". On the international SFF scene, Darcie Little Badger is also becoming a familiar face on the Hugo shortlists.

And again, while the SFF awards scene has not exactly been welcoming, it's quite a different case with literary awards. The contributors to this anthology are a well-decorated bunch, who seem to have won just about every literary award Australia has and a few more besides. They're also a multi-talented mob, with many being known for other forms of writing or art, such as poetry, journalism, music and visual art. Generally speaking, they are not writers at the beginning of their careers. Rather, This All Come Back Now is an anthology that has been carefully curated to show their best, with most of the stories being reprints.

But show to whom? The Overture states that this is an anthology written by and for First Nations people, and certainly the editor didn't make it easy to access by starting with "Muyum, A Transgression" by poet Evelyn Araluen. The story is a surreal trip through time and space, but beautifully evocative. Although I didn't entirely understand what was going on, I enjoyed it enough that I'll be trying Araluen's recent poetry collection Dropbear, once it makes its way through the long queue at the library.

After this evocative but challenging start, the stories settle into something a bit more accessible for a white (or at least Australian) audience. There's a wide variety of stories on offer.

"Closing Time" by Samuel Wagan Watson is a Covid-era story that examines what this time of isolation means to a character who is already feeling isolated.

The anthology also contains a story by Wagan Watson's father, Sam Watson Snr. The Kadaitcha Sung was the first Aboriginal speculative fiction novel, published in 1990, and the anthology has included an extract of this seminal work.

Kalem Murray and Lisa Fuller write horror stories about teaching the new generation the importance of respecting traditions around how and where to travel; there are some places one should never tread.

Alison Whittaker looks at transhumanism from an Indigenous perspective, particularly how it might be used as another form of colonisation or segregation. This sits interestingly with Protocols of Transference by Kathryn Gledhill-Tucker, which looks at the combination of Indigenous worldview and technology through the protagonist’s relationship with the robot they’re building.

Climate concern shows up in more than a few of the stories, including Muyum, A Transgression; Lake Mindi by Krystal Hurst (whose Big Fire is something any Australian and many Americans will find all too easy to picture); Nimeybirra by Laniyuk (which I loved for the solidarity envisioned with the Maori of Aotearoa); Water by Ellen van Neerven; An Invitation by Timmah Ball.

I particularly enjoyed Snake of Light by Loki Liddle. It was intense and a bit violent (as many vigilante stories are), but the surreal aspects were managed well and there was a queer edge I enjoyed.

The extract from Alexis Wright's The Swan Book showed her superb command of language.

As is usual with anthologies, there were a few stories that didn't really do much for me, but none I actively disliked. It doesn't always make for comfortable reading, but nor should it. Rather, it should be appreciated as a ground-breaking work that has been sadly overdue. May it open the gateway for more.

The Math

Baseline assessment: 7/10

Bonuses:  +2 for collecting together a representative sample of Indigenous speculative fiction, +1 for an excellent introduction placing the anthology in context.

Penalties: -1 for the challenging start to the collection.

Nerd co-efficient: 9/10

POSTED BY: Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a writer, binge reader, tabletop gamer & tea addict. @elizabeth_fitz

References

Saunders, Mykaela. This All Come Back Now [University of Queensland Press, 2022]

Araluen, Evelyn. Dropbear [University of Queensland Press, 2021]

Dillon, Grace L. Walking the Clouds: An anthology of Indigenous science fiction [University of Arizona Press, 2012]

Fuller, Lisa. “Don’t Look!”, Hometown Haunts: #LoveOzYA Horror Tales, [Wakefield Press, 2021]

Hopkinson, Nalo, and Mehan, Uppinder. So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial science fiction and fantasy [Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004]

Watson, Sam. The Kadaitcha Sung [Penguin, 1990]

Wright, Alexis. The Swan Book [Giramondo, 2013]

Review: Reclaim the Stars

A new collection of fantastical fruits of the Latin imagination

This is truly the Rainbow Age of science fiction: there's a treasure trove of global authors getting known more and more and more and more. This time, we're taking a look at Reclaim the Stars, a SFF anthology of short stories by writers of the Latinx diaspora, edited by Zoraida Córdova.

Part 1: To the Stars

The first part of this collection is about robots, spaceships, aliens, and the undying endurance of the Latin people in the far future.

Reign of Diamonds by Anna-Marie McLemore has a showstopper of an opening: "Even a princess going to her death must appear worthy of her title." Before we know what hit us, we have intergalactic royal intrigue, elemental magic battle and romantic rescue. If Romeo and Juliet taught us that the enmities between elders bring punishment upon the descendants, this sapphic retelling gives those descendants a chance to redraw the balance of power in their own terms.

Flecha by Daniel José Older boasts a no less appealing start: "How do you mourn someone who's not dead yet?" That question will morph in multiple directions by the end of this adventure that imagines a duo like Han Solo and Chewbacca flying through the galaxy in their smuggler ship, except this Han Solo is Cuban and worships the Yoruba hunter god Ochosi, this Chewbacca is an outcast from her people, and they don't embark on a heroic mission for money, but for justice.

The First Day of Us by David Bowles is a formally daring text, with its double-addressee second-person narration and its multiple flashback structure, but it's hard to find cohesion between theme and setting. At its core, what this story presents us is the cherished memory of a sweet moment when a relationship was forged, but the rest of the plot elements are so tangential that it may as well have happened in our time. There's no indication of why this story needed to be science fiction at all.

The Tin Man by Lilliam Rivera has an intriguing start and a disappointing ending. The protagonist is a lonely survivor of a plague that forced everyone to leave Earth; one day, a robot comes visiting, offering a way out of the desolate ruins. That could have been an interesting premise, but the narration's tone is too light for the situation (including such embarrassing lines as "This is a horrible dream where my own private dystopia has transformed into a science fiction slash horror documentary"), and a pivotal action scene near the ending is written without enough spatial detail, leaving the reader confused.

This Is Our Manifesto by Mark Oshiro is, literally, more a manifesto than an actual story, with endless paragraphs of some unnamed character's opinions that lead to a short bit of predictable action at the end. What little plot actually happens has already been resolved before the text starts, which removes all the tension. This is a tiresomely unoriginal entry that recycles every prison dystopia cliché from every prison dystopia that exists.

Part 2: The Magical Now

The second section is all about magical realism, so it covers those scenarios where the supernatural blends into the real.

Creatures of Kings by Circe Moskowitz is your standard half-demon offspring tale, which means you have the secretive mother, the outcast teenager, and mandatory half-sibling drama. No surprises there. But on top of being the trillionth fantasy story to uncritically reinforce monarchist tropes, this one also has a scene that depicts suicide under a joyful light, which earns it a big NOPE from me. Although the protagonist displays some semblance of a moral backbone, that doesn't prevent her from doing exactly what the plot expects of her, which the narration literally spells out: "It is no longer a choice. It is what happens when fates are forged." That is always the least interesting way to resolve a story.

Eterno by J. C. Cervantes is nothing short of a gem. In the short space available, the author invents an entirely new mythology and magical system, complete with compelling backstory and rival agendas. It's hard to properly summarize this sibling drama between three sort-of-but-not-exactly Grim Reapers. One could try to describe it as the forbidden love of an immortal for a human, ending in a heroic sacrifice for the human's sake, but that would not do justice to the depth and complexity that this story can deliver. It truly has to be experienced.

White Water, Blue Ocean by Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez is a bittersweet metaphor about the cost of truth and the more insidious cost of keeping appearances. In a family cursed with enforced sincerity, a young grandchild struggling to reclaim their own truth makes the case that oppenness doesn't have to be seen as a threat.

Leyenda by Romina Garber is a magical school story about systemic sexism. While the worldbuilding has some points of undeniable interest, the author doesn't quite capture the voice of the teenage characters and ends up making everyone sound petty and immature. The interpersonal melodrama goes over the top and the resolution is a textbook deus ex machina.

Color-Coded by Maya Motayne also suffers from a too neat, too unearned ending, but it at least manages to make the old premise of puberty-as-superpowers feel somewhat fresh.

Magical Offerings by Nina Moreno is the curious case of a portal fantasy that happens entirely on this side of the portal without losing the otherworldly eeriness. The protagonist, a teenage witch with a talent for jumping into trouble, is sent to live with her grandfather as part punishment and part desperate last resort, but what she finds in his junkyard is her own form of freedom. You can't blink or you'll miss how effortlessly this story transitions from family psychodrama to Frankenstein horror to Southern gothic to happily ever after.

Part 3: Other Times, Other Realms

The final third of the collection explores the multiplicity of worlds where the Latin people have existed, or might exist.

Rogue Enchantments by Isabel Ibañez is a lovely mystery around magical shops, with an earnest, good-hearted protagonist you instantly root for, and a clear sense of worldbuilding that lends solidity to the story. I always appreciate a text that makes good use of its short space to suggest a wider setting you can intuit beyond the events on the page. Here a crafter of magical painting supplies is the target of business envy and sabotage, but her creativity and honesty save the day. The plot points at the ending are a bit less surprising than they should be, but this is still a wonderful tale.

Sumaiko y la Sirena by Vita Ayala loses no time in painting a chilling image of life in a slaveholding plantation. This serves to create a persistent air of threat that lingers even over the few scenes of joy that the protagonist, a mermaid foundling, gets to have in the middle of her daily horror. Her quest to return to her home under the sea is punctuated by moments of genuine sweetness, although I must confess I'm not sure how to feel about a slavery story where only the designated protagonist gets to magically escape the slavery. It's interesting that the final paragraph seems to address that point, by jumping to the present time and deliberately pulling the reader's attention to the mermaids that still play in the ocean next to the spot where the plantation no longer stands. I'm not sure how effective that device is as a symbol for victory, but it's a credit to the story that it leaves this kind of questions in my mind for quite long after my reading.

River People by Yamile Saied Méndez is a web of oppositions: the will of mortals against the will of spirits, the faith of white Europe against the faith of Latin America, honorability against necessity, brother against sister. This story follows a generation of Irish immigrants in Argentina and centers on the daughter, who can hear the voice of the river and tries to save her family's livelihood from a deal with the devil. Even though the writing in the dialogues feels unpolished at times, what makes this story truly special is that, instead of the standard European model of religious fantasy, the central obstacle isn't even the devil, and it is not resolved with confrontation or sacrifice, but with empathy and openness.

Moonglow by Sara Faring is a revenge fantasy written in the form of private diary notes kept in the protagonist's head. This narrative choice acquires a foreboding resonance when the reader learns that this protagonist has become pregnant with her own stories, which means that the tale you're reading is, in a way, alive too.

Killing El Chivo by Claribel A. Ortega is a fantastical retelling of the plot to overthrow Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. But instead of clandestine fighters learning to shoot rifles, we follow clandestine witches learning to focus their emotions into a blast of lethal energy. The juxtaposition of folk horror with political horror is particularly powerful here, and the real-world parallel with the heroic martyrdom of the Mirabal sisters elevates the story to the level of national epic. This is by far the best entry in the collection.

Tame the Wicked Night by Zoraida Córdova is a fairy tale about a monster-slaying quest that turns into a Freudian fever dream brimming with fertility symbolism: a dark cave in a mountain standing in for femininity, a goat with an insatiable appetite standing in for masculinity, and a protagonist blessed with the gift of making the earth sprout life. With all this loud subtext, it's only fitting that the author chose a metaphor for pregnancy as the shining miracle that restores the world.

Overall, the selection of stories in Reclaim the Stars leaves a pleasant aftertaste. The first two parts have, regrettably, a rather mixed quality, but the final section is pure excellence.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Córdova, Zoraida [editor]. Reclaim the Stars: 17 tales across realms & space [Wednesday Books, 2022].

Review: The Sinopticon Anthology

Thirteen short stories by Chinese writers, available in English for the first time

These days it may feel like Chinese science fiction has suddenly exploded onto the scene, but the truth is that Chinese writers have been working with science fiction for a long time; we just didn't have access to the texts from here. Editor and translator Xueting Christine Ni has endeavored to help remedy our ignorance with the stories she chose for this collection.

One can sympathize with the foreword by Xia Jia, who confesses, "I cannot help but be moved by the thought of those who had read bad translations, and were compelled to doing the job better themselves." In that spirit, Sinopticon (what a great title!) is a meticulously curated selection of old and new stories made available here to introduce English-reading audiences to the wealth of literature that has been and continues to be produced in this genre.

The Last Save by Gu Shi, about a subscription service that lets people reload their lives from a previous save point every time they don't like a turn of events, chooses a domestic incident to focus on, but allows a terrifying glimpse into the anxiety of infinite choice, the pressure of expectations of achievement, and the loneliness of those left behind in each timeline when someone opts out.

He would always have to choose, again and again—correcting his
mistakes, correcting all contradictions—to attain a perfect life.

Tombs of the Universe by Han Song is made of two first-person narratives: one by a man fascinated with visiting astronaut cemeteries on deserted planets, and another by a veteran gravemaker reflecting on his trade and the cultural effect of burial customs in the space age. The two stories are only indirectly connected, but they both speak to humanity's complicated relationship with memory, legacy, and our inescapable finiteness.

Perhaps we no longer think the past is important. Has
it become something we don't have time to remember?

Qiankun and Alex by Hao Jingfang, about a world-spanning AI tasked with learning to choose its own goals from observing children, is a curiously small version of an event we're used to seeing develop on a much larger scale in Western science fiction. In this story, the AI learns by watching how a child learns. Perhaps an analogous process is meant to take place: we may learn from this story to think differently about real AIs by reading about how this fictional one learns.

He knows all there is to know, better than anyone else, but
has never considered acquiring data he doesn't already have.

Cat's Chance in Hell by Nian Yu, about a wounded soldier trying to make it back home from his final mission across robot territory, suggests a cautionary scenario of the creative ways war can find to persist in its inhumanity.

Haven't things always been like this? Which soldier isn't a pawn
in a bigger game? Not to mention those who are less than pawns...

The Return of Adam by Wang Jinkang, about a society transformed by electronic enhancement of the human brain, comes from an earlier era of science fiction, and it shows: it employs the technique of the traveler who arrives in the far future and has to sit for helpful explanations of how the world works. It also suffers from too much gratuitous nudity and an uncomfortable stance on eugenics.

"You could say that machines have borrowed human bodies, and
with the aid of the human brain, have occupied Earth; and we are
like idiotic moths, incubating their larvae with our own bodies."

Rendezvous: 1937 by Zhao Haihong, about a time traveler sent to find evidence of local resistance during the Nanjing Massacre, but also about the clash between a character and her author, is a metafictional confession of the difficulty of writing about the horrors of history.

My stomach clenches, my eyes screw shut, but I
force them open—I must see and bear witness.

The Heart of the Museum by Tang Fei, about a child's bodyguard who secretly belongs to an alien species able to experience the past and the future, is not only an enthralling meditation on the limits of human perception and our need for physical markers of our presence in the world, but also a precious example of the narrative possibilities opened by the timeless grammar of Chinese.

Rather than a short straight line, my life can better
be described as an eternal point in the chaos of
time and space. My future will never disappear.

The Great Migration by Ma Boyong, about the chaotic process to get spaceship tickets from Mars to Earth during the biennial close approach, is at times hilarious in its sense of hopeless absurdity and at times tiresome to read. That's probably the point: to convey the protagonist's sense of irritation at comically worsening events that don't move fast enough. However, the story is hindered by the repeated objectification of its female characters.

It was in these doldrums that the Great Migration
bared its sinister sharp teeth. Its knives were now
dulled, roughly sawing at our flesh and blood.

Meisje met de Parel by Anna Wu, about a temporal paradox related to the origin of a portrait, is an exquisitely written love letter to the link between science and art, and a bittersweet reminder of the hard reality of temporal existence.

I was troubled to think that the girl in the painting
was me, but a strong curiosity compelled me to
wade through the mist of time and find you.

Flower of the Other Shore by A Que, about a zombie's journey to take his former girlfriend, a human, to safety, presents an unexpected reversal of the zombie story: this time, we have access to his inner thoughts, his hopes, his attempts to remember, and even his self-aware sense of humor. It's always noteworthy when a story dares (and manages) to make us feel empathy for those we're used to calling mindless monsters, but this entry is also important in that it merges zombie lore with Chinese myth.

"Might be a good thing. No brain, no worries."

The Absolution Experiment by Bao Shu is so fantastically stunning that I won't give away any details. Suffice it to say that it has a Twilight Zone vibe in how the protagonist's assumptions are perversely turned on their head. Instead of ruining the reveal, I'll quote from the translator's note:

Creating a protagonist so far beyond sympathy
and a punishment so far beyond acceptability
makes you consider the very nature of retribution.

The Tide of Moon City by Regina Kanyu Wang, about a binary planet system where an academic exchange turns romantic and then political, connects in surprising and heartbreaking ways an ancient Chinese legend of forbidden love with the international tensions that sometimes beset scientific cooperation between China and the West.

Every dusk, every dawn, he would stand somewhere facing Lunar
Side on He'lin, looking up at the sky, listening to the tide hitting
the shores, and imagine Dianne looking towards him from He'lin.

Starship: Library by Jiang Bo, a series of connected episodes about a robot librarian determined to preserve her collection of knowledge despite humankind's indifference, is a fitting choice to end the anthology with. If we are to make it until the end of the universe, books will be our salvation.

Ehuang turned her head, and saw the entire heavens
inundated with stars. Her mind was made up.

After reading this collection, the only regret that remains in the reader's mind is that it did not contain more stories. Sinopticon is a small but bright window into a fertile tradition that demands and deserves to be better known outside of China. We can only hope that more books like this will come.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +2 for Ni's introduction, which provides a brief yet quite informative overview of the current state of science fiction in China. She also adds little notes at the end of each story, where she adds relevant cultural clues that enrich the reader's comprehension.

Penalties: −1 for several scattered typos.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Ni, Xueting Christine [translator]. Sinopticon, a Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction [Solaris, 2021].

Review: Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, a Latinx Anthology

A new collection of fiction and poetry about home, identity, and the need for connection

A sequel to the Latinx Rising anthology, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers contains 38 pieces of writing by authors from the Latin diaspora. The inherently hybrid nature of Latin life and Latin identity in the United States is addressed in the editors' introduction, which states, "Being Latinx, in its immense, beautiful, fractured entirety, is a kind of speculative fiction in itself."

These stories come at a pivotal moment for Latin artists of all speculative genres in the United States, which Frederick Luis Aldama's preface describes as "how the creative, mindful use of our counterfactual capacity today can imagine better ways for us to think, act, and feel tomorrow."

Part I: Dreaming of New Homes

The pieces selected for this first section deal with the characters' search for a place in the world and with their need to persist in that search when the world seems determined to exclude them.

How Juan Bobo Got to los Nueba Yores by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez, about an immigrant mother struggling to keep her son safe in a hostile city, is a dreamlike sequence of close encounters with the urgent need to belong, both as a matter of personal identity and as a matter of survival.

If he looked out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw mountains, hazy
with distance. Every time he repeated his story to himself, they grew sharper,
greener, until one day the skyscrapers would become the mountains back home.

Those Rumors of Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice Have Been Greatly Exaggerated by Ernest Hogan, about a road trip through the reclaimed lands of Mexican America, is an incoherent, rambling rant that mistakes having an anthropologist character for the need to overexplain itself in anthropological parlance. Even worse, it's a historical revenge fantasy, which to me is one of the least interesting forms of speculative fiction.

"It's a chocolate-flavored delivery system for a scientifically
blended combination of caffeine and cannabis!"
"Keeps you awake and energetic. And feeling good! It's the working
person's best friend! And it doesn't make you pee all the time!"

Saint Simon of 9th and Oblivion by Sabrina Vourvoulias, about a single young woman trying to figure out what she wants from life while everyone around her wants to impose their own aspirations on her, is a beautifully written exploration of the meaning of self-confidence, the elusive gift of living on one's talent, and the blurry lines between need and desire.

"My success comes from how wildly I imagine and how
meticulously I execute. Not magic, not fortune, just me."
"You've always had an exceedingly high opinion of yourself."

Ancestral Lines and other Tall Tales by Samy Figaredo, a theater play about a mixed-race young enby learning to draw strength from their origins, is a bit too flat and direct, without space for layers or subtext, but sometimes a heavy truth calls for a blunt delivery.

"You may choose to show certain sides to people to survive, but
the features you conceal are still with you. The moon does not
dissolve to form a crescent: it only chooses to show us less of itself."

Quetzal Feathers by Tammy Melody Gomez is a short but touching poem where an unnamed narrator transforms into the sacred bird of Mayan culture and flies toward a land more alive than reality.

a mountain place of winged fish and fluorescent frogs,
where I have forced my dreams to take me, again and again.

Tía Abuela's Face, Ten Ways by Lisa M. Bradley, about a young woman who undergoes plastic surgery to adopt her dead great-aunt's face, does a great work of condensing into the short story form the complexities of extended family drama, the effects of technology on identity, the biopolitics of bereavement, and the oddities of human culture when seen from the outside.

Everything is swimmy. Which I guess is appropriate, since the serum
in my irises is modeled after the chromatophores in octopus skin.

Part II: Dreams Interrupted

In this section, characters are placed in situations where they have to deal with loss, be it personal, generational, or ancestral.

Jean by Stephanie Nina Pitsirilos, about a girl whose way of coping with the death of a mother addicted to consuming heroin is to retreat into the story of the death of a heroine addicted to consuming stars, draws a thought-provoking parallel between spacetime wormholes and the unsettling power of emotional triggers.

Shake up the world of the dead and there's no way of knowing how far back into
the past you've reached to understand a story. Where a wormhole's taken you.

Like Flowers through Concrete by Louangie Bou-Montes, about a park ranger searching for a proper way to honor his dead brother's memory while unexpectedly falling in love with a guerrilla gardener, is a sweet portrayal of the compassion and care with which lasting sadness can gradually learn to coexist with newfound joy.

Wyatt just preferred the outskirts of town: the trees bursting up through
the roofs of the long-forgotten rectangular buildings, the mounds of
moss and grass growing over hunks of rusted metal, the forest smashing
its way past the concrete and asphalt that had once tried to contain it.

A Flock for the Sandhill Crane by Roman Sanchez, about the spirit of Our Lady of Guadalupe watching over the Mexican nation for centuries, is a waste of an interesting idea with its poorly edited sentences, its jarring structural disjointedness, and its cartoonish oversimplification of the historical roots of inequality as if they were reducible to conspiracy theory.

They had never intended to give the world
the opportunity to begin life in the stars.
While DeLamonte kept the UN and its
citizens distracted, the capitalist class began
boarding his rockets and preparing to flee.

Fancy by Diana Burbano, a theater play about organized struggle under a patriarchal theocracy, proceeds like a philosophical debate between waves of feminism and, by extension, between their associated generations, with the topic in question being the choice of tactic of resistance.

"Fighting like you do gets people killed. Or
thrown in jail— We got other ways to rebel."

Time Traveler Intro by Eliana Buenrostro is a flash piece about the dislocating strain of having to survive as several identities in several places.

I am everywhere and split into so many directions.
Split into multitudes. I am here and not at all.

The Music Box by Sara Daniele Rivera, about a grotesquely commodified soprano singer, is the curious type of science fiction that picks a metaphor and plays with taking it literally, in this case the metaphor of being robbed of your voice.

If she could, she would sing in Spanish.
If her mouth could still shape the words.

Part III: My Life in Dreams

The unifying theme in this section is the effect that the wondrous element (either technological or magical) has on human beings when it is integrated into the ordinary actions of daily life.

My First Word by William Alexander, about a community of garbage collectors in a world where speech produces trash, is an intriguing example of how language can be a tool of social exclusion, but also of survival.

The boy uttered a refrigerator. He didn't seem to have any trouble
producing an entire fridge from inside his distended jaw. It was
dark beige. It thunked against the rooftop, several times his size.

Do as I Do by Pedro Iniguez, about a trek across the Mexican countryside during a robot apocalypse, should have had more retouches in the editing stage, but is still effective at conveying the strength to keep love alive when all seems lost.

"He had to come out of hiding because food was running short. That's when
I met him. I was scavenging an old pet store for food. It had been looted
long ago, but there he was, frightened and joyous all at once. Like me."

The Clarification Oral History Project by Pedro Cabiya is written in the style of a promotional brochure by a nonprofit organization entrusted with documenting first-hand testimonies about a mysterious event that transformed all Haitians into white people.

After the Clarification nothing has been the same anywhere in
the world. Perhaps one of the most enduring and far-reaching
results of the Clarification is the final disintegration of Western
moral paradigms and the bankruptcy of its cultural leadership.

Curanderas in the Ceiling by Alex Temblador, about a woman undergoing spiritual healing at the same time as gynecological surgery, is one of those cases where an ending open to ambiguous interpretations hurts the story instead of helping it.

I want to say something, but in that moment, I can feel
the blood rushing from my head, my vision blurs and
begins to fade. I can hear the nurse speaking in tongues,
Mamá crying, and the doctor yelling at someone.

Dream Rider by Daniel Parada, a comic one-shot about an agricultural festival in a Mesoamerican-themed future, has an interesting visual design, but it doesn't really have a plot, and feels more like a prologue for something longer.

It is only once a year, but on this day, the dimensions
of the living and the dead are weakened. This creates a
liminal space accessed by lucid dreaming via a special
liquid compound. On this day the dry and wet worlds party.

Spooky Action at a Distance by Laura Villareal is a poem where the narrator meditates on the threads that tie us to each other.

people gushed about Pluto's heart
until they knew it was broken.

BlindVision by Grisel Y. Acosta, about an extreme form of augmented reality that takes over users' muscles to guide their daily movements for them, starts as a very interesting thought experiment and then derails into something resembling a spy drama that promises answers and gives none.

They look like glasses to block the sun, the kind
you get at the doctor, except for the flicker of
light at the center of each lens, like a blue, green,
or red signal, slowly dying, somehow lingering.

Part IV: When Dreams Awaken

This section explores that liminal moment when the realm of fiction brushes against the realm of reality, and the inhabitants of our stories somehow cross over into our side.

The Chupacabra Next Door by Roxanne Ocasio, an urban fantasy/shifter romance about a schoolgirl who accidentaly gets involved in a secret war against evil, is a great example of the power of legends to rewrite collective memory: chupacabras are actually a very modern phenomenon, arisen in the late 20th century, but this story succeeds at believably recasting them as mythical creatures from precolonial times.

Wings and tail drooped as if empty of bone and muscle.
His strange blue eyes lost all of their color, becoming
a sickly gray. How could this be the same person
who had eaten dinner at her house twice this week?

An Adventure of Xuxa, La Ultima by Reyes Ramirez, about a wandering warrior who visits town after town to warn them of an oncoming zombie horde, is a fast-paced adventure with serious questions about humanity's right to survive.

"The gods, in all their genius, ended our reality
with the dead returning to feast on the living, our
collective history catching up to confront us."

Night Flowers by Stephanie Adams-Santos, about a family of survivors that flee from a fire and walk through a dangerous jungle full of hungry terrors, abounds in pitch-perfect metaphors that don't let the tension subside for one moment.

in the vicinity of sleep one begins to
doubt the shape and size of what is true.

Alma y Corazón by Julia Rios, about a former demon slayer now institutionalized as a mental patient, takes the tropes of superheroism and carefully molds them into a more intimate form. There is an admirable depth of compassion in how this story suggests a different way of saving a life.

She needed to be strong for her sister. And
strength didn't always mean roaring ferociously.
Sometimes it meant being quietly assertive.

Ella by Frederick Luis Aldama, Fernando de Peña and Rodrigo Vargas, a comic one-shot about biomechanical surveillance in a totalitarian maquila, has a worthy premise, but is visually unpolished and structurally confusing.

I wake. I roll over. I'm connected. I'm tentacled.

Two-Bullet Cowgirl Blues by Steve Castro, a poem about a tough girl in a tough town, is brief and direct, but with a whole world of revelations at the ending.

She arose early enough to wring the rooster's neck while it slept.

A Mirage by Steve Castro, about a domestic discussion on what to have for dinner in space, is written in flash form, and that hurts the story. The sheer amount of background exposition that the characters have to insert in each line of dialogue demands too much credulity of the reader, and the abruptness of the ending makes the whole piece feel directionless.

"Didn't you tell me that dodo burritos were your favorite,
and that your mistress loved goat-cheese empanadas."

The One by Steve Castro is another flash piece, this time about a world-ending cataclysm, and it fares better in its use of the form to paint a general image in the appropriately broad strokes it needs.

The fire was so massive and intense, its flames reached
up to the heavens and incinerated the earth's moon.

Grave Talk by J. M. Guzman, a surreal exploration of a literally living city, is by far the most difficult piece in the book. I have no idea what it means, but it's beautiful.

There were violet hearts encased in the calcified
ceiling, oozing black oil, pulsating irregularly.
Engineering the city with their tenuous hold.

Part V: Dreams Never Imagined

The anthology reserved the most creative pieces for its last section, which contains some truly innovative concepts that push forward the frontiers of speculative literature.

A Dangerous Wand by Nicholas Belardes, about a glassblower who becomes fascinated by a newcome stranger with mysterious intentions, is a tragic take on the allure of danger.

She said in our native tongue that Mr. Tiré was a
brujo, that he was here to melt the trees and consume
both sand and animals and pull the water from
below us and evaporate what was left into the sky.

Madrina by Sara Daniele Rivera, about stranded astronauts who resort to telepathic time travel to try to chart their way back home, not only has a thought-provoking premise related to the ethics of anthropological research and historical memory, but also leaves the reader with a bittersweet new sensation: the nostalgia for a place not yet seen.

"It's like I was born in a gap. Like my whole life is a
transition between people who will have true lives."

Bad Sun by Scott Russell Duncan, a flash piece about a boy sneaking out to play under forbidden sunshine, has almost an air of ancient myth in how it wields imagery and primal fears.

Knocking came from the door. A man in a hat
that had candles circling it talked to Mom.

Beacon by Scott Russell Duncan, a flash piece about a sinister bishop obsessed with people's inner light, is a curious reversal of the colonial gaze on Indigenous religions.

Their fathers and mothers lit candles to their spirits,
then more candles so they could see to light even
more candles, but it was never enough, darkness
came every night, inside, outside, everywhere.

Her Number by Scott Russell Duncan, a flash piece about an accountant who finds mystical meaning in financial datasets, is a weird but entertaining portrait of gradually creeping obsession.

Wendy did her numbers. The patterns came slowly.
Numbers formed pictures at times. At first like looking
up in the clouds and seeing people. Or a paw. Or a tail.

Old Folks by Scott Russell Duncan, a flash piece about a retirement home running an organ harvesting program, is quite effective at beginning in a warm, friendly tone and ending with a wham.

"Don't be so greedy, Pearl. Wait your turn. He's here for everyone."

Soledad by Ezzy G. Languzzi, about a desperate housewife who asks for a wish from an enchanted bottle of mezcal, is a hilarious vignette of revenge.

"The plant warmed, wrapped its plump, velvet-like
leaves around her, and protected her from the cold. It
cradled her and lulled her into a deep, deep sleep."

Contraband by Patrick Lugo, a comic one-shot about a reluctant smuggler doing a favor for her brother in a cyberpunk dystopia, makes excellent use of silent panels to tell its plot and of dialogues to land the punch of its reveal.

"Oh, what's that? Is that what everyone calls 'papers'?"

The ENCRoach Program by Grisel Y. Acosta, a poem about coerced espionage via insect wetware, tells a lot more than it shows, and ends up sounding more like a dry manifesto than like an artistic work.

my enslavement, the anvil on my back,
forcing me to steal words from the same population I steal food from

Homebound by Tabitha Sin, about the slow, bureaucratic genocide of immigrants in a future flooded Manhattan, leaves a chilling impression of how easy it can be to normalize the unacceptable. It offers a sobering reflection on whether immigration is really worth all the hatred and the broken ties. As the last story in the collection, it closes resoundingly.

I didn't know if I was heading home or leaving it, but
at least I had someone who felt like home by my side.

As regards wordcraft quality, this anthology is rather mixed. But in thematic breadth, historic relevance, and opportunity for recognition of both established and up-and-coming creators, this is a milestone. There's material here for every taste: you may love the parts I didn't, and that's one of the strengths that make this book very recommended.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Reference: Hernandez, Alex; Goodwin, Matthew David; and García, Sarah Rafael [editors]. Speculative Fiction for Dreamers, a Latinx Anthology [Mad Creek Books, 2021].