Provocative, challenging stories that project the tech innovations of today onto the moral framework of tomorrow.
A diverse group of contemporary authors imagine our shared future in these speculative tales.
These 14 stories peer into a variety of futures only just visible from where we stand. Many imagine solutions to pressing contemporary emergencies (climate change, overpopulation, economic inequality) and then, in the way of all the best literature, seek out the complications in that perfect picture. In Nnedi Okorafor’s “Mother of Invention,” the Niger Delta has been transformed into a nation-sized plantation of the “innovative air-scrubbing superplant known as periwinkle grass,” which simultaneously solves the earth’s CO2 emissions problem and strikes a blow against world hunger with its versatile seeds. The only problems are the “pollen tsunamis” and the resultant deadly allergic condition that strikes the story’s protagonist in the final days of her pregnancy. In Charlie Jane Anders' “The Minnesota Diet,” the “cutting-edge 'Smart-City' of New Lincoln” is a fantasy land of predicative-software enhanced, zero-carbon-footprint urban living. But when an agricultural collapse necessitates the reprioritization of food shipments, the entire city of “midlevel computer engineers, quality-control experts, content creators, architects, marketing experts, musical theater geeks and service workers” is deemed redundant, and starvation sets in. Other stories start with our current time’s most pressing moral issues and imagine them worse. In Madeline Ashby’s “Domestic Violence,” smart homes—programmed to surveil, predict, and protect—become another tool in a domestic abuser’s arsenal. Mark Stasenko’s “Overvalued” imagines the endgame of skyrocketing college tuition costs as a complex industry of Wall Street-style investments, where the future of promising underprivileged youth is heavily leveraged on the competitive market. A standout story by Carmen Maria Machado sees a young girl exposed to the vast simultaneity of time in a fashion more lyric than the rest of the anthology’s offerings. The charming “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis,” by Annalee Newitz, interjects both humor and hope. Science fiction has long been the great equalizer in the American literary landscape—capable of imagining more inclusive futures even as it struggles to represent them equitably on its pages. Because of the diversity of its authorship, this anthology does more than imagine what the world might be like if all of our perspectives were included. Instead, it moves past the picture of representation to a clear, uncompromising, imaginative look at just what it is we are all included in.
Provocative, challenging stories that project the tech innovations of today onto the moral framework of tomorrow.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-944700-95-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Unnamed Press
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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