A celebration of queer and Afrofuturist science fiction saluting creativity in difference.
In her debut collection, musician and actress Monáe collaborates with a different writer for every story to explore a world defined by some people's resistance to a dangerous surveillance state in which memories are currency.
An introduction, "Breaking Dawn," lays out the collection's guiding thought experiment: In a world with cameras everywhere, most people have accepted the idea that "an eye in the sky might protect us from...ourselves, our world"—and soon, not content with seeing the surface of things, the New Dawn found ways "past the encrypted walls of our minds," into people's thoughts and memories. This constant surveillance divides the nation into those who are safe and clean and those who are "deviant, complex"—the dirty computers. The title story, written with Alaya Dawn Johnson, explores the life of Seshet, the Director Librarian of Little Delta, the New Dawn's highest-ranking position. Interested in the contradictions of bureaucracy and the conflict within someone with the power to enforce rules who doesn't abide by them, Seshet investigates the curious background of her new lover. “Nevermind” is both a memory-enhancing drug and a story (written with Danny Lore) set in an off-grid community where women and nonbinary people can exist free from “people trying to force so much on [them]. Capitalism for one; monogamy for another.” The theme of collective resistance continues in some of the other stories. In "Timebox," written with Eve L. Ewing, a couple discovers extra time hidden in their pantry, pushing them to grapple with inequities in the way time is distributed. The last story, “Timebox Alta(red),” written with Sheree Renée Thomas, has a group of children create an altar that transports them through time and space, showing that you can’t build the future if you don’t dream it first. Studded with references to Monáe's album Dirty Computer (2018), the book is a clever adaptation of music to a new form. Emotionally raw and with a wholehearted love for people, these stories will make readers long to forge deeper human connections by sharing and holding one another's memories.
A celebration of queer and Afrofuturist science fiction saluting creativity in difference.Pub Date: April 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-307087-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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