A riveting speculative dystopian collection that makes compelling arguments for radical queer resistance in every future.
Six interconnected short stories serve as windows into Hayslett’s speculative futuristic world.
This collection of forward-looking stories chronologically spans from 2067 to 2980 and stretches geographically from the “former California” to the moon, Saturn, and outer space. Hayslett introduces readers to a Black lesbian activist named Resistance who’s leading a campaign of land reclamation against a space-destined billionaire, two friends reuniting on the moon in a love affair forbidden by company hierarchies, and a group of clones achieving community at a cost, among other futurist stories. In the lead story, “Reclamation,” CEO billionaire Graham Sheff joins “the world’s most important people [who] live in orbit now.” Those who are “too poor, too brown, too sick, and too queer” are left trying to rebuild and survive on a broken Earth. But Resistance is plagued with a malignant toothache that whispers its name and corrupts her memories. In the next story, “Barriers,” the aforementioned CEO grapples with his past as he encounters an alien life force “not designed for confinement.” Their mission is “to flow and understand” the spaceship’s occupants, but their curiosity is met with cruelty. In “Centipede’s,” two former friends, the Historian Tigre and Contract grunt Snake, reunite; their dormant love blossoms under Sheff’s rigidly enforced company hierarchy. In “Battery,” Black lesbian scientist Chantral is training for interdimensional travel but is haunted by a woman she only half remembers. This is a fascinating and timely set of speculative science fiction tales: Hayslett is a masterful storyteller whose complex moral scenarios are made accessible by the human and nonhuman relationships at their center. The collection taps into the contemporary zeitgeist by thematically exploring the ethics of off-world travel, social hierarchies, and how society can build a community to resist capitalist structures without simplifying Hayslett’s position for the reader. This collection is highly readable and one that fans of Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, and Nalo Hopkinson will no doubt relish.
A riveting speculative dystopian collection that makes compelling arguments for radical queer resistance in every future.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781963869347
Page Count: 346
Publisher: Running Wild Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.
After purchasing a dilapidated, century-old starship called the Destitute, Torian Razner discovers that the moss covering it is, in fact, a deeply sarcastic sentient computer with abandonment issues.
Torian’s sister, Celise, is dying. Determined to save her life by getting her to a distant planet with air she can breathe, Torian ignores her former captain Amelia Perrosk’s warning that it’s an impossible task (along with any romantic feelings she might have for Amelia). Using the only ionite bars she has to her name, Torian purchases an ancient, moss-covered alien starship that appears to be on its last legs, so to speak. She hardly expected the moss to be a sentient computer or for it to hold a century-old grudge against its former alien captain. Moss quickly proves itself to be acerbic, intelligent, and rightly angry after being having been left behind for 100 years by its former captain. The two form a reluctant and surprising alliance, Torian proving to Moss that not all captains are “dog-turd fungus,” and they both gradually evolve into the best versions of themselves, human or otherwise. It’s obvious from the early pages that Thorne has crafted a story tailored to fans of Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries. Falling somewhere between the two, this is a delightful mashup of romance, found family, and a touch of violence as Moss grapples with its feelings about its former captain and the unexpected kindness that Torian shows. Sweet without being overly saccharine, it’s a book for readers who want the adventure that comes with the vastness of outer space without its harsher realities.
A cleverly titled, cozy SF romance that marks Thorne as a writer to watch.Pub Date: July 7, 2026
ISBN: 9781250414144
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bramble Books
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
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