SEASONS BETWEEN US

Stories of how life events, some cyclical, shape identities through time are featured in the latest anthology in the thematically focused speculative-fiction series.

Through soft and hard science fiction, magical realism, folklore, horror, high fantasy, and alternate history, the 20 stories and two poems tackle aging, loss, change, and adaptation. Like the authors and characters, the settings are diverse: Japan, Singapore, India, Tanzania, Wales, Canada, and the U.S. Most stories portray the middle-aged or elderly in conflict with young adults or simply themselves at an earlier age. In C.J. Cheung’s spare, evocative “Clear Waters,” an elderly man, shaped by loss, feels betrayed when his daughter partners with an android. In Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s ironic “Sympathétique,” a young man uses his future self to smooth his path and shape his life. A desperate father places his family’s survival in the hands of his teen children in Tyler Keevil’s apocalyptic “Summer of Our Discontent.” In Maria Haskins’ haunting “When Resin Burns to Tar,” a woman struggles to free herself from her dominating, deceased mother. Despite the quality of the writing, this anthology’s guiding motif is too amorphous and general for overall thematic cohesion. While authors’ “notes to my younger self” follow each story, offering various tidbits of life advice, few of the stories center on young adults’ concerns.

Fans of speculative fiction are well served.