New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of ColourEdited by Nisi Shawl
Solaris, 18 March 2019
PB, 385pp, e-book
I'm grateful to Solaris for an advance e-copy of New Suns via NetGalley.
What the Publisher says:
New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange. Between this book’s covers burn tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their indefinable overlappings. These are authors aware of our many possible pasts and futures, authors freed of stereotypes and clichés, ready to dazzle you with their daring genius.
Unexpected brilliance shines forth from every page.
(For more, see the publisher's website here).
My take:
New Suns contains seventeen stories by writers of colour, raging across many genres - including science fiction, fantasy, horror, retold fairy stories, alternate history, religion, crime and romance - indeed often more than one, almost all with a speculative tinge but with no intention to pursue an overall theme. I have seen some reviews that lament that, but while I love a themed anthology as much as anyone, it really isn't necessary (in my view) for at least three reasons.
First, reading these stories, there is, I think, a commonality which pretty much amounts to a theme. In their different ways, many of these stories explore the position of marginalised people or the effects of power, colonialism or inequality. Even where these themes are not in the foreground they are often visible as part of the furniture of the story. That's not surprising, given that the writers are explicitly identified as people of colour, but the fact that it's not, itself, an overtly imposed theme allows for a more subtle exploration of these issues than if there were an overall theme - and it also means the writers aren't being expected to act as spokespeople just because of who they are.
Secondly - and more simply - general anthologies, with no theme, are a thing and a perfectly fine thing at that. And many of them have in the past been largely male and white, as well, so even the idea of an implicit theme arising from the choice of the authors is not exactly new.
Finally - and I think this is the most important point - these stories are generally of a very high standard and eminently readable. They're fun! A collection of great stories is a Good Thing and, obviously, how far the editor ranges to assemble one is the real test of any anthology. And here Nisi Shawl has done an excellent job.
So - on to the stories. What's in the book? The stories included are
The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex - Tobias Buckell
Deer Dancer - Kathleen Alcalá
The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations - Minsoo Kang
Come Home to Atropos - Steven Barnes
The Fine Print - Chinelo Onwualu
Unkind of Mercy - Alex Jennings
Burn The Ships - Alberto Yañez
The Freedom of the Shifting Sea - Jaymee Goh
Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire - E Lily Yu
Blood and Bells - Karin Lowachee
Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister - Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Shadow We Cast Through Time - Indrapramit Das
The Robots of Eden - Anil Menon
Dumb House -Andrea Hairston
One Easy Trick - Hiromi Goto
Harvest - Rebecca Roanhorse
Kelsey and the Burdened Death - Darcie Little Badger)
There is also a Foreword by LeVar Burton and an Afterword by Nisi Shawl, which both set the context for the collection.
The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex (Tobias Buckle) imagines Earth - by implication, but specifically the US and New York City, as the location for the story - at the receiving end of tourist culture, having to defer to the foibles of "Galactics" with their strange food and smells and their desire for "authentic" Earth culture ("Over half of the US economy was tourism, the rest service jobs"). It's a focussed story, making one point but making it well.
Deer Dancer (Kathleen Alcalá) has a sense of mystery about it. In a post-apocalyptic society which is seeking to rebuild, Tater (named after the root vegetable) loves "imagining what it was like Before, when the sun was scarce". She has some affinity for animals, and enters a dream state which takes the story to strange places. One of those stories where perhaps nothing happens, perhaps everything, the dream here seem freighted with meaning and to point a way forward for the precarious community living on the Edges.
The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations (Minsoo Kang) is framed as a discussion of history, in a setting that (to me) seemed to echo distant Chinese history, written almost as if it were the notes of a seminar or a lecture, of the futility of war ("the copses of ambitious leaders, obedient soldiers, and powerless civilians lay in numbers like grains of sand upon a blood-soaked shore") and the utility of finding ways to avoid it, even at the cost of disobedience. It also points up the power of those invisible to history ("very little can be affirmed about her identity due... to the... lack of information about women...") In its celebration of the outwitting of a powerful and arrogant but dull minded leader I felt a rather cogent point was being made about the present day.
Come Home to Atropos (Steven Barnes) is almost, I'd say, not a story at all. A script for an advertising campaign it features a caribbean (I think) island being marketed to rise, white, elderly - and wealthy - people. But this is no paradise. There has seemingly been a hurricane, but little help has been offered. So is the idea to attract foreign money by marketing the place as a paradise? if so, it doesn't perhaps quite hit the right note... but if it's aiming at other needs, other desires, of its clientele - as it seems, in a rather barded way, it is - then maybe business can be done. A deliciously sharp story. I worked out fairly early what was going on, but that only made a succession of revelations more and more delicious.
The Fine Print (Chinelo Onwualu) is a variation on the idea of how bitter it can be to be granted wishes. The technology has been updated, with a Catalogue, call centres and cubicles offices, but the tension between human will and the ineffable remains, as do the dangers of backing mysogyny with great external power - whether that's colonial power or magical.
Unkind of Mercy (Alex Jennings) was one of my favourite stories here. Jennings cleverly introduces us to a comedian, Johnny, who's moved to LA hoping to make it big but it soon becomes clear that the story is, rather about the woman (Alaina-Rose, not introduced till well into the story) who's narrating everything and who, through the shifting tone of her monologue, is perfectly characterised ("...and I mean, he's not wrong, but he's not right either.") It is, I suppose, more of a horror story than anything else - but one of those where rather than seeing something terrible we're led up to it by that oh-so-ordinary narration. Quite chilling, and more so the more you turn it over in your mind.
When I was at my secondary school, I took part in a school production of the play The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Portraying the conquest of the Inca Empire by Spanish invaders, a scene that has stuck in my mind is of the death (the murder) of Atahualpa, the Inca leader and of the quiet faith of his people that he will rise again to scatter the invaders. of course he does not. Burn The Ships (Alberto Yañez) is a complex, horrific story set in a reality that recalls that: technologically advanced intruders have subjugated a Native population in an astonishingly short time and are committing genocide and seeking to destroy what remains of the traditional religion and culture. But this isn't exactly 15th or 16th century South America, nor, I think, quite earth. Modern technology is referred to but its users seems have fled something - there's almost an implication of alternate realities or gates between universes. The theme is, though, firmly the lengths one might go to to defend one's people, one's culture with women turning forbidden magics and rites while their menfolk sit on their hands - and haughty gods who care little for their people. A lot of food for thought here.
The Freedom of the Shifting Sea (Jaymee Goh) was another favourite of mine. Almost or actually a romance, it kind of turns the mermaid legend inside out - in both story and gender terms - as well making the half woman, half-seaworm encountered on, I think, an Indonesian island ("Mayang could remember a time before British imperialism") a Muslim and family that becomes entwined with her part local, part Western. Featuring a real punch-the-air moment when a rather nasty characters gets a deserved fate, it is a clever, funny story.
Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire (E Lily Yu) revisits a familiar story that never goes out of style and might have a rather obvious reference ("Once there was a vain and foolish emperor, who made up for his foolishness by a kind of low cunning...") However, nothing here is too obvious and the three versions of the story that interweave make this retelling a rather subtle thing. Who is the greater villain - emperor, or tailor?
Blood and Bells (Karin Lowachee), set in an unspecified city given over the gang conflict between "The Nine Nations" is a variant on Romeo and Juliet, a kind of ultra-tuned West Side Story featuring mixed loyalties, death, and loss. Tzak's mother died as he was born; now his father Taiyo tries to keep him safe from opposing factions and to ward off attempts by his mother's people to take him back. This is a convincing portrayal of a young man shouldering immense burdens in an impossible world, a claustrophobic world that seems set on destroying everything he holds dear. It has a real sense of menace, of tension.
How to describe Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)? Frankly, I can't. It just is itself, or something: anything you say just misses the point. What it is, is a gem of a story asking the question (I think) "what is a monster?"
The Shadow We Cast Through Time (Indrapramit Das) is, at first sight, a very classic science fiction story about settling other worlds, about the interaction with what was there before. But it turns into more of a reflection on how we alter everything we interact with; there's a sense that the "demons" described on the New World that Das takes us to are more a product of the colonists than a "pristine" feature of an "empty" world. We can't get away form ourselves, we take ourselves wherever we go, and thus there is almost a kind of ecology between the strange "clay spires" described here and the humans. A haunting, entrancing story, part SF, part, in the end, horror.
Dumb House (Andrea Hairston) felt like an exploration for what could become a longer study of a an economically post-apocalyptic society - something like The Space Merchants - where consumption is mandated and hold-out communities - as that of Cinnamon Jones, tucked away in the remote countryside - persecuted. Here we meet two sinister-comic "salesmen" who may in reality be spies but who do seem to find a way to get under Jones' skin... also featuring a ghost-dog and a witch-dog, traditional culture is here enlisted on the side of the resistance. I'd happily read a longer, more detailed account of this struggle.
One Easy Trick (Hiromi Goto) is a clever, circular story focussing on another aspect of oppression, body size and body image. Marine is hunted online by adverts trying to tell her of "Ways to Lose Your Belly Fat!". But she doesn't want to. or Does she? Getting right into that area of ambivalence where a sense of self can be lost, where one can lose track of whether one is reacting to societal pressures or really doing what one wants, which is speculative fiction at its best, externalising a metaphor in a most astonishing way which nevertheless convinces. Another of my favourites.
Harvest (Rebecca Roanhorse). A strange harvest, in this story, seems intended to settle historical injustices - but to unsettle the reader, eventually creating an atmosphere where it's hard to know what to trust, what is real and what isn't, whose wrongs are being revenged. Never, as the story, says, fall in love with a deer woman...
Kelsey and the Burdened Death (Darcie Little Badger) is a clever little story that could be an episode in an urban fantasy series. In an alternate world where the final breaths not only of humans but of animals are prone to linger and can cause trouble, Kelsey's business is to usher them over to - wherever they belong. Confronted with a particularly trouble "burdened" breath she shows considerable courage and resource in dealing with it and I could see a series of such adventures - except that this story is as much about her reconciliation with her past, something she can only approach by risking the loose of what is most dear to her. A genuinely sad, touching story, one of may favourites, which definitely ended the collection on a high.
It's a strong collection. Short stories are tricky things to write, often coming over as extended treatments of a single point or, having little space to develop characters, having to rely on stock figures. There's little of either fault here with most of these protagonists believable in their circumstances, even where these are horrifying of mystifying circumstances. There's a lot to think about and a lot which is seen from a very distinct point of view. I'd strongly recommend both for all these virtues and also as a gateway into these authors' wider bodies of work.
Buying the book
You can buy the book directly from the publisher here (ePub or mobi) or from your local bookshop, including via Hive here, or from Waterstones, Blackwell's or Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment