Harare Review of Books

300 pages.

First published Nov 14, 2023 (Arc Manor)

Fiction anthology.

It’s weird: this collection was kind of polarising, and that’s just in my head. Unusually for me, there were stories I really liked, and stories I really hated, and almost nothing in-between. Normally there’s a decent spectrum.

But let’s talk about the good. Some stories I thought were above average: Prompt, by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey, tackles the “black box” of AI in an oblique and interesting way. Ray Nayler’s Hermetic Kingdom starts like Westworld, but has a happyish and poignant ending. The Form of Things Unknown by Julie Nováková is a beautiful story exploring transhumanism and cybernetics/cyborgs. Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Mercer Seat is cool and weird and references PKD’s Do Androids Dream and Blade Runner and all kinds of sci-fi lore. Forged by Jane Espenson thinks about AI “creativity” and kind of subverts the roles of AI and humans. But Auston Habershaw’s The Laugh Machine stands out, and is far and away my absolute favourite: a comedic AI (and it’s genuinely funny) that’s “stolen” jobs and caused grief kind of stumbles on a new calling in this really tender story.

I think this is a collection that’s worth reading for what it tries to do—to explore what a “generative world”, in the words of editor Alex Shvartsman, might be like. Because of the bimodal distribution of my ratings of the stories in it, whether it entirely succeeds is debatable for me. I will, however, recommend it for the stories I did love.

Thank you to NetGalley and to UFO Publishing/Arc Manor/Caezik SF & F for access.