Harare Review of Books

161 pages. Published April 20, 2024 by The Mad Duck Coalition. SF.

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I loved, loved! this collection of (eventually I worked out) linked stories that are set in our (potential) future: climate change has ravaged the world, sea levels have risen, and the corps run everything that matters. (The book’s blurb is excellent, because that’s exactly what it delivers.) Salkovic sets these stories in unnamed countries around the world, which is truly wonderful because too much of this kind of SF is entirely focused on the US.

So, the stories. Hantu is the disturbing story of a Big Pharma refugee-turned-concentration camp hidden away in the jungle, and includes folkloristic elements (the hantu of the title). Carriers is an actual nightmare about a pandemic and again, a concentration camp—completely plausible after (we’re not even really after yet, are we) COVID. It’s also a bit of a zombie story. Spook feels like the logical next step in corporate espionage, and features an arcology, an exciting chase, and the chilling Tranh, who’s a spook with a modified face. I’ve never read a story quite like the chilling and excellent Freehold, where Big Agric is in deadly competition with farming co-operatives in the US’s heartland. Line of Duty takes things from the perspective of a corporate security officer who completely believes in and takes the side of the corps. The heartbreaking Beached depicts the impact on the poor of this corporatised world, where the scramble for resources—food!—is about who gets there first, and where corporate control means corps will destroy food so as to profiteer. And, finally, On Rails takes the opposite view of Line of Duty, with corporate security learning what’s really going on with the indigenous people who live in the jungle where they’re stationed.

This is such a thoughtful and well laid out collection. I commend the author for their fully realised world with its logical conclusions about corporatisation, and its international, planet-spanning scope. It’s a warning for anyone who’s listening, and feels really prescient about our future; even if we’re going to do nothing about it, prophets like Salkovic must and will speak. And so, although this will fall into the genre of speculative fiction, it’s really a voice from the future.

Many thanks to BooksGoSocial/the Mad Duck Coalition and NetGalley for access to a DRC.