Harare Review of Books

160 pages. Published Sept. 5, 2024 by Roseway Publishing. SF/Palestine.

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“Someone once said that all Palestinian fiction is speculative; we are always grappling with the past and living in expectation of the future, while our fictions tell of alternate histories,” Sonia Sulaiman says in the preface.

Imagine longing for your homeland so much that you start digging a tunnel from wherever you are to Jerusalem, like the people in Jumaana Abdu’s Down Under—in the case of the protagonists, from Australia. Or, imagine a group of friends swimming off Gaza and disappearing one by one—while the rest keep going, as in Ziyad Saadi’s The Third or Fourth Casualty. Nadia Afifi (author of some excellent SF) writes about the preservation of memory in The Generation Chip, a story with an LGBTQIA sub-theme. Soul Searching by Rana Othman is about a change of perspective in a young girl after a body-swapping incident. Karl El-Koura’s Cyrano de AI celebrates neurodivergence. The Frontrunner by J.D. Harlock is a stunning story with an excellent twist. Sara Solara’s In the Future, We Can Go Back Home is also about that longing for homeland. Editor Sonia Sulaiman’s contribution is about the Witnesses who tell of the Forty, and about pilgrimage and exile. Elise Stephens’s Remembrance in Cerulean tells of grief after loss, and how misunderstandings can grow. Samah Serour Fadil’s Gaza Luna is a poignant story about escape from this world, about finally being free. There are a few more, but the last story in this collection is the very smart The Centre of the Universe by Nadia Shammas, which first appeared in Strange Horizons.

Like other collections of stories from a particular region (or its diaspora), the stories in Thyme Travellers are not monolithic or concerned with one subject—like homeland, for these writers. There’s a wonderful variety of themes and ideas for readers to enjoy, like I did. This collection is for everyone, but those who enjoy speculative fiction will derive particular pleasure from it. An excellent way to spend your time.

Thanks much to Roseway Publishing/Columbia University Press and to Edelweiss for early access to a DRC.

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