Harare Review of Books

232 pages. Published November 4, 2024 by Interstellar Flight Press. SF.

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It took me a minute, but I got quite enamoured of this quirky collection. That’s possibly because the more you read, the more links you see between stories; and some themes start to emerge, too. Time. Love. Memory. Forgiveness. Ghosts—on Mars. Other things on Mars. Space. A couple of empires. Post-apocalypses. Deadly feuds. Beginnings, middles, endings, and further beginnings.

Baker likes headings—you’ll see them a lot, and so I imagine he likes grouping things and ideas—like in the very cool vision of a ruined Toronto after humanity’s lost the ability to use technology, and many of the other stories. There’s a great deal more. The title story is mind-blowing, and very strange. There are feuding time travellers who leave a message in a bottle. There’s the dad who has surgery to forget everything. Also the story of an archive; a quantum game; a time loop and a sentient ship; a one-woman symposium where her many iterations are to present papers; a little cli-fi; and a dog called Little Bastard. There’s even a whole thing on Basho. Oh, and story about ship names.

There are modified humans. There’s a confectioner’s shop on Mars. There’s diving to find exotic life on Europa. doge coefficient is an amusing story about language. love and relativity is a heartbreaking series of letters to a man lost in time and space. images across a shattered sea is fascinating for its imaginary tech and how Baker imagines that world; also for world-building in miniature. ???. [error: out of timeline, unable to process] is my favourite story, and I won’t spoil it for you, but it has a really wonderful structure, and is a “hermit crab” (there are quite a few of these). I enjoyed Baker’s instructions on how to break causality and write the perfect time travel story. I also loved an evening of theatre at floating world station, which is about goats, love gone wrong, and a sentient space station. (Aren’t all these titles so cool?!)

Anyway. This is a book I want to read again soon, and I will. So many great ideas, and so much great structure. Read if you love SF ideas, and read if you’re a writer who’s interested in the many ways you can tell a story. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Interstellar Flight Press and NetGalley for DRC access.

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