Harare Review of Books

510 pp. Published November 12, 2024 by Ansible Press. SFF anthology.

---

Ok this was “a romp”! It’s always extra fun to read big names in SF—names like Nalo Hopkinson, Amal El-Mohtar, Premee Mohammed, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, and more. This multi-author anthology opens with a review of the year that was in Canadian publishing and SFF: The Year in Review 2023 (the big story being the rise of generative “AI”). If you usually skip intros, don’t skip this one.

There are many really good stories (and poems) in this collection. Like Amal El-Mohtar’s John Hollowback and the Witch, an absorbing fairytale with a touch of horror (so, basically, Brothers Grimm); and so is the also excellent The Lover by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The Girl Who Cried Diamonds by Rebecca Hirsch Garcia is about exploitation; I thought it was particularly clever/apt to use mineral extraction from a girl’s body to tell the story. I loved Derek Künsen’s super imaginative Six Incidents of Evolution Using Time Travel because of the “trantus worm” which is “a behavior-altering parasite that infects many intelligent species of the galaxy” and enables time travel (kind of)—reminiscent of Star Trek Discovery’s Stamets plotline (so now I must make time to watch it again).

The Manic Pixie Girl in A. C. Wise’s story is probably not one you want to get tangled up with. The Distance Between Us is an intriguing poem by Rati Mehrotra, about love and other great forces. Premee Mohammed’s At Every Door a Ghost is a thoughtul “What If?” about government surveillance and science in the wake of terrorism. Douglas Smith’s entry, If I Should Fall Behind, is a cool love story about the many-worlds theory. Kelsey Hutton gives us a welcome alt-version to the many Western-oriented stories about Victoria (a 19th c. queen) in Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea (bonus: magical dresses!!). Also loved Grace P. Fong’s Medusa-themed revenge tale, The Toll of the Snake, and Manuela Amiony’s time travel story, The Long Way Home From Gaia BH1 (particularly because the central relationship is not your standard romantic one).

There’s looooads more. A story about a violinist with a haunted (?) prosthesis, by Aleksandra Hill. From Chandra Fisher: women who sink their sorrows into a particular part of the sea. I’m yet to decipher J.D. Dresner’s poem For the Robots (it’s in hexadecimal). There’s a very cool story about human-pseudo-octopus co-operation by Isabelle Piette and Margaret Sankey. A “holiday suit” forms a protective (maybe too protective) barrier against the world in a story by Rich Larson. There’s a cleverly circular story by Justin Dill. More out-of-time-ness, in a building this time, from P. A. Cornell. An excellent post-apocalyptic story featuring the best protagonist and a robot by Fiona Moore. On Mars, there’s a smart (and/or haunted) truck and reimagined imprisonment in Phoebe Barton’s And Prison On My Back. And that’s only about half the pieces in this fantastic collection, which closes with Nalo Hopkinson’s powerful The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World.

As you can see, more than worth your time and money. If you’re a SFF fan, this will be an excellent addition to your library.

So very many thanks to NetGalley and Ansible Press for DRC access.