Editors Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman Are Your Guide to The New Voices of Science Fiction
In this new golden age of speculative fiction, an almost mind-boggling number of excellent short stories are published in print and online every month, and in more venues than I can easily count. While this embarrassment of riches is a good thing, it can be difficult for anyone—even those of us with a keen interest in the field—to keep up. Now more than ever, the best bet for readers interested in getting a grasp on the state of genre fiction is via thoughtfully curated anthologies.
The New Voices of Science Fiction
Paperback $17.95
The New Voices of Science Fiction
Editor
Hannu Rajaniemi
,
Jacob Weisman
Contribution by
Nino Cipri
In Stock Online
Paperback $17.95
Enter The New Voices of Science Fiction: a carefully and thoughtfully curated science fiction anthology showcasing some of the genre’s brightest stars. Editors Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman have gathered together 20 award-winning or award-nominated stories, published between 2015 and 2018 in venues such as Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Apex Magazine, and others. It’s an informal followup to 2017’s The New Voices of Fantasy, edited by Weisman and Peter S. Beagle; that anthology went on to win a World Fantasy Award, and I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that The New Voices of Science Fiction might garner awards consideration as well.
Enter The New Voices of Science Fiction: a carefully and thoughtfully curated science fiction anthology showcasing some of the genre’s brightest stars. Editors Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman have gathered together 20 award-winning or award-nominated stories, published between 2015 and 2018 in venues such as Tor.com, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Apex Magazine, and others. It’s an informal followup to 2017’s The New Voices of Fantasy, edited by Weisman and Peter S. Beagle; that anthology went on to win a World Fantasy Award, and I don’t think it’s far-fetched to say that The New Voices of Science Fiction might garner awards consideration as well.
Each story here is exceptional. Taken together, they cover a wide range of topics, moods, settings, and perspectives on the present and the future. Fans of science fiction will certainly recognize many of the themes and tropes at play—space travel, time travel, robots—but again and again, these sci-fi mainstays are used in unique ways. As editor Rajaniemi says in his foreword, the assembled writers are repurposing the old ideas and “cold thought experiments” of the genre’s history, expanding them “into deep explorations of gender, love, and identity.” It’s this willingness to focus on how individual lives might be affected and shaped by changes in technology, environment, and society that sets these stories apart and gives them their power.
The personal perspective is at the forefront of Amal El-Mohtar’s profoundly moving “Madeleine” (the title a nod to Marcel Proust’s memory-inducing baked goods), which follows a young woman who ends up experiencing disconcertingly real flashbacks after participating in a pharmaceutical study. The individual’s point of view is also forefront in the devastating “Mother Tongues,” in which S. Qiouyi Lu explores the repercussions of a new technology that can remove the knowledge of a certain language from one person and transfer it to another. In the scientifically gritty and charming “A Series of Steaks,” Vina Jie-Min Prasad immerses us in the futuristic business of bioprinting, but also explores how one beef-related project gives two women the opportunity to change their lives.
Elsewhere, tropes are interrogated. Take time travel: in Nino Cipri’s subtle and gripping “The Shape of My Name,” a temporal voyager uses their Mama’s time machine to investigate the secrets and mysteries in their own past. In Alice Sola Kim’s “One Hour, Every Seven Years,” the protagonist returns again and again to a particular even in their childhood on Venus, each time trying to alter the past and the future. Meanwhile, Samantha Mills skates closer to fantasy, exploring time travel of a different sort in “Strange Waters,” set in a world where violent storms at sea can teleport people through the ages, and where a woman is desperately trying to find her way back to the life she left behind.
The New Voices of Fantasy
Paperback $16.95
The New Voices of Fantasy
By
Eugene Fisher
,
Brooke Bolander
Editor
Peter S. Beagle
In Stock Online
Paperback $16.95
There are robots here too. Some of them care for human children, as in the unsettling “Tender Loving Plastics” by Amman Sabet. In Suzanne Palmer’s cheeky “The Secret Life of Bots,” we’re granted a riveting (no pun intended) look at the inner workings of a starship, as seen through the eyes of its very determined maintenance robots.
There are robots here too. Some of them care for human children, as in the unsettling “Tender Loving Plastics” by Amman Sabet. In Suzanne Palmer’s cheeky “The Secret Life of Bots,” we’re granted a riveting (no pun intended) look at the inner workings of a starship, as seen through the eyes of its very determined maintenance robots.
The ramifications of virtual reality are considered from different angles. In Jamie Wahls’s witty far-future entry “Utopia, LOL?” the scope of the artificial is taken to the extreme, while E. Lily Yu ponders the pros and cons of a more near-future online gamer lifestyle in the keenly observed “The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi.” The subject is given a darkly humorous, chilling slant in Rebecca Roanhorse’s multi-award winning “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™,” in which a man’s identity and sense belonging are gradually erased and claimed by an intruder. And in Lettie Prell’s harrowing “The Need for Air”, we encounter a mother who is willing to abandon the real world in favor of a digital existence, no matter what the cost.
Wither the post-apocalyptic? In Sarah Pinsker’s masterful “Our Lady of the Open Road” (inspiration for the novel Song for a New Day) we follow the travels and travails of a rock band in a future shaped by scarcity of resources, in which new communities and new ways of living are taking shape.
Enriched by its ranged and buoyed by the remarkable talents of its contributors, The New Voices of Science Fiction is a must-read anthology for anyone who loves the genre, demonstrating vividly just how vital it remains. As Rajaniemi’s foreward suggests: “Read them, and be changed.”