Friday, May 14, 2021

A People's Future of the United States

 A People's Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, 432 pages.

This anthology, inspired by Howard Zinn's similarly titled A People's History of the United States, brings together a very diverse group of authors to write speculative fiction about different ways that America could be. Some of these futures are bright, many of them are not. 

Like most anthologies, I found the quality of the stories within wildly variant. Many of the stories almost feel flat to the point of caricature, and several others are just incomprehensible. However, there are also a number of truly fantastic short stories that were so good they prompted me to put novels by the authors on my to-read list immediately. "Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death" by N.K. Jemisin, "The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves" by Violet Allen, and "Good News Bad News" by Charles Yu were personal favorites of mine.


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