Mind-stretching tales of synthetic fauna, not to be confused with the Marilyn Manson rock album of the same title.
A sci-fi anthology delivers 22 short stories, vintage novel excerpts, and nonfiction essays on the theme of robotic/cybernetic beings modeled after animals.
Strange flowers indeed bloom in this garden, gathered and creatively arranged by sci-fi/fantasy editors Chambers (Calls for Submission, 2017, etc.) and Heller (Strange Stars, 2018, etc.). They offer a particularly unusual subject via brief works based on (or tangential to) the idea of animal robots, cyborgs, or automata. Such a narrow focus might limit the appeal and quality of the material, and indeed there is a preponderance of eco-dystopic, what-happens-after-all-the-wildlife-becomes-extinct tropes. But the variegated imaginations of the writers burst off the page nonetheless. Here and there among the newcomers (and seemingly cued by pop historian Jess Nevins’ eponymous essay about animal simulacra in fiction and folklore going back centuries) are nested heirlooms from the early masters of fantasy. There are pieces by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert T. Toombs, Hans Christian Andersen—the one about a Chinese emperor’s clockwork nightingale, a classic not yet adapted by Disney—and, of course, Jules Verne. A steampunk influence shows up vividly in Delia Sherman’s “Brass Monkey,” which is mock-Victorian in its setting, voice, and sentiments, as a faithful faux simian helps its creators stop a counterfeiting ring. More troubling and timely is Jesse Bullington’s “Stray Frog,” envisioning a future in which police brutality is countered (theoretically) by making cops wield toxin-spitting GMO organisms that they must care for and nurture rather than cold, steel firearms. Seldom does the technology venture into the nuts-and-bolts descriptions of hard-sci-fi territory (the major exception: An Owomoyela’s “The Hard Spot in the Glacier,” a space-survival piece starring a centipede-shaped mecha). More often, there is science speculation transmuting the hows and whys into poetry, magic, art, or fairy tale, more effective in some literary experiments than others but always rewarding. From the doom-laden to the heroic, attitudes toward the concept of robotic animals at large run the gamut (although no stories seem to reflect Japanese anime and manga culture’s giddy positivity over robo critters, especially android cats). But the collection ends on an up note with Carrie Vaughn’s “Closer to the Sky,” a Western yarn featuring a bionic horse, arguably the most accessible entry for mainstream readers.
Mind-stretching tales of synthetic fauna, not to be confused with the Marilyn Manson rock album of the same title.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997736-7-3
Page Count: 418
Publisher: Hex Publishers
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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