Title: How Long ’til Black Future Month?
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Short Stories/Science Fiction
Trigger Warnings: Varies between stories; see end for list
Back Cover:
In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow south must figure out how to save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story “The City Born Great,” a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.
Review:
I don’t read a lot of short stories, mainly because with so many stories in one volume it’s pretty much guaranteed that I’m not going to love all of them. Except this volume. I don’t think there was a single story in here that I disliked. Some of them were a little hard to follow due to the format (“Henosis” is told out of order, “The Evaluators” is told through mission logs, and “The You Train” is a transcript of one side of a phone conversation), but none of them were bad.
There are 22 stories in this anthology, so in an effort to not make this review ridiculously long, I’m not going to go through them one by one. Besides, I’d say the same thing about pretty much all of them. The concepts are unique and fascinating, the stories are well-written, the characters are complex and well-drawn despite the stories being short, and there’s not a single bad story here. Some are less memorable than others, but there wasn’t a single one that I didn’t enjoy reading.
The concepts are so diverse, too. There’s witchcraft in the Jim Crow south, a chef learning to cook with magical ingredients, an alternate-history steampunk-esque version of New Orleans, AIs in a virtual world, space exploration, utopia, dystopia, apocalypses, hard sci-fi, science fantasy, dragons, goddesses, aliens, lucky charms, the personification of Death itself … And, of course, humanity. Love, death, hope, fear, food, longing, pain, striving, overcoming, living and being and continuing on in weird and wonderful and sometimes frightening worlds.
N.K. Jemisin packs so much into such short stories. I’m honestly blown away. Not only can I not pick a least favorite, I can’t pick a most favorite. These stories are all just so stunningly good, in concept and in execution. I am so glad I read this.
Trigger Warnings:
- The Ones Who Stay and Fight: Death
- The City Born Great: Poverty, homelessness, sex work (mention)
- Red Dirt Witch: Racism, Jim Crow, slavery
- L’Alchimista: None
- The Effluent Engine: Racism, segregation, guns, death, blood
- Cloud Dragon Skies: Loss of home
- The Trojan Girl: Mild body horror, brain death
- Valedictorian: None
- The Storyteller’s Replacement: Death, death of non-human animals, gore
- The Brides of Heaven: Death of children, pregnancy
- The Evaluators: Death (mention), mild body horror
- Walking Awake: Death, death of children, imprisonment of children, blood, murder, body horror, mind control, ableism
- The Elevator Dancer: None
- Cuisine des Memoires: Divorce
- Stone Hunger: Death, injury (broken bones), mild body horror, imprisonment, death of parents/family
- On the Banks of the River Lex: Death, death of non-human animals, human extinction
- The Narcomancer: Death, rape (mentions), sexual desire, heterosexual sex (implied)
- Henosis: Threat of death, murder (mention)
- Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows: Loneliness, non-existence
- The You Train: None
- Non-Zero Probabilities: Masturbation (mention), heterosexual sex (mention), vehicle crash, death, broken bones (mention)
- Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters: Blood, death, gun violence (mention), police brutality (mention), corpses, flooding, death of non-human creatures
Bluejay Reads 