New Suns

I spent much of my day at my mechanic (yay new brake pads) which was perfect for paper reading! New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction By People Of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl. 17 stories, of which 10 of the authors sounded at least vaguely familiar and like I had liked something else they had written (and some much more specifically so). (Ok I am totally bragging but the forward was like "you may not be familiar with some" and happened to pick three that I *was* and I was like, ha! all that time I spend reading online short fiction really is accomplishing some familiarity with the field!) I often prefer anthologies that are organized around a theme like fairy tales or djinn or whatever, and there was not really a unifying theme here other than "writers of color that Nisi Shawl knows personally", but it was well-edited, a good mix of lengths and tones and styles and stuff.

Particular standouts: "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex", Tobias S. Buckell, about a cab driver who's seen some shit; "The Shadow We Cast Through Time", Indrapramit Das, about human colonists becoming intertwined with the ecosystem of their new planet, and "The Robots of Eden", Anil Menon, about posthuman emotions. Oh, and maybe "One Easy Trick", Hiromi Goto, about the complexity of body acceptance, except I didn't get the ending. :/