Made to Order

[psocoptera]

Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, 2020 anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan. Generally strong, certainly all-star (as in there is literally nobody in this anthology I hadn't heard of). My favorite was by Annalee Newitz, "The Translator", which I will not give away with any description; additional shoutouts to Suzanne Palmer for some interesting speculative economics in "Chiaroscuro in Red", to John Chu's "Dancing with Death" for a really sweet relationship (spoilers: features a robot and an ex-hockey player/minor god ice dancing together!), to Rich Larson ("An Elephant Never Forgets"), for an interesting text-adventure style setup (although I didn't think it stuck the landing), and to Sofia Samatar ("Fairy Tales for Robots"), for a meta-commentary-heavy premise that initially had me rolling my eyes a little and by the end had me just sitting there like "she's so smart!". God I would love to see Samatar at a con, if we ever have cons again. Dream panel, maybe, Samatar, Malka Older, and, I don't know, Jemisin maybe, talking about literally anything. (This is probably where someone tells me "there's a podcast!" and I have to confront my inability to listen to the spoken word. But feel free to comment for the benefit of others...)