SFF is …changing. Long the bastion of men, especially white men, the genre’s stories and boundaries are at last making room for a greater variety of voices and points of view. 2017 has been a particular great year for that in our corner of the woods with FIYAH Lit Magazine, showcasing African American SFF; Comic Con this summer celebrated more diverse characters in comic books and films, including a superb Muslim crimefighter; the Star Trek TV series franchise is being resurrected with black and Asian female crew members, as well as the usual undefined aliens; and of course, everyone is still vibrating over the Star Wars beloved General Leia and the new strong female leads in that world. All of this means that when we had the opportunity to read the New Voices in Fantasy Anthology, we both jumped at the chance.
New Voices is not a YA anthology, although there are contributors who write for YA and MG lit included, but we wanted to look it over anyway, because we strongly support diverse voices in science fiction and fantasy. So, without further ado:
Welcome to another edition of In Tandem, the read-and-review blog series where both A.F. and I give on-the-spot commentary as we read and blog a book together. (Feel free to guess which of us is the yellow owl and which of us is purple …who’s driving this bike??)
We are…
Two writers,
& Two readers,
Exploring one book…
In Tandem.
What would you do if a tornado wanted you to be its Valentine? Or if a haunted spacesuit banged on your door? When is the ideal time to turn into a tiger? Would you post a supernatural portal on Craigslist?
In these nineteen stories, the enfants terribles of fantasy have entered the building—in this case, a love-starved, ambulatory skyscraper. The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years, including Sofia Samatar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Usman T. Malik, Brooke Bolander, E. Lily Yu, Ben Loory, Ursula Vernon, and more. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic).
So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.
“This anthology represents some of the most exciting and interesting work in the fantasy field today, and anyone interested in the genre should read it immediately.”
—Booklist ♦ “…a valuable snapshot of SF/F’s newest generation of writers.”
—Publishers Weekly ♦ “A stellar anthology that proves not only that fantasy is alive and well, but that it will be for years to come.”
—Kirkus
We received copies of this book courtesy of the publishing company, via NetGalley. You can find THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY edited by Peter S. Beagle & Jacob Weisman at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!
tanita: I don’t know why, but I love, love, love anthologies. Maybe it’s the little snippets of someone’s work, which gives me a jumping-off point to getting to know them as a writer. Maybe it’s the reality that sometimes, I don’t have mental bandwidth for a long novel, but there’s always time for a story. Maybe it’s just that I have attention deficits. I enjoy how some stories turn out to be favorites, and others, not so much, which is always my experience – which makes even reading something I’m not sure I like A Good Thing. You were remarking the other day how hard it is to read them sometimes, though. I agree… this was both fun, and really hard!
sarah: I guess any “new voices” type of thing is going to be highly varied. It’s hard for me to do more than a few stories a day… Is it weird that I find short stories require more stamina in a way than novels?
tanita: No, no – not at all. I had to put this down and come back to it repeatedly. For me, the issue with anthologies, where there are rich, fully realized stories is that I can’t change lanes that fast. The finned Chevy of my imagination is hurtling down the dark freeway, weird sights blurring as I fly by… and then the story …ends. I have to find where the car went and turn it around before I can start something new.
The stories featured in this collection were were fully realized, fully populated little worlds we spent time in. Which one was your favorite? Or, which two, probably, that you’re having a hard time picking between?
sarah: I have to admit, I’m kind of a sucker for selkie stories–for anything based on myth, really–and so I think my favorite of the bunch is Sofia Samatar’s “Selkie Stories Are for Losers.” It also is a YA-friendly story, and was nominated for several awards. It does such an amazing job of doing what myths do best–they teach us something about ourselves, show us what already exists in our all-too-human hearts that has existed through history and across time. In the same way, the selkie has both a literal and a metaphorical role in Samatar’s story.
tanita: Funny – for the selfsame reason, I kind of hate selkie stories; I find them tragically sad, which is why I loved the Samatar’s story — because her character, too, came from a place of where the story of selkies and sentient sea creatures IS traditionally tragic, and so she decided to reject those stories, in a show of bravado, despite that story being HER story. Similar in themes of loss of wildness and freedom was the story of the anarchist bees – and well done to that person for being able to portray a hivemind in a story – and of course, the Jackalope Wives… I am SO here for any Vernon story, anytime. While I had read this particular story before (which kind of detracts from the “new” voices in the title), I’m glad to see her non-kid work find a larger audience.
sarah: I also liked Ursula Vernon’s “Jackalope Wives”–not surprisingly. I’m already a fan of her work for young readers (e.g. the Dragonbreath graphic novels).
Other stories I enjoyed were “Tornado’s Siren” by Brooke Bolander for sheer uniqueness of concept; “Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker for being YA-friendly, very literary, and leaving the reader with intriguing questions; and “Here Be Dragons” by Chris Tarry for having an interesting new take on dragons and dragonslayers.
tanita: There were echoes, in “The One They Took Before,” by Kelly Sandoval, of Seanan McGuire’s EVERY HEART A DOORWAY trilogy that was really haunting, in combination with the weirdness of Craigslist. But, my favorite of the new-to-me pieces was Max Gladstone’s “A Kiss With Teeth,” which started off with me feeling pretty unsure of things… In a novel filled with pieces which will appeal to adults and teens alike, this is definitely an adult story. Parents looking back at their lives before becoming part of the Upright Citizens Brigade and remembering when once they were vampire and vampire hunter, when the night was filled with menace and promise and dangerous, obsessive romance… I adored it. I love that story because it’s about maturing – and maturity is something you just don’t read a whole lot about in speculative fiction, despite the thousand-year-lived vampires and the like that you get in urban fantasy. More often, you get the angst and drama of what happens when people live nearly forever and don’t mature, but just… roll into later adulthood, still acting a fool. It was partly side-eyeing those types of stories, and partially celebrating settled, selfless, mature relationships. Which is super rare. Having read that, I’m very much open to finding Gladstone’s other work for adults, in a way I wasn’t prior to now (although, not going to lie – I have been struck by the wonderful representation on the covers of his books. I mean, look at this!).
sarah: Yes, I enjoyed the “but what happens AFTER?” approach of Gladstone’s story–that was something I liked about “Here Be Dragons,” too. There are so many tropes in fantasy, and that’s not inherently bad, but fantastical creatures like dragons and vampires and werebeasts and whatnot have been done in the same way so many times (hence the trope, I suppose). Bringing a new approach to existing tropes is something that was well done in this anthology as a whole.
tanita: What else stood out to you about this collection in terms of theme or stylistic choices, or anything, really?
sarah: I wanted to just mention how much I enjoyed the variety and risk-taking in terms of form and storytelling approach–there were surprises at every turn, from unusual characters like bees, buildings, and ducks, to unique conceits of form like the how-to guide, Craigslist ad, and anthropological study. I really enjoyed “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik for its sweeping, epic, multigenerational look at jinn mythology–great to see something that’s not from the well-used Western mold. I’m already a fan of Rushdie, who similarly draws on the history and myth of the Indian Subcontinent, and I’m glad to see more writing in that vein.
tanita: Oh, yes! My main interest in choosing this anthology is that it is aimed at “new voices;” the overarching meaning, in this particular, is not solely stories I haven’t yet read from “new” to the field authors, but additionally, nonwhite voices in fantasy, which brings that new vibe to the entire genre. Usman T. Malik allowed us to glimpse both old Lahore, new, busy Lahore, and the mental and physical and spiritual space in between, bridged by the character’s life in the West. It was enchanting, in part because the story was about family stories, and how they stretch the truth and what we understand of truth through time. Wouldn’t it be lovely, if an aging relative could remember themselves in another time, in their dementia — and it would all be real? That… in a way would redeem old age and remakes it into something beautiful.
And, in a way, that’s what the whole anthology does. Familiar bits of ephemera from our imaginations, from our urban myths and legends, from our cultures and our worlds have been transmuted into something both less familiar and more knowable, both more off-puttingly gross and horrible (and there are some prime bits of horror in this collection – eek), and more charmingly disturbing. This collection runs a good gamut. It’s meaty stuff, and could easily be taken along to ease the pain of airports and train rides. It’s absorbing and invites the reader to a feast of a thousand different senses. It’s not our usual fare here at the Treehouse, but I’m glad we read it.
sarah: Me, too! It definitely fulfills our goal to read widely and diversely, something that we both try to do as much as possible–just not usually at the same time… In this case, though, a tandem review seemed like a good way to survey the gamut of stories in the anthology–we each responded to different ones, and as a result, hopefully, we were able to do it justice as a collection…and tempt you into picking it up, perhaps.
Thanks for joining us on our latest tandem review journey!
