Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm

Leib combines laudable ambition with remarkable mediocrity, selecting 17 tales of struggle and rebellion that are neither inspiring nor challenging. Instead, the authors paint carefully within the lines, offering conventionally banal stories of resistance to social conventions, economic repression, and brute prejudice. Daniel José Older’s “Phantom Overload” wraps the occult around an attempt to exploit familiar anti-immigrant sentiments. In Barbara Krasnoff’s “The Red Dybbuk,” the shade of a dead activist possesses her granddaughter, and the young woman’s mother is caught in the middle. RJ Astruc & Deirdre M. Murphy’s “Scrapheap Angel” depicts the weakest imaginable expression of individuality by a collection of thoroughly cowed and broken workers. The premise is interesting and several of the authors have done noteworthy work in the past; how these ingredients combined to produce such a bland meal is a mystery. (Dec.)