A Place Between Waking & Forgetting

These 18 impressive speculative shorts from Bacon (Serengotti) nimbly traverse subgenres while combining rich magic and mythology with a sharp exploration of what it means to be African both in and away from Africa. The ungentle folklore of “The Fable of a Monkey’s Heart,” which follows a young monkey determined to teach the hungry local crocodile a lesson, and “The Lightning Bird,” about a too-beautiful bride who can never be complimented enough, sit easily alongside the pure sci-fi of “Derive, Moderately,” in which a mother and son flee technological unrest in an escape pod headed for a distant planet, and “The Water Runner,” about a young woman whose job is to reclaim the precious water contained in the bodies of the dead. There’s even a Sherlock Holmes–riffing murder mystery set in a holiday lodge, “The Mystery of a Place Between Waking and Forgetting.” Bacon’s fans will be over the moon. (Oct.)