Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction

This mostly unsuccessful anthology showcases authors from all over the world, including Zimbabwe (Tendai Huchu), Cuba (Carlos Hernandez), Greece (Michalis Manolios), and Italy (Clelia Farris), and four of its 12 stories originated in languages other than English. Unfortunately, the geographic and cultural diversity on display does not produce a similarly rich and exciting body of work. There are highlights: Hernandez’s “The International Studbook of the Giant Panda” manages to make panda conservation efforts humorous, touching, and genuinely transgressive, and Clelia Farris’s “Creative Surgery” is an unpredictable and gorgeous ride through a completely original mind. But many of the pieces feel dated and trite (such as James Patrick Kelly’s “Bernardo’s House,” in which the android avatar of a sentient house, characterized as a naive adolescent girl, reminisces fondly about the human man who built her and used her for sex) or simply inconsequential (such as Manolios’s confused and confusing “The Quantum Mommy”). This severs as a decent introduction to several writer U.S. readers may not have been aware of, but as a reading experience in itself, it falls short. (Apr.)