New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention. edited by Chris Campbell. 2024
New Year, New You.
Rated 85% Positive. Story Score = 4 out of 5
24 Stories : 7 great / 11 good / 5 average / 1 poor / 0 DNF
First things first. There are shocking number of great stories for an original anthology. And a Kickstarted project from a Residential Writers’ Workshop to boot! (Viable Paradise) Plus it’s an anthology full of authors that are mostly new to me. This is the kind of thing that just doesn’t happen. I tip my virtual hat to them.
Buy your copy at this link
The theme is a broad one.: “various facets of this revolutionary idea of reinvention.” That is definitely to the anthologies benefit. You never feel that you are getting trapped by the theme. One might even ignore the them if they felt like it. But you can’t ignore the stories. Or the splash these authors are likely to make in the future.
A Whopping 7 stories make my All-Time Great List:
A Thousand Gomorrahs” by Daryl Gregory. © 2020.
Great. A quiet introspective tale. Normal people watch as cities around the world stop existing. They don’t know much, but try to be the best version of themselves anyway.
“The Manifold Aspects of Horace” © 2024, Taylor Lykiardopoulos
Great. An old-fashioned story of an animator of Horace who lives in a world where Intellectual Property is literally a god and artists toil in poverty as a kind of monk.
“Redo” © 2024, Brigitte Winter
Great. I loved this story of a woman slowly realized the horrifying time-travel lengths that her husband has gone to to prevent her from leaving him.
“All The Time in the World and None at All” © 2024, Allison Pottern
Great. As a certain time, on a certain day, the therapist sits and waits to meet the time traveler, but never knows which version will show up.
“Wave Walkers” © 2024, Victor Pope
Great. A superb ‘sense-of-wonder’ story. A man who has lost his ability to experience special moments, despite trying all sorts of adventure travel, floats in space called the Fathoms around awe-inspiring beings known as “Walkers.” Rich on sensory detail and emotional impact.
“Spaced” © 2024, Catherine Castellani
Great. Bigotry, persecution, and friendship forced from shared planetary identity come to the forefront in this story about refugees from a planet that transforms the skin of the humans who live there.
“Chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z” © 2024, Ash Howell
Great. A woman reaches out to NuYou’s AI assistant to arrange a body replacement under her health insurance plan. What starts as a frustrating customer service chat takes a disturbing turn when Olivia learns the truth about the AI assistant’s past as a human consciousness trapped in the company’s systems.
NEW YEAR, NEW YOU.
24 STORIES : 7 GREAT / 11 GOOD / 5 AVERAGE / 1 POOR / 0 DNF
My Rating System?
“Better Me Is Fun at Parties” © 2024 by F.E. Choe
Good. “Better Me” is a doppelgänger grown and the protagonist immediately has a strange intimate relationship with them.
“The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac” © 2024, C.R. Kellogg
Average. The attempted assassination of a refugee girl leads her on a magical journey and an awakening.
“A Façade of Faith” © 2024, Shannon Spieler
Average. An Inquistor vies for the prestigious position of Formel, the religious leader of another world, as the current Formel nears death.
“A Thousand Gomorrahs” by Daryl Gregory. © 2020.
Great. A quiet introspective tale. Normal people watch as cities around the world stop existing. They don’t know much, but try to be the best version of themselves anyway.
“Father Time Dares You to Dream” © 2024, Trae Hawkins
Good. In a post-apocalyptic world, human lives simply with no knowledge of the world before. A powerful godlike being decides to give that knowledge to a young man.
“The Manifold Aspects of Horace” © 2024, Taylor Lykiardopoulos
Great. An old-fashioned story of an animator of Horace who lives in a world where Intellectual Property is literally a god and artists toil in poverty as a kind of monk.
“Ugly” © 2024, Julie Danvers
Poor. Another cinderella feminist retelling about a princess prisoner freed by some mice.
“Aurora Deserti” © 2024, Rowan Copley
Good. A woman struggles to deal with her boyfriend who lives in a desert prone to metaphysical light storms.
“Katabasis” © 2024, Alec J. Marsh
Average. Feminist retelling of Persephone. It was fine but unoriginal.
“The Ravishing Moon Princess” © 2024, Charlotte Ahlin
Good. The Moon Princess, a dancer, struggles with the ravages of extreme body modification, cloning, and age-defying technology. As she faces an offer to reset her life through a consciousness transfer, she questions whether it is truly possible to reclaim lost youth and beauty.
“The Catadromous Nature of Eel” © 2024, Sophia Tao
Good. Interestingly offbeat story about a young eel woman.
“The (Re)Creation of New Terraform” © 2024, Adianu Etinose
Average. Two wildly different terraformed humans (elven and aquatic) fall in love at disobey their plotting family.
“Redo” © 2024, Brigitte Winter
Great. I loved this story of a woman slowly realized the horrifying time-travel lengths that her husband has gone to to prevent her from leaving him.
“All The Time in the World and None at All” © 2024, Allison Pottern
Great. As a certain time, on a certain day, the therapist sits and waits to meet the time traveler, but never knows which version will show up.
“12 Hours to Anoesis” © 2024, Avani Vaghela
Good. Everyone has uploaded all their memory into tech in their head, but in just a few hours, it will all be deleted. How will society and our protagonist survive.
“Fracture” © 2024, Melinda A. Smith
Good. A device separates the memory of the traumatic moment from the trauma of it. With the “Many World’s Hypotheis,” is it ethical to use?
“Wave Walkers” © 2024, Victor Pope
Great. A superb ‘sense-of-wonder’ story. A man who has lost his ability to experience special moments, despite trying all sorts of adventure travel, floats in space called the Fathoms around awe-inspiring beings known as “Walkers.” Rich on sensory detail and emotional impact.
“Mars Monkeys” © 2024, Neil Flinchbaugh
Average. A single mother deals with many emotions when her son’s father sends him a gift of ‘mars monkeys.’ They aren’t really special but the son lovers them anyway.
“No Moon and Flat Calm” , © 2019. Elizabeth Bear.
Good. Exciting adventure as four student find themselves in a life-and-death situation on a large space habitat.
“Spaced” © 2024, Catherine Castellani
Great. Bigotry, persecution, and friendship forced from shared planetary identity come to the forefront in this story about refugees from a planet that transforms the skin of the humans who live there.
“Athena’s Voyage” © 2024, Nick DePasquale
Good. An A.I. controlling a spaceship jumps in action where her human is captures from a rogue A.I. spaceship. Fun space opera.
“My Lover’s Music Box” © 2024, A.E. Kirchoff
Good. A grieving woman clings to the memory of her lost lover, now an AI embedded in a music box. Both the woman and the AI struggle to reconcile the gap between memory and reality as they confront their shared grief.
“Chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z” © 2024, Ash Howell
Great. A woman reaches out to NuYou’s AI assistant to arrange a body replacement under her health insurance plan. What starts as a frustrating customer service chat takes a disturbing turn when Olivia learns the truth about the AI assistant’s past as a human consciousness trapped in the company’s systems.
“Ada the Last Daughter: On Blackhole Cosmology and Computation” © 2024, Chris Campbell
Good. A mysterious woman named Ada appears on a secluded beach and reveals to the narrator, Charles, that he is living in a highly complex simulation. As they grow closer, she reveals that she is the last daughter of humanity, tasked with preserving the memories of her creators across an infinite number of simulated universes.
Austin’s Note; This review is from an ARC provided by Netgallery and Immortal Jellyfish Press.
