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New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention
An anthology of diverse speculative fiction exploring themes of reinvention, re-imagining, and revolution, from Elizabeth Bear, Daryl Gregory, and alumni of the 2023 Viable Paradise Writers' Workshop.
New Year's resolutions and self-help gurus ask us to reinvent ourselves-be better, prettier, perfect. But the writers in this anthology know that reinvention contains both potential and pitfalls.
One woman's doppelgänger offers her a chance to fix her flaws - for a small price. Against the wishes of her family, an eel-person yearns to reveal her true nature. A showgirl in a backwater lunar cabaret seeks cosmic fame-and will do anything to get it.
From cutting-edge voices in science fiction and fantasy, comes a mind-bending collection of twenty-four tales that span the vast reaches of magic and space and delve into the intimate spaces between people.
The authors featured in this anthology have had short fiction published in Clarkesworld, Locus, Asimov's, Raleigh Review, Lightspeed, and more. They are joined by two of the industry's most celebrated Hugo and Sturgeon Award-winner Elizabeth Bear and World Fantasy winner Daryl Gregory. Editor Chris Campbell's work has received recognition and support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for his contributions to Afrofutrist literature.
Stories by: Charlotte Ahlin⬩Elizabeth Bear⬩Chris Campbell⬩Catherine Castellani⬩F.E. Choe⬩Rowan Copley⬩Julie Danvers⬩Nick DePasquale⬩Neil Flinchbaugh⬩Avani⬩Daryl Gregory⬩Trae Hawkins⬩Ash Howell⬩Adianu Etinose⬩C.R. Kellogg⬩A.E. Kirchoff⬩Alec J. Marsh⬩Victor Pope⬩Allison Pottern⬩Taylor Lykiardopoulos⬩Melinda Smith⬩Shannon Spieler⬩Sophia Tao⬩Brigitte Winter
New Year's resolutions and self-help gurus ask us to reinvent ourselves-be better, prettier, perfect. But the writers in this anthology know that reinvention contains both potential and pitfalls.
One woman's doppelgänger offers her a chance to fix her flaws - for a small price. Against the wishes of her family, an eel-person yearns to reveal her true nature. A showgirl in a backwater lunar cabaret seeks cosmic fame-and will do anything to get it.
From cutting-edge voices in science fiction and fantasy, comes a mind-bending collection of twenty-four tales that span the vast reaches of magic and space and delve into the intimate spaces between people.
The authors featured in this anthology have had short fiction published in Clarkesworld, Locus, Asimov's, Raleigh Review, Lightspeed, and more. They are joined by two of the industry's most celebrated Hugo and Sturgeon Award-winner Elizabeth Bear and World Fantasy winner Daryl Gregory. Editor Chris Campbell's work has received recognition and support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for his contributions to Afrofutrist literature.
Stories by: Charlotte Ahlin⬩Elizabeth Bear⬩Chris Campbell⬩Catherine Castellani⬩F.E. Choe⬩Rowan Copley⬩Julie Danvers⬩Nick DePasquale⬩Neil Flinchbaugh⬩Avani⬩Daryl Gregory⬩Trae Hawkins⬩Ash Howell⬩Adianu Etinose⬩C.R. Kellogg⬩A.E. Kirchoff⬩Alec J. Marsh⬩Victor Pope⬩Allison Pottern⬩Taylor Lykiardopoulos⬩Melinda Smith⬩Shannon Spieler⬩Sophia Tao⬩Brigitte Winter
314 pages, Paperback
Published October 8, 2024
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February 2, 2025read one of these a day (ish) to kick off my new year! a lot of these i found cool but somewhat underdeveloped, but god, i love weird speculative fiction. favorites, in table of contents order:
The Manifold Aspects of Horace by Taylor Lykiardopoulos
Sannuel's figurine is no mere toy. He takes it out, dazzled as always by the lapis of His Brilliant Coat,t he bioceramic polymers of His Four-Fingered Hands, the synthetic diamonds shining in His Beneficient Eyes. Years of handling have left it patinated and the right foot was chipped from wrangling a goat during agricultural work period. It no longer precisely matches His Copyright Image, but that is immaterial.
every moment of realizing what this story was about was increasingly delightful. imo the ending comes a LITTLE suddenly, but the slow unfolding of the setup through sannuel's bewildered innocent eyes is so fucking fantastic that it doesn't even matter.
The Ravishing Moon Princess by Charlotte Ahlin
"One dead girl is an accident. Two is a shuttered operation." She raised the hammer higher, even though little white lights were popping at the corners of her eyes, and she could feel her knees going wobbly. "Make me headliner."
far and away the standout for me. every single aspect of this story fucks, from the moon princess's narrative voice to the lavish setting detailed so efficiently in so few pages. the very first paragraphs tell you exactly who the main character is and what kind of world she's living in, and i would follow her anywhere. delightful start to finish
The Catadromous Nature of Eel by Sophia Tao
Even my twin Lydia does not know I am an eel-person. If I ever told her, she would show up with a knife in the dorm we share and open me up from my chin to my tail. She would pry apart the squelching whiteness of my belly to have a look inside and see whether I was telling the truth. Of course she would see that I was, but then I would be dead, and whether I was telling the truth would not matter.
i wish this story were longer, because the prose is so evocative and beautiful and the concept grabbed me instantly and i wanted more of it! but i'm glad there's at least this much of it.
Fracture by Melinda A. Smith
"Help me. It hurts." Her voice trembles. Echoes in my skull until it becomes my voice. She looks up. It's me there, on my knees.
the format of this one is sooooo cool; it unpeels in backwards chronology, which is a choice that not only rocks but is also directly relevant to the plot and themes of the story. one of the most polished pieces in this collection, imo, and so satisfying.
The Manifold Aspects of Horace by Taylor Lykiardopoulos
Sannuel's figurine is no mere toy. He takes it out, dazzled as always by the lapis of His Brilliant Coat,t he bioceramic polymers of His Four-Fingered Hands, the synthetic diamonds shining in His Beneficient Eyes. Years of handling have left it patinated and the right foot was chipped from wrangling a goat during agricultural work period. It no longer precisely matches His Copyright Image, but that is immaterial.
every moment of realizing what this story was about was increasingly delightful. imo the ending comes a LITTLE suddenly, but the slow unfolding of the setup through sannuel's bewildered innocent eyes is so fucking fantastic that it doesn't even matter.
The Ravishing Moon Princess by Charlotte Ahlin
"One dead girl is an accident. Two is a shuttered operation." She raised the hammer higher, even though little white lights were popping at the corners of her eyes, and she could feel her knees going wobbly. "Make me headliner."
far and away the standout for me. every single aspect of this story fucks, from the moon princess's narrative voice to the lavish setting detailed so efficiently in so few pages. the very first paragraphs tell you exactly who the main character is and what kind of world she's living in, and i would follow her anywhere. delightful start to finish
The Catadromous Nature of Eel by Sophia Tao
Even my twin Lydia does not know I am an eel-person. If I ever told her, she would show up with a knife in the dorm we share and open me up from my chin to my tail. She would pry apart the squelching whiteness of my belly to have a look inside and see whether I was telling the truth. Of course she would see that I was, but then I would be dead, and whether I was telling the truth would not matter.
i wish this story were longer, because the prose is so evocative and beautiful and the concept grabbed me instantly and i wanted more of it! but i'm glad there's at least this much of it.
Fracture by Melinda A. Smith
"Help me. It hurts." Her voice trembles. Echoes in my skull until it becomes my voice. She looks up. It's me there, on my knees.
the format of this one is sooooo cool; it unpeels in backwards chronology, which is a choice that not only rocks but is also directly relevant to the plot and themes of the story. one of the most polished pieces in this collection, imo, and so satisfying.
November 22, 2024
Great anthology! My Lover’s Music Box is beautiful and makes my heart break every time I read it.
October 23, 2024
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.
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:
https://www.shortsf.com/beststories
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
“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 Note; This review is from an ARC provided by Netgallery and Immortal Jellyfish Press.
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.
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:
https://www.shortsf.com/beststories
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
“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 Note; This review is from an ARC provided by Netgallery and Immortal Jellyfish Press.
November 10, 2024
A surprisingly thematically coherent collection of short stories; each a novel experience with a unique perspective. The range was quite impressive, from scenarios near to modern life to interactions (even love) with galactic-scale superintelligences.
This took me longer to read (~a month) than I had expected because I found that it worked best to pause and think after each story—My biggest overall critique is I would’ve liked to see more from most of these stories and authors (a frequent critique of short story collections, but speaking well to the quality of the group). Even as there were a couple stories I didn’t *like*, I appreciated all of them, and could see them adding value to the collection (for instance, there was a story that gave me Ray Bradbury vibes—not a favorite author, and a couple stories left me uncomfortable in ways body-horror stories often do). It’s a good takeaway from this to have a list of authors I’ll be watching for in the future. Recommended to all readers who like clever sci-fi!
*Note: I am friends with the editor and was a crowdfunding backer of the book—it was well worth the wait, in my opinion!
This took me longer to read (~a month) than I had expected because I found that it worked best to pause and think after each story—My biggest overall critique is I would’ve liked to see more from most of these stories and authors (a frequent critique of short story collections, but speaking well to the quality of the group). Even as there were a couple stories I didn’t *like*, I appreciated all of them, and could see them adding value to the collection (for instance, there was a story that gave me Ray Bradbury vibes—not a favorite author, and a couple stories left me uncomfortable in ways body-horror stories often do). It’s a good takeaway from this to have a list of authors I’ll be watching for in the future. Recommended to all readers who like clever sci-fi!
*Note: I am friends with the editor and was a crowdfunding backer of the book—it was well worth the wait, in my opinion!
October 17, 2024
A spectacular collection of speculative fiction! All the authors bring magical voices to these tales of invention and reinvention, blending the borders of genres with a deft touch and keen eye. C.R. Kellogg's "The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac" is a particular favorite--it's still haunting me, in the way the best short stories always do.
November 12, 2024
I backed the Kickstarter and was really excited to see this in my inbox. I'm still working my way through all the stories, but so far I've been enjoying these a lot. My personal favorites are “Ugly” by Julie Danvers and “Chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z” by Ash Howell. Such excellent writing, definitely worth a read!
October 17, 2024
Each story is a delicious slice of spec fic and I can’t wait to read more from each of these authors!
October 30, 2024
TL;DR A good collection of SF stories.
This is a collection that’s loosely about re-invention and rediscovery (like, New Year’s resolutions), featuring a mix of what looks like established writers and new. To run through just some of the ideas in here: Alter-you who is so much better at, like, everything, in *Better Me is Fun at Parties*, by F. E. Choe; a new beginning for sisters with a very toxic relationship in *The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac*, by C. R. Kellogg; ambition, and ways to get what you want in Shannon Spieler’s *A Facade of Faith*; running for the hills after an alien invasion in *A Thousand Gomorrahs* by Darryl Gregory; a reworking of Cinder Ella (:)) in Julie Danvers’s *Ugly*; a supernatural event (alien abduction, maybe?) in the desert, beautifully described, in Rowan Copley’s *Aurora Deserti*; Hades and Persephone in Alec J. Marsh’s *Katabasis*; and extreme bodysculpting and/or dysmorphia in *The Ravishing Moon Princess* by Charlotte Ahlin (great ending).
There’s an eel person in Sophia Tao’s *The Catadromous Nature of Eel*; interspecies love in Adianu Etinose’s *The (Re)Creation of New Terraform*; love across timelines, and toxicity, in Brigitte Winter’s *Redo*; more time travel in *All the Time in the World and None at All* by Allison Pottern; a beautiful story about future medical science in *Fracture*, by Melinda A. Smith; dimensional escapism in Victor Pope’s *Wave Walkers* (I would totally want to go there), which reminded me, of course, of Abbott’s *Flatland*; and you may already know (I did) Elizabeth Bear’s *No Moon and Flat Calm*, about postgrad apprentices who arrive at a space station in crisis.
Catherine Castellani’s *Spaced* is an excellent story on being an outsider and still making it. *Athena’s Voyage* by Nick DePasquale is about my favourite thing in the world, sentient spaceships (OpenAI has nothing on this, so far). A. E. Kirchoff’s *My Lover’s Music Box* is a melancholy story about death and a kind of afterlife. And doesn’t *chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z* have the best title? I enjoyed Ash Howell’s story about an uploaded consciousness, and how the ending suggests more. And then Chris Campbell's story of the last person and possible simulated realities, *Ada the Last Daughter: On Blackhole Cosmology and Computation*.
All of these stories are super imaginative with many interesting ideas—as all SF should be—and fun to read. Of course, as happens with collections, I didn’t enjoy every single story. No matter: if you enjoy SF, you’ll enjoy this unique collection. Recommended.
Thanks to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op/NetGalley and Immortal Jellyfish Press for DRC access.
This is a collection that’s loosely about re-invention and rediscovery (like, New Year’s resolutions), featuring a mix of what looks like established writers and new. To run through just some of the ideas in here: Alter-you who is so much better at, like, everything, in *Better Me is Fun at Parties*, by F. E. Choe; a new beginning for sisters with a very toxic relationship in *The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac*, by C. R. Kellogg; ambition, and ways to get what you want in Shannon Spieler’s *A Facade of Faith*; running for the hills after an alien invasion in *A Thousand Gomorrahs* by Darryl Gregory; a reworking of Cinder Ella (:)) in Julie Danvers’s *Ugly*; a supernatural event (alien abduction, maybe?) in the desert, beautifully described, in Rowan Copley’s *Aurora Deserti*; Hades and Persephone in Alec J. Marsh’s *Katabasis*; and extreme bodysculpting and/or dysmorphia in *The Ravishing Moon Princess* by Charlotte Ahlin (great ending).
There’s an eel person in Sophia Tao’s *The Catadromous Nature of Eel*; interspecies love in Adianu Etinose’s *The (Re)Creation of New Terraform*; love across timelines, and toxicity, in Brigitte Winter’s *Redo*; more time travel in *All the Time in the World and None at All* by Allison Pottern; a beautiful story about future medical science in *Fracture*, by Melinda A. Smith; dimensional escapism in Victor Pope’s *Wave Walkers* (I would totally want to go there), which reminded me, of course, of Abbott’s *Flatland*; and you may already know (I did) Elizabeth Bear’s *No Moon and Flat Calm*, about postgrad apprentices who arrive at a space station in crisis.
Catherine Castellani’s *Spaced* is an excellent story on being an outsider and still making it. *Athena’s Voyage* by Nick DePasquale is about my favourite thing in the world, sentient spaceships (OpenAI has nothing on this, so far). A. E. Kirchoff’s *My Lover’s Music Box* is a melancholy story about death and a kind of afterlife. And doesn’t *chat_transcript_elsie_user260916_2189-12-13T21-18-32.661Z* have the best title? I enjoyed Ash Howell’s story about an uploaded consciousness, and how the ending suggests more. And then Chris Campbell's story of the last person and possible simulated realities, *Ada the Last Daughter: On Blackhole Cosmology and Computation*.
All of these stories are super imaginative with many interesting ideas—as all SF should be—and fun to read. Of course, as happens with collections, I didn’t enjoy every single story. No matter: if you enjoy SF, you’ll enjoy this unique collection. Recommended.
Thanks to Victory Editing NetGalley Co-op/NetGalley and Immortal Jellyfish Press for DRC access.
November 8, 2024
New Year, New You has changed my perspective on how a compelling, haunting, and sometimes downright scary fiction can be presented. This is one of the few times I've read an anthology of short stories, and I was very pleased with how it went. I have enjoyed novels of speculative fiction before but had never really given the short story format a chance.
I was repeatedly impressed by the authors in New Year, New You. Their ability to draw me into a believable alternative reality in relatively few words was surprising, and their ability to rock my new world-view in just as few words was amazing. Over and over I found myself reaching the end of a story, wishing I could pull more out of the author's brilliant mind.
For me, a few of the stories stand out in my memory, and I applaud their creators wholeheartedly:
- Better Me Is Fun at Parties by F.E. Choe
- The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac by C.R. Kellogg
- The Manifold Aspects of Horace by Taylor Lykiardopoulos
- Katabasis by Alec J. Marsh
- The Ravishing Moon Princess by Charlotte Ahlin
- Wave Walkers by Victor Pope
- Athena's Voyage by Nick DePasquale
The only criticism I might level has to do with the more experimental time-warping stories. There are a few which present the narration out-of-order, with some interesting formatting to match. I struggled to keep track of the stories like that, but it might just be my preference for sequential action.
I was repeatedly impressed by the authors in New Year, New You. Their ability to draw me into a believable alternative reality in relatively few words was surprising, and their ability to rock my new world-view in just as few words was amazing. Over and over I found myself reaching the end of a story, wishing I could pull more out of the author's brilliant mind.
For me, a few of the stories stand out in my memory, and I applaud their creators wholeheartedly:
- Better Me Is Fun at Parties by F.E. Choe
- The Holy Daughters of Eng Mac by C.R. Kellogg
- The Manifold Aspects of Horace by Taylor Lykiardopoulos
- Katabasis by Alec J. Marsh
- The Ravishing Moon Princess by Charlotte Ahlin
- Wave Walkers by Victor Pope
- Athena's Voyage by Nick DePasquale
The only criticism I might level has to do with the more experimental time-warping stories. There are a few which present the narration out-of-order, with some interesting formatting to match. I struggled to keep track of the stories like that, but it might just be my preference for sequential action.
January 3, 2025
Short stories are one of my favorite art forms, but some readers don’t seem to like them. Perhaps, in school, all the short stories they read were old, depressing, pedantic, and hard to parse. (But new, uplifting, entertaining, unperplexing short stories are written all the time.) Or perhaps, some readers don’t like them because unlike novels, short stories are too fast, too intense, and send readers back into the world a little breathless. (Is that a bad thing?) Or perhaps, readers just don’t hear about them as much as novels.
Now hear this: New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention is a great way to start your 2025 reading. It offers two dozen science fiction and fantasy short stories united by the idea of personal change. Themes include time travel, Greek myth, fairy tales, foreseen death, odd dystopias, programmed memory loss, and manufactured life. Many are quite short, and the tone varies from playful to horrific.
I enjoyed them all, like eating a box of chocolates or bento box, and was sometimes left a little breathless. The anthology was published by the Viable Paradise writing workshop 2023 cohort as a Kickstarter that was funded in less than 12 hours.
Now hear this: New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention is a great way to start your 2025 reading. It offers two dozen science fiction and fantasy short stories united by the idea of personal change. Themes include time travel, Greek myth, fairy tales, foreseen death, odd dystopias, programmed memory loss, and manufactured life. Many are quite short, and the tone varies from playful to horrific.
I enjoyed them all, like eating a box of chocolates or bento box, and was sometimes left a little breathless. The anthology was published by the Viable Paradise writing workshop 2023 cohort as a Kickstarter that was funded in less than 12 hours.
September 30, 2024
Online chatter about the New Year, New You anthology intrigued me, so I was extremely excited to read the ARC—and I wasn’t disappointed! I read the whole thing twice! From the unsettling tension of the first story to the bittersweet triumph of the final piece, each of these stories is meticulously crafted. Readers will find wonder, fury, and excitement in these pages, but most welcome to me is the underlying theme of hope. I can’t highlight any specific stories because they’re all standouts.
January 1, 2025
It's hard to believe this is an original anthology, because this collection is so solid. Filled with great writers, the stories are original and interesting. It's rare to see quality this consistent in any short story collection, but this was great. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.
November 17, 2024
A mixed bag like any anthology, but all interesting. The second to last story is worth the price of admission alone. The whole thing could have used another copyediting pass, though
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