Alien Virus Love Disaster

by Abbey Mei Otis

Abbey Mei Otis’s short stories are contemporary fiction at its strongest: taking apart the supposed equality that is clearly just not there, putting humans under an alien microscope, putting humans under government control, putting kids from the moon into a small beach town and then the putting the rest of the town under the microscope as they react in ways we hope they would, and then, of course, in ways we’d hope they don’t.

Otis has long been fascinated in using strange situations to explore dynamics of power, oppression, and grief, and the twelve stories collected here are at once a striking indictment of the present and a powerful warning about the future.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Science Fiction Fantasy

224 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2018

About the author

Abbey Mei Otis is a writer, a teaching artist, a mongrel trash robot, an anarchist, a storyteller and a firestarter, raised in the woods of North Carolina. She loves people and art forms on the margins. Her story collection, Alien Virus Love Disaster (Small Beer 2018) was a finalist for the Philip K Dick Award. She has received fellowships from the Michener Center for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has survived in many American cities, and right now is experimenting with the idea of home in Minneapolis, MN. She is at work on a novel of climate catastrophe and post-mass-incarceration, This Is Not a Wasteland.

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," (my imagined tag line for this book.)

This is the review I've been dreading most because I wanted so badly to like it and just couldn't connect with it at all.  It's a collection of bizarre short fiction mostly incorporating some kind of romance and/or alien contact.

With a title like Alien Virus Love Disaster- I was expecting something weird, yes, but also something funny.  Like the Stephanie Plum of alien books.  And it was just dark, depressing, despairing.  There isn't a single shred of hope in the whole darn book.  Not one tiny story.

I gave it two stars instead of one because on the upside, the stories are unique and inclusive.  I can honestly say I've never read anything like them, and I can see how they would be right for someone, just not me.  I wanted to laugh, I wanted to be uplifted, and instead I ended up dragged down in a way I wasn't prepared for.

Content warnings: implied rape, talk about child death, and maybe cannibalism

[Tijana]

Odakle da počnemo. Možda od naslova. Nisam baš sasvim sigurna da li bi ovo trebalo prevesti kao "Ljubavna katastrofa koju je izazvao vanzemaljski virus" što ne bi bilo netačno u kontekstu te naslovne priče, ili samo "vanzemaljci! virus! ljubav! katastrofa!" što... takođe ne bi bilo netačno.
Elem. Višeznačnost je ključna reč za većinu ovih priča, njih ukupno dvanaest. Neke su čista naučna fantastika, neke nisu tako čiste, neke su pitaj boga šta ali recimo magični realizam koji se malo poigra sa SF ikonografijom na dve sekunde, a nekad ni toliko. Bar dve priče, Teacher i Sex Dungeons for Sad People, deluju kao da ih je pisao neko ko se vratio posle celodnevnog rada sa đacima, potpuno fizički i psihički izmrcvaren, i seo da opiše svoj radni dan i onda se malo zaneo i nekoliko strana kasnije opšte rasulo i užas. Reći ću samo da nastavnica iz druge priče uporedo radi u skupom bordelu za sadomazohiste i da joj je taj drugi posao. Mnogo. Lakši.
E da. Ove priče se od dobrog dela savremenog SF-a razlikuju time što te epohalne megakataklizme i društvene promene vidimo iz ugla ljudi koji stoje po strani i gledaju kako da prežive vanzemaljske viruse i klimatske promene a da ne ostanu bez posla koji je vrlo često kelnerisanje ili manikir ili shvatate već. I po prirodi stvari nisu baš sigurni šta se dešava - niti imaju potpunu sliku niti sve neophodne informacije - a život koji se odvija u međuvremenu neće da čeka. Ta vrlo jaka komponenta svakodnevnog života koja je na mahove kao preslikana iz socijalne književnosti jedna je od najvećih vrlina Ebi Mej Otis.
Druga velika vrlina je svakako njen jezik, koji je tako sjajno fleksibilan da istovremeno ume da bude i kolokvijalan i očuđujući i lirski stilizovan. I kad udari po emociji, a to je dosta često, zna koji efekat, kako i zašto postiže. Autorka ionako operiše začudnim slikama i situacijama a ovo samo dodaje još jedan sloj kompleksnosti.
Mane: pa, hm. Moj utisak je da su najbolje priče sa precizno određenom SF komponentom jer u njima Ebi Mej Otis maltene besprekorno kontroliše materijal - motive i likove, neću reći zaplet jer ovde uglavnom nema klasičnog zapleta, ali recimo radnju. Priče koje naginju magičnom realizmu ili sasvim pretežu na tu stranu znatno su slabije jer kao da se u njima vodi idejom da sad sve može a najviše da može da završi kako hoće i kad hoće (nije tako). Tako da: naslovna, Moonkids, Not an Alien Story, to su sjajne priče koje mogu u koju god želite antologiju; If  You Could Be God of Anything, Blood, Blood i I’m Sorry Your Daughter Got Eaten by a Cougar su vrlo solidne do odlične; ostale su generalno slabije tj. počnu jako a onda krenu da popuštaju. Možda je jedino Rich People stvarno loša priča.
Zaključak: dobra knjiga, prva priča me je oduvala sasvim, čekam iduću knjigu autorke i držim palčeve da se mane eksperimentisanja s jeftinim metaforama u magičnorealističkom fazonu* kad joj već naučna fantastika tako dobro ide da su metafore u njoj odmah nivo-dva više.

*mali disklejmer za ljude koji će na ovo da nabasaju i da pomisle kako ne volim magični realizam: neistina, Kortasarove priče su nešto najbolje na svetu, prosto nije sve za svakog a za Otisovu je eto da piše o originalnim i neshvatljivim vanzemaljcima a ne alegorijice o bogatašima koji se iz dosade uvlače u rasporene životinje kao da su Han Solo na Hothu.

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was, hands down, the most depressing book I've ever read.
The author masterfully creates an atmosphere of oppression, desolation, help- and hopelessness in each story that I literally stumbled from one gut punch to the next. Read individually there are some excellent takes on the inequality of societies, POVs of people who have no real chance in life and are at the mercy of those with power. As a collection the stories are downright devastating. After "Not an Alien Story" I had to put the book down, cause I cried so hard.

And that's what fascinated me most here. Usually I can distance myself quite easily from the protagonists, especially if the narration voices are on the vernacular side as was the case here. Therefore I thought I can read a range of disturbing stories without getting affected. Yet Abbey Mei Otis commands such a poetic yet honest style that she managed to get beyond my shields and attacked from the wrong side of them.

I would not recommend this collection to anybody (unless your shields are fully charged), but I'm damn glad that I read it and I will definitely return to these stories. As repulsive as they are, they are even more addictive, cause in all their weirdness they ring true.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've got a friend—a hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey's West Virginia office—whose slow, thick Appalachian accent might just lull you into thinking he is slow and thick too. Unless you listen to what he's saying.

These are like that. You don't realize unless you're really paying attention. Until.

Let me tell you, mouth lizard to sound cave... Alien Virus Love Disaster by Abbey Mei Otis is unique, truly amazing work. Every story in this short collection is a goddamn gut punch—and yet, these are all sf of one sort or another as well, bursting over the levees and overflowing the boundaries of dry mimetic literature. The climate-change refugees living in "Saint MART's Home for Flooded Children" (p.125) are just one example among many.

You'll figure out other terms she uses, like "bamf" "bad-ass motherfucker," natch from context, too. Or you won't—Abbey Mei don't care either way.

Her narrators are deceptively plain-spoken, like my friend:

I line up the pill bottles on the table. They all have long names full of Xs and Zs, and I know that's how you trust something's authorized scientific but it still makes me kind of nervous.
—from "Alien Virus Love Disaster," p.6

—or—

What I should really do is just say, here's the deal, dead soldier, no more sex until you tell me straight, are you a zombie or a ghost or what? But for some reason whenever he shows up the question goes clean out of my head.
—from "I'm Sorry Your Daughter Got Eaten by a Cougar," p.143

But don't confuse the characters with the author, who can also break out words like "Eleusinian" without breaking a sweat, and who demonstrates a sly intimacy with the clouds of jargon that surround modern educational practice, to boot:

The Vice Principal frowned. "There is nothing in our standards-based approach that covers the sound of worms."
—from "Teacher," p.71

And yet... while often funny, these are not humorous stories. Reading lines like this, I could well believe that Otis grew up in my very own shrinking and dilapidated hometown:

You don't have to say anything, believe me, I know there are places in the world that put beauty into their buildings and this isn't one of them.
—from "Sex Dungeons for Sad People," p.111

And this more universal observation, from the same short story:

I realize hers is the truest sadness I have ever seen, and all the rest of us have only been pretending.
—p.112

Odds are, you haven't heard this song—even on stations that still play the Violent Femmes, it isn't the tune that gets attention—but if I were assigning a soundtrack to Alien Virus Love Disaster it would definitely include "Country Death Song," (YouTube link) from the Femmes' 1984 album Hallowed Ground.

Abbey Mei Otis writes without compromise, but always with empathy. And, at the end, she thanks her father, for his

endless nights reading to me as a child. Who gave me the gifts of Earthsea and Middle-earth and Pern and Arrakis, and made me want to do it too.
—p.237

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro was right—this one was well worth picking up.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philip Roth would sometimes quote Chekhov's observation that the job of the artist is "the proper presentation of the problem." If that's indeed the case, then Abbey Mei Otis's highly artistic debut collection, which gathers a dozen dazzling tales, tells me we have quite the problem on our hands. The majority of these stories--eight previously published, four original to this volume--revolve around dystopic or depressed futures wherein rampant angst, alienation, decadence, and physical suffering seem like the only logical outgrowths. I use that word deliberately, as Otis has a particular knack for details that anchor her characters in their physical predicaments. In the collection's eponymous tale, for instance, one of my favorites, the inhabitants of a small town, in the aftermath of an accident involving alien technology in a nearby lab, develop bumps on their bodies and must be evacuated. These protuberances--which "feel hard and round like everybody's got ping-pong balls buried inside them"--are bad enough, but there's an almost-throwaway line early on that well illustrates Otis's attention to physicality: "He digs at the sole of his bare foot, peels off a big nugget of callus and flicks it onto the rug." The "Moonkids" of the next story, rejects from a lunar colony who are outcast to Earth at the age of sixteen if they fail to achieve specific test scores, experience immense discomfort in our higher gravity and must undergo difficult procedures: "Your muscles learn differently in moon gravity. Your bones form light like a bird's. Used to not even be possible to make the transition, you'd touch down into earthpull and collapse like fast-melting candles. Too many fractures for all the king's horses and all the king's men. Way, way too many for Earth doctors to deal with. (Earth doctors are known for not giving a shit.) Now, though, they've got ways around it. They've got operations and stuff. Every moonkid's got incision scars in the same places." Despite these treatments, though, "Earthpull is fickle like a trickster gnome. Sometimes even after months and months it sneaks up behind you and punches in your knees." The name of the game, thematically speaking, is not so much adapting as surviving.

Anatomy is even more foregrounded in the third story, "If You Could Be God of Anything", in which a bunch of kids discover a sex robot that has literally fallen from the sky, one of countless discarded objects from the "skyways" air traffic. In the fifth, "Blood, Blood," quasi-disembodied aliens derive observational pleasure from humans performing mundane activities, but they seem to become especially aroused by fighting. The sixteen-year-old narrator, who engages in these tussles, longs to escape her life and body. Guilt, she tells herself, is "just another trapping of the flesh." Again the body becomes a world, now made alien by a kind of ultra-sensitive latex encasing, in "Sex Dungeons for Sad People."

As this first batch of stories readily makes clear, the problematic worlds in which Otis's characters find themselves are not only globally insoluble but, more often than not, personally untenable. This doesn't always lead to tragedy; sometimes the possibility of transformation is enough to sustain hope. In other instances, such as "Teacher" or "Sweetheart," a retreat into surrealism seems like the only appropriate response. In yet others, such as "Rich People," the successful incursion into a different realm of class or status only opens up even more nauseating vistas.

Readers who enjoy traditional narratives may struggle with Otis's work, which celebrates voice above all else. Though there are plenty of science-fictional and fantastic elements here--rising sea levels, moon colonies, gene modifications, robots, virtual realities, even ghosts of a sort--they typically comprise the background, rather than the foundation, of the stories at hand. Otis displays enormous skill in first-person narration, and she relies on it almost exclusively, trapping us in an array of colorful subjectivities. Her characters, frequently youthful, tend to speak in a highly idiosyncratic, mordant, colloquial way. Otis's deliberate cadences and repetitions in sentence structures result in a kind of hypnotic poetics of the mundane. Privations--physical, mental, spiritual--are a constant focus in these stories, and those elements are immediately accessible, but their contexts often remain oblique. Consider, for example, this nugget of description about the aliens in "Blood, Blood": "They speak, or rather do not speak, in streams of thought directed toward our minds. Look at one straight, it's like the sunlight that plays on the hull of a boat in a lake. Only no boat, no lake, no sunlight."

"If You Lived Here, You'd Be Evicted by Now" and "Ultimate Housekeeping Megathrill 4," the volume's two closing stories, are longer than most preceding pieces and in some ways stronger. There's more room to explore the crevasses of Otis's thoughtfully-constructed worlds, and more time to engage with the characters' plights. There's also the opportunity for some truly amazing stylistic flourishes, such as the following, which occurs three paragraphs into the penultimate story:

"Let's say there's no money in this world. Let's say if you want to obtain something, like rice or photocopies, you have to give somebody a handjob. Only nobody wants to give a handjob in the grocery store or the copy shop, so instead at each register, in a clear glass tank, they have one of those giant clams from the Pacific Northwest, which is a symbol for genitalia. In lieu of payment you dip your hand into the cold salt water and caress the clam: once, twice.

Just kidding; of course there's money. Casey and Stacy both work in finance."

If you get the sense that Otis's stories may provoke strong emotions in you, and disturb you, you're probably right. But I don't believe Otis's focus is on being transgressive per se, rather on illustrating how, for many, transgression has already become a cornerstone of everyday reality. Otis doesn't use science fiction to lift the veil of the familiar and peer at what's beneath. Instead, with great shrewdness and courage and originality, she reveals that the veil was itself an illusion, and the familiar a construct of anything but.

[Bojan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ako ću nešto pamtiti od ove knjige, sem samih emocija koje ubedljivo prenosi, to je intenzitet kojim je napisana. U skoro svakoj priči, pre no što se osvestimo i uopšte shvatimo gde smo, nađemo se u lavini reči, blatu koje nas zatrpava s klizišta života protagonista. Poput uznemirenog osinjaka te reči tvore snažne impresije, rastvaraju stare obrasce i od njih prave nove literarne alergene često u suprotnosti sa apatijom i blagim očajanjem koje oslikavaju. Ili ne nužno... ovo su osećanja koja su meni imprintovana, neko drugi će, recimo, videti optimizam a ne teskobu.

Takođe, fantastika u ovim pričama nije štaka, jeftino pokazno sredstvo da bi se, možda nevešto, prenela neka poučna metafora. Ništa u ovoj knjizi nije nevešto.

[Silvana · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a hard book to read, and even harder to rate. I had to tally my individual rating for each and came up with 2.5 stars. Gosh darn it, if it's 2.4 or 2.6 it would be easier. I give three for now just because it is still better than most two star-books I read.

Why the extra 0.5 star? It brought, no, kicked me out of my comfort zone. It has some powerful scenes, intriguing conversations. This is my first encounter with the author's work and she sure is memorable. She knows how to knit all the traditional SF story elements from aliens, genetic modification, dystopia, rising sea water, and ground them to the level of individual, families and communities. Most stories also have strong voices. All happen to be female, in all kinds of ages.

Now, the downside. The stories are super bleak, set near futurish decaying world, and told in a hopelessly devastating manner. The book is not something to pick up randomly and require a suitable mind condition - mine is pretty stressed out at the moment - thus it got heavier. Also, I admit I did not fully comprehend all stories.

Yet, I feel the draw of rereading them. Some I did reread because they are short(er) and I ended up liking them. I hope I could find a time when I could, in a better state of mind, peel the layers slowly and immerse myself more. Unfortunately this is not the time.

[Ivana Nešić · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kao prvo, nisam znala da su u pitanju priče inače verovatno ne bih uzela da čitam.
Ljudi moji kakva bi to greška bila!

Ne znam da li je dužina takva ili šta je, ali nisam imala problem koji inače imam: inače priče ili nisu dovoljno duge da se investiram u zaplet ili likove, ili su pisane tako da se taman investiram kad ono kraj pa se svakako osetim uskraćeno. Ovde nisam imala ni naznaku tog problema. To je valjda najbitnije. Za početak.

Dalje, likovi su pojedinci iz najnižih ili barem onižih društvenih slojeva. Ali nekako nema neke žalosti u tome, žive ljudi kao i svi drugi. Nemaština generiše neke probleme, ali šta je priča bez problema. I na površini deluje kao da su im svakodnevne teme i rečnik dosta priprosti, i taj utisak se kao prenosi i na celinu priča, ali veoma je lažan jer je jezik lep i kompleksan i to shvatiš tek ihahaj kasno, zbog toga što nije napadan.

Što se radnje tiče... Pa ne znam, naslov kaže sve :)

[Miloš Petrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is... different. Great, but different, in a good way. Not desperately trying to be original by being unintelligible. Looking at you, Mrs Kelly Link.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, thank goodness, a collection of actual short stories, with plots and characters and all that good stuff I remember from way, way back. Not only that, but Otis does it with pizzazz, wrenching the good old humanist SF short story out of the familiar nineteen-sixties tropes, settings, and style, straight into the new millennium – the feeling is still there, but it all feels fresh, it feels today, it feels… relevant.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alien Virus Love Disaster is a debut short story collection by Abbey Mei Otis, which thrilled and confused me. In the first couple stories I was reminded of a couple of my favorite short story collections of the year, Friday Black and Sabrina & Corina. I relished Otis’ creativity in crafting otherworldly stories and was reminded of Adjei-Brenyah in that satirical brilliance that makes you laugh so hard until you’re on the verge of collapsing in anguish. I was reminded of Fajardo-Anstine in the searing humanness of the characters and their resilient depth. I was riding high on this collection but it began to fray around the edges and I found myself unable to keep up as the narratives again and again dissolved into fragmented dream sequences - both literally dream sequences and inexplicable descents into absurdity.

My favorite stories were the titular Alien Virus Love Disaster, which explores the effects of government experiments with alien technology on the surrounding community after exposure begins to cause their bodies to swell with red lumps; Moonkids, about a group of young adults living on Earth after being separated from their Lunarian parents after failing to pass the exams required to continue living on the Moon; and Blood, Blood, about a pair of friends who earn money fighting for the entertainment of aliens, while struggling to adjust to the alien impact on their world.

Even the stories I liked less had such intriguing imaginative premises that I’m still contemplating, I just wish they were less baffling. If you’re intrigued by any of this, I definitely would still recommend you check out this collection and then come unpack it with me!

[Michelle Morrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another of the PKD nominees, this one is a collection of short stories set in the near(ish) future. Not really any sort of future I want to see though. It's a grungy, bleak, tainted place filled with beaten down people discarded by society.

Well written, yes, some of it is quite good. A few of those images will stick with me for a while. I do like to think that humans will always love, always fight to survive. I'd just rather not see them doing it with their heads down, hunched over, getting kicked.

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm pretty bummed I didn't like this more. There are some great ideas, and zinger sentences. From "Teacher", the troubled educator in the Vice-Principal's office muses:

"Sometimes when I speak, I can't hear the words. All I hear is the sound of worms pushing up through wet earth."

But I found the longer pieces to be quite a drag. Sorry.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mesmerizing collection. Obviously, Otis has sold her soul for great story titles, but the stories themselves rise above any gimmicky appeal. Otis knows when to deploy waking logic and when to let loose the dream reasoning. I believed in her dystopic futures and the desperate people, usually children, living in poverty. I felt for her characters even when I didn't quite understand them.

There were only two stories here that I didn't like. Unfortunately one was the title story AND the first story. I really was worried, but once I got past that first hurdle, I was all in. (For some reason, I didn't click with the voice of "Alien Virus Love Disaster." It felt listless compared to those of the other equally doomed, equally uneducated protags.) The other story that left me cold was "Sweetheart," which was so sappy--about the doomed young love between a human child and an alien child--that I couldn't quite believe it was written by the same author as the other stories.

A weird sort of gender essentialism crops up from time to time, too. For example, in "blood, blood," one of only two stories I'd previously read, it's unclear what, if any, genders the visiting aliens have, which bothers the protag because she thinks a sentient being shouldn't be an "it." Later, when resigned to her human fate, the protag describes a fight with her partner: "He's stronger, he's always been stronger. He's a he, not an it....I've always been faster. I'm a she, not an it." Frankly, I was baffled by the insistence on a gender binary. If anything, I'd expect exposure to the ungendered aliens would prompt the protag to see gender as more complicated...but maybe that's the point: our heroine is defeated in her ambition to exceed her lot in life, and so she sinks back into familiar constraints.

I was most affected by a pair of stories about the same family ("If You Could be God of Anything" and "Ultimate Housekeeping Megathrill 4"). One story is from the youngest child's perspective (mostly), the other from her mother's standpoint. Seeing the disjunct augmented the sadness of the whole situation, where a hard-working woman's deepest, most impossible desire is to provide a stable, middle-class upbringing to her children.

I'm eager to see what Otis conjures next.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful selection of stories from an author that is new to me. The stories range from sort of a magical surrealism (similar to the stories of Kelly Link), to more straightforward science fiction. I enjoyed both modes of writing, but the science fiction is grounded in the world as it is now: children born and raised on the moon struggle to make lives on an earth that doesn't want them; a sex robot falls from the sky and is found by a group of kids; aliens pay to watch a couple kids to fight. The characters are recognizable and sympathetic, even when their motivations are unknown, even to themselves. My favorite of the stories is the last one, "Ultimate Housekeeping Megathrill 4," in which a mother in a dystopian world retreats into a video game version of her life to try to cope with the chaos that is going on around her. Her addiction, and the frustration and desperation of her family as they try to get her to respond to her, read as very real to me, in spite of the science fiction milieu. I look forward to reading what this author writes in the future.
(I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book to review.)

[Annschi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eine wilde Mischung aus Science Fiction und Traumtagebuch. Nicht ganz, was ich erwartet hatte. Jedoch schön geschrieben (find ich unverständlich, dass keine der Geschichten es auf die Hugo-Shortlist geschafft hat).

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some good some baffling some horrifyingly realistic and depressing

[SofiaTorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Lisa]

This one was not for me.

[Skailer · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were some stories that I thought were really interesting, but a lot of them were difficult to follow for me personally.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t read this yet, but I’ve been following Otis’s work for years, and I expect it to be amazing, as all of the author’s stories have been.

[Alex Marianyi · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories are heavily reliant on the concept for a world and then exploring that world and who--or what--lives in it. With few exceptions, there isn't much focus on plot or character development. As a result, I tended to like the shorter stories, and for me, the longer stories tended to go on a little too long. Highly recommended if short stories that focus on voice and world building are your thing.

[Matt W · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a surprising and subversive collection. Every story was a hilarious, heartbreaking delight. Otis has a way of throwing you off your balance with vivid surreal images, daring unexpected point of view shifts, or just plain bizarre how-did-you-think-of-that worlds (looking at you "Rich People") and then slipping in a sentence that grabs your throat or pulls back the curtain of your heart or reveals a stunning vista you didn't know was hiding just behind the leaves. I will be revisiting this collection often and thinking in particular about the light-shimmer aliens and their fascination with bodies in "blood, blood" as well as the last paragraph of the title story which literally knocked the wind out of me (I let out one of those exhale gasps like she'd taken my legs out from under me and I'd landed flat on my back). If you like the strangest worlds of Kelly Link, wish Amelia Grey wrote longer stories, or thought Her Body and Other Parties was great but could have challenged convention even more, this collection is for you. In her acknowledgements, Otis thanks those who "helped [her] grapple with what it means to live this science fictional reality, as a mixed-race immigrant settler in the twilight of a colonial empire in the midst of a great extinction." I can't think of a better blurb for the collection than this.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published by Small Beer Press in 2018, Abbey Mei Otis’s debut collection of short stories, Alien Virus Love Disaster, starts off with a disorienting moment of violence. The residents of a crappy apartment building are dragged from their homes and sprayed down by government agents with fire hoses that rip at their flesh and leave some of them dead. This is their first clue that they may have been infected by an alien parasite, and it’s our face-slapping introduction to the dark, unsettling world of Otis’s fiction.

In each story, the world has been left more or less worse by a disaster or the arrival of some new alien species. The setting is invariably our world, but the suburbs are decaying, big box stores have been turned into economy housing, jobs pay just enough to keep you desperate, and everybody is one disaster away from losing the remaining shreds of their security and their sanity.

Into these not-far-enough-away future worlds, Otis plops characters that would struggle even in the best of conditions. They’re the insecure, the weak, and those willing to still love after the emotion has become irrelevant. Her style hits its stride in “Moonkids,” her story about those sent back to a life of poverty on earth after failing to pass intelligence tests, and “Ultimate Housekeeping Megathrill 4”, which tells of a mother who would rather spend time with a virtual version of her family than care for them in the real world. In these, and in the titular story, Otis is able to weave a tapestry of the future that seems unsettlingly plausible.

However, a handful of the stories verge towards surreal. What begins as a steady narrative can suddenly dive off a cliff in the last few pages. Otis pulls it off in “Teacher”, where a woman is required to teach advanced curriculum to a group of students who are literally rotting in front of her. When the train jumps the tracks in that story, it’s a welcome fantasy. Yet when it keeps happening, it leaves the reader in this weird place where they don’t know whether to take the next story at face value. Is Otis creating a world in earnest? Or is she going to rip the rug out from under us again?

Still, this collection of dark science fiction keeps a tight focus, and the stories work well together. Otis manages to make us fall in love with her misfits, even though we know disease, disaster, or cruelty could wipe them out and break our hearts. What she does best, though, is raise the question of the value of life in a few decades. It’s a theme expressed by the heroine of “Moonkids”: “They track sand through sublet rooms and wake up with tooth-sweaters and crud in their eyes.This thing, Colleen wonders, does it count? As a kind of living?” (30). Otis doesn’t write stories of comfort and light. Instead, the stories of Alien Virus Love Disaster aim to infect, and once they’re in your blood, they’ll change you.  

[K · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible title really as it does not reflect the stories within. Each story holds a similar theme of horror or being unsettling, yet not scifi. The book isn't very well compiled or written, as each writer has a different way of writing it can be jarring to see some so poorly written and edited. Kind of an overarching theme of sexism as well, and having kids experience the strange scenarios.

3/5
1. Alien Virus Love Disaster. Funny and strange story about alien bumps appearing on citizens. Not always well written, "Hey sis!" or going into a methodical freeform about god and the universe. The ending was just about the bumps bringing in a new age? Terrible ending nothing is resolved.

-/-
2. Moon kids. Didn't catch my interest. People on the moon are second class citizens.

3/5
3.Could be a God. A sex doll falls from the sky. Very gruesome with its descriptors. Kids (?) take the robot in, she is banged up and damaged. The girl is the only one who seems sad for it and is at odds with how to feel about her. It comes alive and she kills it...because...uh? Mercy? Seems like a way for the author to express a desire to kill a woman but justifying it by making it a robot. Wish it touched more on sex work and objectifying women but alas. It was immersive and creepy that they described the robot as talking despite being damaged and giving off speech like a porn star. Toxic masculinity as her brothers fight with each other at the end, threatening to cut each other to see if they were human.

3/5
4.Teacher. Very short, but creepy and odd. The kids weren't written like they were kids and the teacher is just...blank until she reveals she is pregnant. In a horrid attempt to have an abortion she crashes into a chair with her stomach and gets blood everywhere. This isn't very scifi, it's more horror and zombie-esk. Feels like a fever dream as it ends with them falling into a dark pit.

2/5
5. Blood, Blood. Aliens pay to see humans fight. The aliens aren't really described other than being ethereal. They enjoy seeing humans do physical things. Biggoted to aliens as humans don't like them invading and being everywhere. Humans can travel through the portal but it splits your physical form. The main character becomes a vessel, joining with an alien and signing up to leave Earth. But like all the other stories, it ends on a cliffhanger.

1/5
6.Sex Dungeon. Yayyy more stories about putting women in odd scenarios. Again lacking the scifi part I was alluded to. Its well written though for the most part.

-/-
7. Not an Alien. It was an alien. At least it made me laugh.

-/-
8. Sweetheart. Shortest story. Uhhhh

-/-
9. Cougar. This is more fantasy. Not what I signed up for.

-/-
10. Rich People. I’m tired of reading this poor excuse for a book collection.

/
11. Lived here. I am done.

/
12. Housekeeping. So done.

[Julie Demboski · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author's poetic turn of mind can't save episodes that in some cases don't even qualify as stories; my sense is the author's in love with language, skillful with imagery, but hasn't disciplined her own voice enough to be sure that the words she puts on paper really count. Characters for the most part were vaguely drawn, navel-gazing youth, with settings consistently 'no future' kinds of places (and none of that is inherently bad, on its own); situations often had mention of any number of unusual (that is, sci-fi-ish) elements that amounted to nothing, story-wise (they failed to have meaning in the story, and that is bad). One story I did find really good: 'Blood, Blood'. Honorable mention, and worth a read: 'Sweetheart', 'Not an Alien Story', and 'If You Could Be God of Anything', though the latter has a somewhat unconvincing narrator (an early teens, essentially uneducated kid uses 'utterly' a lot? really?) Not fit for human consumption: 'Sex Dungeons for Sad People', which seemed promising until it indulged in clumsy and un-illuminating parallel symbolism, and 'Rich People', a major bore. If you must read this, read those better stories, and forego the rest--too often this material went for profound, and missed--go for something better developed, more mature in expression, instead.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a love/hate relationship with short story anthologies.

I love that Otis can pour so much into these, and at the same time hate that there isn't more. I became attached to these characters in such a short amount of time that it almost hurts not to know what happens later.

These kinds of gritty, grisly sci-fi stories captivate me. Not all future fiction is perfect space travel and utopian societies, and I feel that Otis captures this in a brilliantly Blomkamp-esque manner. Her writing is jagged and to the point, and flows in a way that it's like you're reading the thoughts of her characters, not a dictation from an outside observer.

I would read a full-length novel for most of these, most notably Moonkids (wouldn't we all?) and Rich People.

I'd give this a full five star review, but there were two stories I really didn't care for: Teacher and Sex Dungeons for Sad People. I love weird, but those two were pushing it a bit too much for me. They weren't bad stories, just not my cuppa.

Overall, I do really recommend this to anyone who likes sci-fi, especially if you're like me and yearn for stories about the broken and forgotten members of society left behind by otherwise beautiful progress.

[Hollowspine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved these short stories, reminded me a bit of George Saunders's book CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. My favorite was the eponymous story, "Alien Virus Love Disaster" which was so captivating, and really the perfect glue for this amazing collection of human stories, mired in the gross details of survival. I also really liked the story, "Teachers" because I can imagine that world so easily, despite the horror of it, it also seems entirely too plausible.

The brutality of the world Otis writes about sometimes feels like only a step away from the brutality of reality, especially when it comes to real estate, standardized exams and voyeurism.

Otis' writing is wonderfully descriptive, in a way that makes you cringe at times, but also gives a sense of the reality of her characters lives. I also liked the final two stories a lot, If you lived here, you'd be evicted by now, and Ultimate housekeeping megathrill 4. People already play games where their lives are perfect (see farming/sim games or anyone's social media ever) while neglecting their reality.

Just a really great collection, concept, writing, flow, all very very well done.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just so bizarre and transporting and delicious that once you read it you'll pester all your friends into reading it because you've got to have someone to spill your guts with over these stories. This collection is speculative fiction at its best: the elements that make the stories fantastical also make them seem more reflective of the real world than our own muddied reality. Where typical sci-fi follows the star captain into space, Otis turns her lens on the fry cook flipping his burgers, the underbelly of future/alternate society in all its gritty glory. An alien exposure story somehow ends up more about income inequality than extra terrestrials. If you ask the elite moon colony's malformed rejects the meaning of life, what will they tell you? This is all a long way of saying that this is a must-read of 2018, with the added bonus of supporting a small press and being able to smugly say "Oh yeah, I've been following her for years," when Abbey Mei Otis inevitably blows up in the literary world.

[Kobeest · Rating 4 out of 5]

i am a sucker for short stories that take me off into the weird...some of these gems get close to my favorites!
'sex dungeons for sad people' --caution, not as racy as it sounds-- captures a couple pieces of falling in and out of love as well as i have ever read!

"eventually I was sending him the tiniest details of my life. 'I got a paper cut under my thumbnail and it hurts.' Or, 'I thought there was a bug in my hair but there's not.' things I hadn't known I needed to tell someone. You go around for a long time carrying the minutiae of yourself in your own two hands, and it's not so bad, not even that heavy. It's just a thing you have to do. And then every so often a person shows up and opens their arms like the clean empty surface of a table, and suddenly your hands feel unbearably full, and you know that what was true isn't true anymore, you couldn't for another instant continue bearing so many small stories on your own." (p103)

beautiful...