New Treasures: Invaders edited by Jacob Weisman
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When I was at the Nebula Awards weekend I had a chance to catch up with my friend Jacob Weisman, publisher of Tachyon Books, and I asked him about his upcoming anthology Invaders: 22 Tales From the Outer Limits of Literature. I had assumed it was a collection of alien invasion tales but, as he patiently explained to me, that’s not it at all. Jacob has gathered a superb batch of stories by literary authors who have invaded science fiction — and left distinct footprints behind. Here’s the Publishers Weekly review.
In this very fine reprint anthology, Weisman has brought together 22 SF stories by authors who, although not generally associated with the genre, are clearly fellow travelers (not the ominous invaders suggested by the title). Among the major names are Pulitzer Prize–winner Junot Díaz, George Saunders, Katherine Dunn, Jonathan Lethem, Amiri Baraka, W.P. Kinsella, Steven Millhauser, Robert Olen Butler, and Molly Gloss. Among the best of the consistently strong stories are Díaz’s “Monstro,” the horrifying tale of a disease outbreak in Haiti; Gloss’s near-perfect first-contact story, “Lambing Season”; Kinsella’s totally bizarre “Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated”; Ben Loory’s fable-like “The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun”; and Saunders’s “Escape from Spiderhead,” a deeply sexy tale of wild experimental science. In general, the stories tend toward satire and emphasize fine writing more than hitting genre beats — technology is usually a means to an end rather than the center of the story — but most of them could easily have found homes in SF magazines. This volume is a treasure trove of stories that draw equally from SF and literary fiction, and they are superlative in either context.
Here’s the complete table of contents.
