Love after the End

August 17, 2020
This visionary anthology edited by Lambda Literary Award winner Whitehead (Jonny Appleseed) brings together a group of Indigenous voices from across North America to explore the aftermaths of apocalypses both global and personal. Ranging from imaginative science fantasy to plausible near-future speculative fiction, these nine stories are thematically unified by their queer visions of Indigenous futures. Standouts include “History of the New World” by Adam Garnet Jones, an emotionally resonant story that grapples with generational trauma and parenthood; “How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls” by Kai Minosh Pyle, which explores the exclusion implicit in the concept of kinship; and the refreshingly conversational “Story for a Bottle” by Darcie Little Badger, in which a teenage protagonist must escape from an abandoned, floating city powered by artificial intelligence. Many of the stories offer portraits of a dead Earth from which new life springs, and all are ultimately uplifting, hinting at a way forward through the darkness of the present. Drawing on deep wells of history and experience, these powerful stories are sure to impress.

Starred review from September 1, 2020
A variety of Two-Spirit/queer Indigenous authors explore events during or after an apocalypse. Most of the stories share a sensibility rooted in the fact that for all Indigenous people, but for Two-Spirit and queer Indigenous people especially, there has already been a vast apocalypse. The people and communities presented here try to survive in a variety of ways, whether by refusing to leave a seemingly dying Earth to reenact colonialism on another planet in Adam Garnet Jones' "History of the New World"; by escaping forced conscription on Mars by leaving on generation ships in jaye simpson's "The Ark of the Turtle's Back"; or by becoming a new type of synthetic human and facing the threat of genocide once again in Mari Kusato's "Seed Children." There are also stories that relate encounters in a new world, from a bio-engineered AI rat trying to find freedom in Nathan Adler's "Abacus" to a girl trying to escape a floating doomsday city in Darcie Little Badger's "Story for a Bottle." These stories are a welcome breath of fresh air in the often hyperindividualist, survivalist subgenre of postapocalyptic fiction, and are essential reading for anyone committed to the possibilities of sf as a means to create new and different futures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)