A review by jayme
McSweeney's #58 (McSweeney's Quarterly Concern) by Rachel Heng, Tommy Orange, Claire Boyle
3.0
I love the concept of this collection (and the beautiful naked hardcover with gold foiling, not to mention the full-colour illustrations that head each story). Each author was assigned a climate event from the 2018 UN climate report (coral reef die-offs, flooding/sea level rise, fires, refugee surges, etc.) and they collaborated with the Natural Resources Defense Council to bring in that extra element of reality.
The stories span the globe with a great list of diverse authors, which gave the collection an overall feeling of "the whole world is fucked, but we're in this together". But there was also a downside to structuring the collection this way, in that most of the stories ended up with a similar format and tone, that blended into one long, beige story. Or maybe this is a result of having a cast of literary authors try their hand at speculative fiction.
Almost every story in the collection started with pure exposition to set up the state of the world in 2040. Then the last half would be the actual story. It was also hard to tell which theme each story was even assigned because most of the authors spent so much time describing the overall climate.
Regardless, it still a worthwhile collection to read. I think my two favourites were The Night Drinker by Luis Alberto Urrea (the most stylistically and atmospherically unique, i.e., weird, story out of the collection) and 1740 by Asja Bakić (because time travel). And I'd also be down to try more from any of the authors, notably Rachel Heng, Tommy Orange, and Birna Anna Björnsdóttir.
The stories span the globe with a great list of diverse authors, which gave the collection an overall feeling of "the whole world is fucked, but we're in this together". But there was also a downside to structuring the collection this way, in that most of the stories ended up with a similar format and tone, that blended into one long, beige story. Or maybe this is a result of having a cast of literary authors try their hand at speculative fiction.
Almost every story in the collection started with pure exposition to set up the state of the world in 2040. Then the last half would be the actual story. It was also hard to tell which theme each story was even assigned because most of the authors spent so much time describing the overall climate.
Regardless, it still a worthwhile collection to read. I think my two favourites were The Night Drinker by Luis Alberto Urrea (the most stylistically and atmospherically unique, i.e., weird, story out of the collection) and 1740 by Asja Bakić (because time travel). And I'd also be down to try more from any of the authors, notably Rachel Heng, Tommy Orange, and Birna Anna Björnsdóttir.