James Nicoll Reviews

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2014 anthology Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse delivers exactly what it promises: post-apocalyptic tales told from Canadian perspectives. 

The moral here seems to be that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. 

Also, it’s not going to get better.

Read more ➤

2015’s She Walks in Shadows  (published by Prime under the less evocative but also less ambiguous title Cthulhu’s Daughters: Stories of Lovecraftian Horror) was compiled by editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. The theme of the collection:

The present volume assembles stories about women, by women. Why an all-woman volume? The first spark was the notion, among some fans oft he Lovecraft Mythos, that women do not like to write in this category, that they can’t write in this category. […] We hope this anthology will help to dispel such notions.

It’s always a mistake to think that the mere existence of an anthology filled with cosmic horror stories will dispel delusions rooted in knuckle-dragging prejudice. Still, despite the generally troglodytic nature of the Lovecraft community, this anthology won a World Fantasy Award in 2015.

Read more ➤

2016’s Certain Dark Things is Canadian SF author Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s second novel. 

World reaction to the revelation that vampires really do exist has varied. Some nations opted for cautious, monitored co-existence. Others simply drove the vampires out. Twenty-first century Mexico did both: Mexico was for many years a haven for vampires fleeing their former home nations, but Mexico City was declared a no-go zone for the blood drinkers. 

Declaring it was one thing; enforcing it another. 

Read more ➤

Silvia Moreno-Garcia may not be quite as well known as Margaret Atwood but she too is a Canadian speculative fiction author, as well as a publisher and an editor. Although she has published enough short fiction to fill two collections, 2015’s Signal to Noise is her first novel.

Read more ➤