James Nicoll Reviews

Nisi Shawl’s 2022 Speculation is a stand-alone middle-grade book.

Winna Cole’s broken glasses would be a calamity at the best of times. When her mother is sick and in hospital, the broken spectacles are a disaster. Winna cannot see without them and there’s no way that the family can pay for new glasses. Luckily, Winna’s Grampa Carl has a solution: Winna’s late Great-Aunt Estelle’s spectacles.

Estelle’s glasses are old-fashioned but more than functional. They won’t necessarily solve Winna’s problems, but they will make those problems very different.

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Nisi Shawl’s 2019 Talk Like a Man Plus Women of the Doll Plus an Awfully Big Adventure and Much More is a collection of speculative fiction.

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2021 Amazon’s Black Star series offers six short science fiction pieces by six different Black authors. To quote:

The sky is not the limit. From an alley in New York to an interstellar wormhole, the path to the future looks different for everyone. These cosmic short stories from some of today’s most influential Black authors reveal a universe of possibilities. 

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Nisi Shawl’s 2019 New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color is, unsurprisingly, an anthology of original speculative fiction by people of color. It takes its title from an Octavia E. Butler quotation: 

“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” 

The anthology includes seventeen stories plus ancillary material. As a whole it is worth tracking down and reading, but the following are of particular note. 

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Although Nisi Shawl has been publishing short-form spec fic and related non-fiction since 1989, 2016’s steampunk novel Everfair is her debut novel. 

Confronted with ultimatums from Leopold’s heavily armed Force Publique , King Mwenda’s least bad choice is to buy time with apparent concessions. He and his Queen Josina hope to use this respite to out-think the Europeans while searching for new weapons in the struggle against the invaders. 

Enter the idealist colonists of Everfair. 

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