The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 2

In The Apex Book of World SF 2, editor Lavie Tidhar collects short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors from Africa to Latin America.

An expedition to an alien planet; Lenin rising from the dead; a superhero so secret he does not exist. In The Apex Book of World SF 2, World Fantasy Award-nominated editor Lavie Tidhar brings together a unique collection of stories from around the world. Quiet horror from Cuba and Australia; surrealist fantasy from Russia and epic fantasy from Poland; near-future tales from Mexico and Finland, as well as cyberpunk from South Africa. In this anthology, one gets a glimpse of the complex and fascinating world of genre fiction—from all over our world.

Featuring work from noted international authors such as Will Elliot, Hannu Rajaniemi, Shweta Narayan, Lauren Beukes, Ekaterina Sedia, Nnedi Okorafor, and Andrzej Sapkowski.

Table of Contents

“Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life” by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
“Mr Goop” by Ivor W. Hartmann
“Trees of Bone” by Daliso Chaponda
“The First Peruvian in Space” by Daniel Salvo (translated by Jose B. Adolph)
“Eyes in the Vastness of Forever” by Gustavo Bondoni
“The Tomb” by Chen Qiufan (translated by the author)
“The Sound of Breaking Glass” by Joyce Chng
“A Single Year” by Csilla Kleinheincz (translated by the author)
“The Secret Origin of Spin-Man” by Andrew Drilon
“Borrowed Time” by Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
“Branded” by Lauren Beukes
“December 8th” by Raúl Flores (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
“Hungry Man” by Will Elliott
“Nira and I” by Shweta Narayan
“Nothing Happened in 1999” by Fábio Fernandes
“Shadow” by Tade Thompson
“Shibuya no Love” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“Maquech” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“The Glory of the World” by Sergey Gerasimov
“The New Neighbours” by Tim Jones
“From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7” by Nnedi Okorafor
"The Slows” by Gail Hareven (translated by Yaacov Jeffrey Green)
“Zombie Lenin” by Ekaterina Sedia
“Electric Sonalika” by Samit Basu
“The Malady” by Andrzej Sapkowski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga)
“A Life Made Possible Behind The Barricades” by Jacques Barcia

About the Editor

Lavie Tidhar is the author of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize-winning A Man Lies Dreaming, the World Fantasy Award-winning Osama, and of the critically-acclaimed The Violent Century. His other works include the Bookman Histories trilogy, several novellas, two collections, and a forthcoming comics mini-series, Adler. He currently lives in London.

Excerpt

From: "Alternate Girl's Expatriate Life" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

In springtime, her garden yielded a hundred wisteria blossoms. White English roses climbed the pergola. Digitalis purpurea, lavender from the South of France, mint and thyme, rosemary and tarragon, basil and sweet marjoram—they all grew in Alternate Girl’s one-hundred-percent super-qualified housewife garden. 

Across the street, excavators dug up large swathes of grass.

“They’re building a new complex over there,” her neighbour said. “I heard the farmer who owned that land went off to live the life of a millionaire.”

Her neighbour babbled on about yachts and sea voyages and Alternate Girl stood there staring while the machines went about their business of churning up grass and soil. She wondered what it would be like to be crushed under those hungry wheels, and she flinched at her own imagination.

“A pity,” her neighbour said. “I sure will miss the view.”

Alternate Girl murmured something vague in reply, and went back to tending her flowers.

She wondered if the farmer was happier now that he had his millions. Would wealth and sea voyages make up for severed ties and the erasure of generations of familial history?

She pulled out a stray weed, and scattered coffee grounds to keep the cats from digging up her crocus bulbs.

She shook her head and headed back indoors. She’d only known two kinds of lives, and in neither of them had she been a millionaire.

Most expatriates pursue a model life. This makes them a desired member in their adopted society. They appear to assimilate quickly, adapting without visible complications to the customs of the country in which they reside. On the surface, they may appear contented, well-adjusted, and happy. However, studies reveal an underlying sorrow that often manifests itself in dreams. In dreams, the expatriate experiences no ambivalent feelings. There is only a strong sense of loss. It isn’t uncommon for expats to wake up crying.
—On Expatriate Behaviour, Mackay and Lindon—

In her dreams, Alternate Girl fled from her life as an expat. She sprouted wings and let the wind take her back to the gates of her hometown.

Even in the dreamscape, she could smell the exhaust from passing jeepneys. She could taste the metal dust in the air. The moon shone on the gentle curve of asphalt, cutting through dusty thoroughfares, creating long dark shadows on the pavement. Metal tenements jutted up from the land, pointing like fingers at the night sky.

By day, a constant stream of drones strove to keep those buildings together. Every bit of scrap metal, every piece of residual wiring was used to keep the landscape of steel and concrete from breaking to pieces. For all its frailty, for all its seeming squalor, there was something dear and familiar about the way the streets met and turned into each other.

Even if her life was filled with the cosiness of the here and now, she could not shake off the longing that thrummed through her dreams in the same way that the thrum of the equilibrium machine pulsed through this landscape.

Towering above the tenements was the Remembrance Monument. Made of compressed bits and parts, it contained all the memories of those gone before. Each year, the monument reached higher and higher until its apex was lost in the covering of clouds. When she was younger, she’d often imagined she could hear the voices of the gone-before.

Above the pulse of the Equilibrium Machine, above the gentle susurrus of faded ghosts, she heard a cry. High and shrill, it emitted a hopelessness Alternate Girl remembered feeling.

It was the same cry that pulled her out of her dreams and back into the present. She turned on her side, pressed her ear against her pillow and stared into the darkness.

This is my home now, she told herself. I am happy as I am. We are happy as we are.

Never mind her personal griefs. Never mind her longing for that lost landscape.

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Alternate Girl stared at the screen. Each day the spam mail showed up without fail. Same time stamps, same recipient name, all from anonymous senders.

Who sends this mail? she wondered. And did everyone in her neighbourhood receive the same mail with the same time stamps every day? If she had the courage to reply, would she receive an answer from all the anonymous senders? Her hand hovered over the delete key.

If you sent garbage to the landfill, it got buried underground, but what about garbage in the ether? Did it float around silently on the airwaves? Would all the spam and the deleted mail come back to haunt her in the form of ether pollution or some such specialised name?

While she sat there, the speakers gave off a faint ping. She clicked and waited as the new message filled her screen.

Happy Birthday, Alternate Girl! Today is a milestone for all of us. You have successfully completed one hundred weeks of expatriate life. In recognition of your hard work, a reward has been issued to you at the designated station. Report in as soon as you can and don’t forget to register at our renewed website. Greetings from Memomach@metaltown.com.

Alternate Girl squeezed her eyes shut. She opened them and stared once more at the message on her screen.

Could it be what she had been waiting for all this time, or was Mechanic finally calling her home?