Almost all these stories were purely amazing! Great thought experiments, great satire, great commentary on aspects of modern life!

The story by Delany was probably my least favorite. While I generally love stories that dump me into the world- I don't the pacing of revelation really worked; things remained obscure for too long, and it was literally hard to figure out what was going on. It did resolve- but I would have appreciated a less oblique pacing.

Bucknell's story- which finished the collection- was so great! I loved every minute of it! On the surface, it was a great space-opera sort of adventure- but it brought up a lot of fascinating issues about what it means to be human, plus prejudice.

There were definitely a lot of highlights- but I'll let you discover them for yourselves.

One additional mention- I LOVED that the stories were so inclusive. They showed interesting people, of a variety of "races", sexes, nationalities, and genders- all as effective actors in their own stories.

VERY recommended!

From strange and poetic to completely bizarre, all of these stories are well-written but may or may not be to your taste. For me, the collection opened strongly with Charles Payseur's "Rivers Run Free," set in a world where some of the rivers have become embodied and are fighting enslavement by a human empire. Kate Marshall's "Destroy the City with Me Tonight" follows strongly, envisioning a virus that forms a painful map of a city on the victim's bones, induces memory issues, and more, with awful impact on the victim's lives. Other favorites of mine include Micah Dean Hicks's "Church of Birds," a fairy tale poignantly retold with no happy ending, and Maria Dahvana Headley's "The Orange Tree," in which a golem is created from the titular tree to be a man's wife, quite against the tree's will. Many others are intriguing and thought-provoking. On the other end of the spectrum, I could not grasp the peculiar world portrayed in Samuel R. Delany's "The Hermit of Houston"; the first-person character in Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident" is oddly obsessed with pus-filled bumps and frequently becomes ill, shaping a story that is much more psychological delusion than SF or fantasy; and Caroline M. Yoachim's "Carnival Nine" is too plainly a metaphor for human life with a mundane moral. Overall, though, the anthology introduced me to many authors I hadn't read before and hope to read again.

There are several stories that are fantastic in this collection.

Unfortunately there are also several that I couldn't finish.

I hope you experience is better

Some of the short stories are a bit long

To be honest, I didn't love every story in this anthology. Since there was talent in all of the stories, I would never admit the ones I found annoying or boring. I especially wouldn't tell what I didn't understand. I absolutely loved a few of the selections and feel my life is better for having read them.

Best collection read in years. I will actually look for some of the books by writers included in this. Very many different voices represented but Jemison is very perceptive and a huge talent herself.

This is the darkest edition of the collection so far, reflecting the emotions of the country in 2018.

The stories selected here boil down the essence of 2018 in spectacular and challenging ways, exploring every chamber of the heart through vivid acts of imagination.

I love those compilations so captivating to read you won’t regret it.

Usually, short story collections from more than one author are an extremely mixed bag for me, but with this one I can happily attest that I liked more than half of the stories featured, which is huge!