The Future Is Blue

by Catherynne M. Valente

Thirteen stories unlike any others.

In the title story, Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning novelette “The Future Is Blue,” an outcast girl named Tetley lives on floating Garbagetown, in a world that dreams of the long lost land. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos is explored and reinvented in style in “Down and Out in R’lyeh.” In the novelette “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery,” Perpetua masquerades as a man in order to continue her father’s business as a glassblower and must fashion a special eye for a queen. And in “The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End,” the wyvern A-Through-L, the warrior Green Wind and his giant cat the Leopard of Little Breezes cope with their broken-hearted disappointment over politicks as the evil Marquess ascends to rule.

Of her previous collection, The Bread We Eat in Dreams, the New York Times said, “Valente’s writing DNA is full of fable, fairy tale and myth drawn from deep wells worldwide.” With The Future Is Blue she continues to build and invent unforgettable worlds and characters with lyrical abandon, creating stories that feel old and new at once.

The Future is Blue also includes three never-before-printed stories, for almost 30,000 words of work exclusive to this collection: “Major Tom,” “Two and Two is Seven,” and the long novelette “Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave.”

Limited: 1250 signed numbered hardcover copies

Table of Contents:

The Future Is Blue
No One Dies in Nowhere
Two and Two is Seven
Down and Out in R'lyeh
The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery
Snow Day
Planet Lion
Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave
Major Tom
The Lily and the Horn
The Flame After the Candle
The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild
The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Fiction, Adult, Collections

368 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2018

About the author

Catherynne M. Valente was born on Cinco de Mayo, 1979 in Seattle, WA, but grew up in in the wheatgrass paradise of Northern California. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her B.A. in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics. She then drifted away from her M.A. program and into a long residence in the concrete and camphor wilds of Japan.

She currently lives in Maine with her partner, two dogs, and three cats, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catherynne Valente is a phenomenally talented author: her writing overflows with creativity, new ways to describe everything from a person to a setting to an emotion, new ways to approach storytelling itself. Her style combines both postmodernism and New Weird techniques, and the lushness of her prose is reminiscent of Angela Carter and Tanith Lee (two of my favorite authors). I loved her novels In the Night Garden and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland.

Unfortunately, this collection was hit or miss for me. There were some wonderful stories (bolded below) but there were also some that I found to be completely unreadable. I'm always down for a challenge, but if things get too silly, too disgusting, and/or too shouty, I find that it's easier to just quit engaging rather than sticking it out and getting increasingly annoyed. Who has the time for that? I do that for people, may as well apply that philosophy to stories too.

All that said, for the most part the stories were perfectly fine. Each one was creative and unique, in their own way. And those stories that I loved - well, I really really loved them. At her best, she's one of the finest and most original of modern genre writers. She has a unique vision and she always goes her own way. An admirable writer.

🪬💎🧫

"The Future Is Blue" - in a post-apocalyptic future, a girl recounts the story of her life in the floating garbage dump called Garbagetown. A life with a loving twin, unloving parents, and a boy who loves her. A world that hates her because she saved them all from dreaming too big and destroying themselves. An eccentric tale, eccentrically told. Mood: wistful.

"No One Dies in Nowhere" - heron-headed Detective Belacqua has a problem: who has tortured and murdered this woman? In the afterlife, dying should be the least of one's worries! This is an ingenious, fully realized murder mystery set in a bizarre semi-Purgatory, dark yet compassionate. It asks an additional question: does God even care?

"Two and Two Is Seven" - the land of N is full of robots who need caring; their caregiver longs for the King who was once her paramour. This story finds Valente indulging her absurdist, Miévillian side - not my favorite side of the author - but still manages to arrange the fripperies around a core of genuine emotion - and eventually, schadenfreude!

"Down and Out in R'lyeh" - incredibly scatalogical farce, I think, set in Cthulhu's underwater lair. I actually don't know if it was a farce or if it turned into something else, because I stopped reading after not quite 2 pages. It was too disgusting to want to continue. Plus I was eating lunch.

"The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek" - a brilliant one-eyed maker of glass eyes meets her match in a one-eyed beauty from Venice. A clever and fun story. I loved the central conceit of inexplicably paired glass eyes, the second of the pair allowing one to see whatever the first eye is witnessing. A perfect tool for a one-eyed spy...

"Snow Day" - the daughter of a conspiracist mistress to many politicians finds herself no longer alone in her island villa as civilization as we know it appears to be ending: her sole friend has come with a color tv as a birthday gift, and thanks to surprise parthenogenesis, she has an infant-minded replica of herself to care for as well. The synopsis that I just wrote sounds incredibly bizarre. And yet this is a homey, cozy story, in its way. I loved that our heroine was self-taught via classic erotic novels, whose titles are intertitles within the story itself. A sweet tale.

"Planet Lion" - new planet, new species that look like lions, not-so-new human ambitions plus human love for experimentation = fucked-up yet vaguely amusing disaster on Planet X. This was wonderfully different. The many images of bizarre, predatory green lions, neurally-linked and having a taste for brains, shouting out the lovelorn dialogues of the crew they've eaten, was like nothing I've read before. Still not sure if their behavior was due to eating the crew or because of some kind of experimental sludge that was rained upon their world, but I don't really care about absolute clarity in a story this strange, clever, and somehow sadly moving.

"Flame, Pearl, Mother..." - in a nameless walled country whose noble children are born monstrous, a girl with the torso of a tower encounters a diabolist, plus a corpse-prince falls in love. This piece finds Valente in nonsense mode, but more Baum then Miéville. There are stories upon stories and I felt tenderly for the poor lovestruck prince, born in a dead body. The prose here is especially lush and lavish.

"Major Tom" - a man realizes his consciousness now inhabits a satellite. Wistful and sad; unfortunately also a bit obvious. I think this was meant to be a mystery, but any science fiction fan would be able to figure out what is happening fairly soon.

"The Flame After the Candle" - adventures in Alice's Wonderland. the story has two parallel strands: in the first, a bored and grouchy girl falls through a looking-glass into Wonderland; in the second, the elderly woman who was the inspiration for Alice has dinner with the man who was the inspiration for Peter Pan. This is an interesting experiment with some excellent writing (per usual), but not entirely successful - the two parts didn't speak to each other. Still, the adventures in Wonderland were wonderful and the conversation between real Alice and real Peter was surprisingly melancholy and affecting.

"The Lily and the Horn" - in this vaguely medieval setting, the fighting of wars with young bodies has been replaced by the fighting of wars at the dinner table. The table is set with poisons by a trained poisoner; at the table is an equally trained expert in antidotes and poison nullifiers. Representatives of those at war eat at this treacherous table; who survives shall determine which kingdom is the winner. This was a fantastic story - so original! Plus it features a secret lesbian romance. ❤️💛🖤

"Badgirl, Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune" - it is regrettable that the collection's editor didn't excise this loathsome story about a young girl abused by her drug-addicted father's heroin dealer. Reminded me of Joyce Carol Oates at her worst. This was a repulsive waste of time.

"The Fall Counts Everywhere" - this is about some kind of arena battle between legendary characters and creatures, reminiscent of Super Smash Bros, mc'ed by some kind of robot. I think? This was unreadable cacophony, so I gave up after about 4 pages. My God, all those ALL CAPS!

"The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild" - in which I discover that too much wackiness makes me impatient enough that I'll just skip the story. This is my third skip in this collection, and I actually love this author! This year I've read a collection of incredibly depressing Steinbeckian stories and a collection of often horribly gross horror stories. Didn't skip a single story in either book. But I guess Total Absurdity is just a bridge too far for me. This story was totally absurd.

"The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland" - a brief prequel to Valente's modern classic The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, featuring the Green Wind, the Leopard of Little Breezes, and the Wyverary. Sweet little sliver of a story but entirely unnecessary.

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

When you boil it right down, Valente is an extremely creative artisan of words. I've known this from the first book I read to the umpteenth. She is not only consistently gorgeous, but heartbreaking, clever, blisteringly droll, and shockingly original, but she also impregnates every tale with so much heart that it bleeds, cries, and even commits suicide.

Mind you, that's a GOOD thing in stories. All those old beginnings, middles, and ends in NORMAL stories are like little moths to the great searing flame that Valente sparks in her stories.

Do you think I'm going a bit overboard? Well, maybe. But no one can deny that that most of these stories push all the envelopes. They range from deep fantasy in quite unusual and wordplay-rich worlds to hard SF (these are often my absolute favorites) that intermix very rich mythology with bleeding-edge tech that makes me bleed forever.

Am I pleased? Thrilled by the poetical, lyrical treatment of my favorite genres? You better believe it.


This limited edition does carry a number of stories that have been printed in other editions, but let me be frank: each story is a joy to re-read.

My favorites?

Down and Out in R'lyeh
Snow Day
Planet Lion
The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild
and
The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End

[Gabrielle (Reading Rampage) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always going to be a Valente fan: she just conjures such beautiful images and leaves them in my head, like the aftertaste of particularly vivid dreams. I had this collection saved up for my vacation, and I spent a few days lounging by the lake, eating farm fresh cherries and getting drunk on words.

Valente's prose is ornate and always surprisingly poetic, as usual. But I found this collection to be cleaner and less baroque than some of her other books I've read. I am beginning to find patterns of her obsession through her work: death and the afterlife, the destruction of our environment, colors and, obviously, fairy tales.

The collection is fantastic as a whole, but here are my favorites:

"The Future is Blue": you know about the infamous garbage island in the Pacific Ocean? Well when the icecaps have fully melted and the continents have been submerged in water, a few survivors set up a civilization on the garbage island. There lives a girl named Tetley, through whose eyes we explore this strange new world, and how she finds and loses love. There's something heartbreaking and beautiful about the idea of garbage sustaining life on a planet where solid ground is a dim memory.

"Down and Out in R'lyeh": this might just be the best Lovecraft pastiche I've ever read. I had never thought about how the disaffected youth of the drowned metropolis spends their time and get their kicks. Every big city is going to gentrify eventualy, I suppose; I never thought Cthulhu's backyard would be where hipsters would wind up!

"Planet Lion": this reminded me of LeGuin's "The Word for World is Forest" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). This is a wonderful story about the unpredictable impact that a small group of humans end up having on a population of green alien lions.

"The Lily and the Horn" is a wonderful reversal of typical fantasy/Medieval warfare stories, where the art of poisoning matters more than skills with a sword. Strange, creepy, delicious.

"After the Flame" revisits Alice Liddell, her looking glass and Peter Llewellyn Davies. I know this is an old trope - how many retelling of "Alice in Wonderland" are there out there? But Valente's take is quite original, and turns the table of the idea of the reality of experience. In post-war New York, Peter tracks down Alice and invites her for dinner, so they can talk about their strange childhood experiences. I loved it!

"The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End" sees Valente revisit her famous Fairyland and a certain Wyvernary. She uses the familiar setting to deliver a message of hope and defiance to her readers. You tell them, A-Through-L!

If you enjoyed Valente's previous work, do not miss this amazing collection. Simply gorgeous. 4 and a half stars.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valente is one of my all-time favourite authors. Every one of her books / stories is an instant-read for me.

In this limited edition book, there are 15 stories.
1) The Future Is Blue
2) No One Dies in nowhere
3) Two and Two Is Seven
4) Down and Out in R'lyeh
5) The Limitless Prespective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescene of Debauchery
6) Snow Day
7) Planet Lion
8) Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave
9) Major Tom
10) The Lily and the Horn
11) The Flame After the Candle
12) Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune
13) A Fall Counts Anywhere
14) The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild
15) The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still

The first is the titular one (more details on that one in my review for the follow-up book). The others are a mix of different fantasy sub-genres right down to a short story that belongs to the Fairyland series.

I had been looking for a copy of this book for quite a while since it was originally only sold to Patreon backers of the author's. Luckily, I found an affordable copy.

What I love about every single one of the stories, but mostly about the very first, is the witty way Valente packed descriptions of our world (incl. criticism of certain things she's observed) in her tales. She is just spewing creativity and gorgeous poetic prose.
Be it creatures in a magical realm that is usually only visited by children at various stages of their growing-up phase, be it the last bit of humanity at the end of the world, be it dinner parties in lieu of wars or any other imaginable, delightful interpretation of terrible and terribly beautiful things - Valente is always at the top of her game (and as a gamer she writes kick-ass stories about those worlds, too, sometimes).

Some of the stories in this collection I had known before, most - to my utter pleasure - were new to me. But it doesn't really matter if they are already comfortably familiar or excitingly new, getting sucked into the rich worldbuilding and marvelling at the characters and places while being swept along in the narrative is always fantastic.

Like I said at the beginning, the titular one was very special (though with this author it's a nuance thing) and I can't wait to read the follow-up story right now. But the other, too, were a feast from the first word to the last.

[Renegade ♥ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

This rating is for the title story/novelette alone.

I definitely plan to read the rest of this collection in future.

[Karl]

This hardcover is copy 348 of 1250 numbered copies produced and is signed by Catherynne M. Valente .

Contents:

007 - "The Future Is Blue"
029 - "No One Dies in Nowhere"
059 - "Two and Two is Seven"
081 - "Down and Out in R'lyeh"
103 - "The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery"
127 - "Snow Day"
155 "Planet Lion"
175 "Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave"
211 - Major Tom"
231 - "The Lily and the Horn"
245 - "The Flame After the Candle"
283 - "Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune"
299 - "A Fall Counts Anywhere"
319 - "The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild"
359 - "The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still"

[Acqua · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Future is Blue is a collection of short fiction written by Catherynne M. Valente. She is of my favorite authors (I've read three of her novels and loved all of them), so I wanted to see if I liked her short fiction as much.
Valente's writing is unique and beautiful, but it's also very heavy and, I have to say, it's almost too much sometimes. There are so many layers and hidden meanings that you can't enjoy the story unless you're deliberately looking for them, and this seems to become more blatant in her short fiction.
In The Future is Blue I found some stories I loved, some that were just weird, and some I had to DNF.

The Future Is Blue - ★★★★★
This is a short post-apocalyptic story set on an island made of garbage. Catherynne M. Valente makes it feel beautiful. And weird, and colorful, tragic and hopeful.
I loved seeing how humans adapted to life on the island, their new traditions, their fascination and disgust for the life of before. (The humans who ruined the Earth are called "the Fuckwits".) It's political, in a way, because it's about climate change, but it's not only about that.
My second favorite in the collection.

No One Dies in Nowhere - ★★
This story is set in a monastery near a mountain, and in a city inhabited by bird-like people. Nothing ever changes. It's about the purgatory, and there's Girolamo Savonarola. The characters were bored and so was I. It was bleak and unsettling and not in a way that worked for me.

Two and Two Is Seven - ★★½
Maribel lives in a neglected nonagonal nunnery in the valley of N, where everything has to start with the letter N. The king hasn't visited for a while and Maribel misses him, but she doesn't actually know what he's looking for when he returns.
I didn't get the point of this one. There were a lot of machines with Polish names for some reason, and I liked the ending - but at the same time, what was that supposed to mean?

Down and Out in R'lyeh - ★ DNF
About Cthulhu. I didn't understand this, but I'm not familiar with Lovecraft's works.

The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery - ★★★½
I'm conflicted about this one.
It starts out in Venice and it continues in London, and while I liked some aspects of it - the magical glasswork, the way Master Peek used it to influence politics, or the fact that this plays with gender in a historical setting - I wasn't completely convinced.
It's that kind of Italian story. The kind that is written in a way that makes you feel like the author thinks your culture and country are oh-so-exotic: they feel the need to put random italicized words in your language when an English one would work just fine - and not in the dialogues, in the narration.
Seriously, English-writing authors, 90% of the time you can just say "palace" instead of "palazzo", it's not a perfect translation (almost no translation is!) but it saves all the awkwardness. Also, it's Samaritana, not "Samaritiana" - what is the i even doing there? I know, you don't even bother to get our language right when you use it.
(Also, why is literally every Italian story written by Americans set in the ultimate tourist trap Venice? Try something more original?)
However, I liked how every name had a meaning that was relevant to the story.

Snow Day - ★★
I didn't get this one. I liked the beginning and what it said about "bad art", what we consider bad art, and the role of erotic novels. I didn't understand anything else, ending included.

Planet Lion - ★★★★
This one was fun, and also humans ruin everything. I'm not sure it was supposed to be and I'm not sure that was what I was supposed to get out of it, but I'm fine with what I got.
It's about a lion named Yttrium, telepathy gone very wrong and a weird alien planet where human intervention changed everything in a way humans didn't anticipate at all (...as usual).
(Nitpicking Taxonomy Brain Time: the "thylacoleo" in Thylacoleo carnifex needs to be capitalized.)

Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave - ★ DNF
This one starts out with deformed children and continued with my boredom.

Major Tom - ★★★
A... cubist story? This follows a man who became the Aspera Orbital Surveillance Satellite after his death. We get to know his life in fragments, twisted and rearranged until they make almost no sense together but in a way they do. Really interesting, even if I was really confused at the beginning.

The Lily and the Horn - ★★★★★
War is a dinner party.

I had already read this one a few months ago, and I loved it even more on reread. It's my favorite in the collection. It's both an exploration of venom as a weapon "for cowards" (a woman's weapon, while war is considered "noble" and for men) and a bittersweet f/f story. In this fantasy world, conflicts are sorted out with a dinner, and I would read a whole book set here - this set up is so interesting it almost feels wasted for just a short story. The food descriptions are wonderful and they managed to make me hungry even when the main character described how she had poisoned everything in the same paragraph.
The ending was as heartbreaking as it was powerful and I loved every moment of this beautiful story.

The Flame After the Candle - ★★★
An Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking-Glass retelling. Parts of it follow Olive in Wonderland, the others follow real-life Peter Pan as he meets real-life Alice.
This falls in the "interesting, but too long and I don't feel like I understood what it was trying to do" category. I liked what it said about the obsession with childhood, and I managed to guess the ending even though I didn't really know what was going on.

Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune - ★ DNF
From The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales. It's about addiction and drug dealing and a child in a difficult situation. I think it was meant to be a modern retelling of The Girl without Hands. Didn't work for me at all.

A Fall Counts Anywhere - ★★★½
From Robots vs. Fairies, and it's literally about a fight between robots and fairies narrated from two announcers, a robot and a fairy. Really interesting idea and execution, but the constant all-caps were irritating.

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild - ★★★★★
This was very weird, but just my kind of whimsical weird. It's about Violet Wild, a nowgirl (just like a cowgirl, but her herd is made up by squirrels pregnant with the present. They're very aggressive.) who lives in Purple Country until the boy she was in love with dies. She teams up with her sorrow and a mask and tries to find him in the Red Country, but she has to cross all the rainbow and escape a shapeshifting emperor to get there. It's a beautiful story about growing apart and finding each other again.
Also, stories are dinosaurs. The imagery was great because it was almost nonsense and I like that.

The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still - ★★★★★
This is set in Valente's middle grade Fairyland universe (I think it's a prequel), which I'm not familiar with at all, but I loved this story, and now I understand why the Fairyland series is recommended for both adults and children.
Fairyland has been conquered by the Marquess, who is now persecuting some creatures for no reason apart from the fact that she needs someone to blame for every bad thing that happens (or, as it's said, the story of her own greatness doesn't work without a villain).
The protagonist is a Wyverary, son of a Wyvern and a library, and he has a conversation with two other characters about the power of stories and using words like weapons. Loved the message and the world.

My rating: ★★★

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look around you and look well: this is the world I made. Isn’t it charming? Isn’t it terrible and exquisite and debased and tastefully appointed according to the very latest of styles? I have seen to every detail, every flourish – think nothing of it, it has been my great honour.

Bizarre and unsettling doesn’t even begin to describe the experience of diving into this massive collection of novellas and short stories. Valente can be trusted to push the frontiers of speculative fiction further and further away, into experimental realms of fancy adorned with baroque turns of phrase. Her unrestrained, exuberant imagery and her disdain for genre tropes or for the reader’s comfort will make the journey sometimes difficult, but I found the challenge always rewarding.
Another signature move from Valente is a certain bleakness, a constant presence of darkness and pain in her worldbuilding. This is one of the threads that links together the stories included in the collection, as much as the colour blue from the title. Taken as whole, I will be hard pressed to slot the anthology as either fantasy of science-fiction. Post-apocalyptic variations in style might be a better label for this treasure chest of nightmares, this mutant Pandora box filled with blue and poisonous candy, this cauldron where witches brew a dark future from gruesome ingredients.

Off in the distance, I could see a pack of stories slurping at a watering hole, their long spine-plates standing against the setting sun like broken fences.

The task of reviewing this incredibly complicated knot of storytelling is daunting, as I believe each individual story is a gem that deserves its own, detailed resume, well beyond the word count allowed on this site but, before we trip the light traumatic to the Island of Dr. Valente, I have one more observation: the meta-fictional Force is strong in this one and readers who pay attention will probably discover a multitude of Easter Eggs and daring metaphorical references to literary canon, from Kafka and Lewis Carroll to Lovecraft or David Bowies.

>>><<<>>><<<

The Future is Blue

Let’s start with a different sort of Waterworld to meet Tetley Abednego, a girl trying to survive in a future world where the former continents are completely submerged and survivors scavenge in the huge garbage patches our present is still dumping in the oceans. Garbagetown is divided into specialized quarters, each dedicated to a certain type of scavenging, but the inhabitants are as parochial and as prejudiced against oddballs, freethinkers and strangers as the generations that caused the apocalypse in the first place. Humanity hardly learns from its mistakes.

... there’s nothing out there, sugar. Nothing but ocean and more ocean and a handful of drifty lifeboat cities like yours circling the world like horses on a broken-down carousel. Nothing but blue.

No One Dies in Nowhere

A vision worthy of Dante offers an alternative to Purgatory, where the souls of the dead build a city of stone to pass the endless days until their Fate is decided. This city is patrolled by bird-headed golems, created by the angles and given a limited amount of free will. When an impossible murder occurs in the city of Nowhere, Detective Bellacqua, he of the heron head, puts down his literary ambitions in order to solve the mystery.

That’s the worst thing for a person. To get crushed under the weight of endless useless days.

Two and Two Is Seven

Maribel is a gardener in the Valley of N where she tends to an unusual flock of gigantic Artificial Intelligence monsters of metal and code, designed by a couple of intergalactic inventors as a bulwark against a tyrannical kingdom. Each machine has a particular talent, either for manufacture or for poetry or for genetics. The return of the King after a thousand year absence precipitates a crisis in the valley of nouns.

Narcoleptic nightingales would sing briefly in her garden, nitwitted newts would nod off on the flat rocks, nihilistic numbats would nuzzle under thickets, nostalgic natterjack toads would croak of days long gone by, and nimble nyala with twisted horns would graze nervously on the nutritious narcissus and noble nasturtiums that grew so well at the mouth of the valley.

Down and Out in R’lyeh

While Chtulhu sleeps, the lesser horrors in his underwater city start the party. Moloch, [Dank as starlit squidshit, antique in the membrane, maximum yellow fellow! Only five thousand years old, still soggy behind the orifices. ] and two of his scary-scaly friends go on an all-night bender of drugs, sex and drink in fabled R’lyeh, bored with waiting for the descent of the known universe into bloody infinite shrieking madness . This is probably the most hilarious and scabrous homage to Lovecraft, delivered by Moloch in the weird slang of the ultimate underworld.

I was into nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outpost of space and time before it was cool.

The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek

What’s a girl to do in seventeen century London if she is an outcast Cyclops with a talent for glass blowing? She could disguise herself into a man, in the best Shakespearean tradition, and remake the world into her own image – by fashioning magical glass eyes that soon become all the rage among the fashionable elites. Unfortunately, the Great Fire of London is just about to blow her wares to dust.

My deliverance came courtesy of a pot of pepper, a disfigured milkmaid, and the Dogaressa of Venice.

Snow Day

Another girl dealing with another apocalypse, Gudrun is hiding in a remote villa in the mountains of Hawaii. Her mother Ruby, a high class escort from Washington sought to get ahead of the rush of refugees after catching the conspiracy theory virus.

Her knowledge was enormous but haphazard, picked up discount from many flea markets of the mind, and useless to a twelve-year-old girl, unless she needed to understand how Russians had infiltrated the Manhattan Project or the CIA experiments with psychedelic drugs and astral projection.

To pass the time until it starts to snow in the tropics, Gudrun studies the villa’s extensive collection of books left behind by its perverse previous owner.

Enough pornography gathered together in one place constitutes a complete history of the world.

Planet Lion

Not content with the destruction of the home planet, spaceships from Earth explore new planets to colonize and to raise in the image of their conqueror culture. The contact with another predatory, intelligent race will result in yet another bloodbath.

Imagine a giant, six-toed, enthusiastically carnivorous marsupial lion with the devil’s own camouflage and you’ll have it just about right.

Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart and Grave

Fairy tales for mutant children will include a corpse prince and a girl with a stone tower for a torso. Their kingdom, somewhere in the Balkans, is threatened by the Mongolian hordes, while a clockmaker’s prophecy promises deliverance to those who embrace curiosity and adventure.

Her hair was dark, dark blue, the color of a whale’s shadow, but the viscount’s daughter had braids of such pure, hot light that they sheared them into two hundred lantern at the beginning of winter every year. Her eyes were enormous, knowing, black as the inside of a winecask, with a pinprick of silver at the bottom of each iris like a tiny star, but the queen had no eyes at all and a pangolin’s tail so long it curled three times around the throne.

Major Tom

He circles above the atmosphere, marooned in the satellite belt for eternity, but his eyes are turned towards the blue sphere below while his memory is haunted with impossible dreams of a normal life. Every now and again he tries to contact ground control for an explanation. The message back is garbled in hexadecimal code and in instructions to hit the reboot button.

When I open my eyes I see blue. Blue everywhere. Blue beyond the dreams of Picasso. When I close my eyes I see everything.

This is probably my favourite pieces of experimental story structure in the whole collection, emotionally intense yet anchored in a solid scientific speculation about artificial intelligence and identity.

What’s a thirteen-letter word for a terrific transformation loved by lepidopterists? It has M’s in it.
Metamorphosis

The Lily and the Horn

Another fairytale template turned on its head offers a kingdom where, instead of knights in steel armour fighting it out in the field, disputes are solved with an opulent party hosted by a lady graduate from the Poisoner School. The survivors are presumed to have the right on their side.

“Mummy, Mummy, what shall I wear to the war tonight?”

The Flame After the Candle

What happens to your favourite characters after you finish reading their stories? Do the authors abandon and forget them as they head for new imaginary worlds? In particular, what about child heroes, do they ever grow up to become responsible adults?
And whatever happened to that magic mirror that leads into the land of the Jabberwocky and the Red Queen? Maybe a bored teenager in Wales named Olive will rescue it from an antique shop and jump into a continuation of the Lewis Carroll adventures.

“Would you prefer a future?” the hare asked, her pride still smarting. “It’s more splendid than the present, but you’ve got to wait three days for delivery.”
“Of course, the past is particularly nice this time of year,” the wolf grinned.

Meanwhile, in a library in New York, an old lady is accosted by a strange old man and invited for dinner. Alice and Peter Pan share the grievances against the vampires who stole their souls in order to put them down on paper, while a lovely turtle with sad eyes sang a song about soup.

“How,” said the marble corvid, “is a raven like a writing desk?” is the riddle that connects these two parallel storylines.

Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune

Reality is often more disturbing than any fictional world, especially for a young girl who tries to cope with home abuse. The story is a bitter reminder that Hell Is Empty and All the Devils are Here.

A Fall Counts Anywhere

Fantasy or Science-Fiction – let us settle once and for all which of these speculative worlds take control of our future. Science or Fancy? Let the champions of each realm face each other in the ultimate Mortal Kombat tournament, for the entertainment of the corporate controlled masses. Just remember that life is a registered trademark of Cogicotech Industries, subject to some rules and restrictions

Ladies and gentlemen, androids and androgynes, sprites and sprockets, welcome to the one you’ve always been waiting for, the big show, the rumble in the fungal, the brawl in the fall, the twilight prizefight of wild wight against metal might! That’s right, it’s time to rock the equinox!

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild

Who needs hard drugs when they can journey across the rainbow riding on the purple wings of their sorrow? The Woe-Be-Gone Nowgirl Violet Wild is fed up with stories after they cannibalize the best friend she had in the world, a boy named Orchid Harm. From her home in the Purple Country, Violet will travel through all seven colours, towards that redshift that grants either forgetfulness or absolution, chasen by a devious, shapechanger Ordinary Emperor. Metafiction rules the kingdoms of coloured emotions.

Watercolor unicorns have hearts like soap operas that never end

They caught sunshine in buckets all over Plum Pudding, mixed it with sugar and lorikeet eggs and fermented it into something now even a little bit legal.

in the Orange country, a sorrow is not a mammoth with a cabinet in its stomach, it is a kind of melancholic dread, a bitter, heartsick gloom. It feels as though you can never get free of sorrow once you have one, as though you become allergic to happiness.

The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still

A final gift for the long-time fans of the girl Saturday and of the A-through-L Wyverary, the collection finishes with a flourish in a prequel to the Fairyland series, a short and bittersweet reminder of the true power of stories.

The Leopard growled. “It’s very much harder to say No to a tyrant than to say No to a plate of beans or a dark bedroom. Harder still to do it while your wings are tied down and blistered. And you cannot stop saying it, even if it would feel so marvellous, so easy, so much less work to just be silent and hope it all come out right somehow.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Clarification: my review applies to the novelette "The Future is Blue" contained in this collection of the same name.*

Brilliant novelette - mesmerizing, beautiful, heart-breaking story that I don't want to spoil for you. It's the kind of story that stays with you for a long time.

I'm definitely going to read more by this author!

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review pertains to copy no. 879 of 1250 signed and numbered copies.
This book is nothing like the mesmerising cover drawn by Galen Dara. And that's the first thing that a reader learns as pages are turned and stories (?) are read.
The second thing? These are not stories. These are surreal pieces where the author uses beautiful and lyrical prose to talk to herself. They depict her dreams, nightmares, visions, fears. Her thoughts take shapes of unbelievable but haunting characters. Her emotions express themselves viscerally or musically— both acting as twin strands of Valente's literary DNA. But above all, most of the work goes nowhere, with words creating shells without anything inside for us as consumable.
Three works stood out as some kind of parodies of extant versions of genre fiction, or fresh parables for the uninitiated. They were~
1. The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminiscence of Debauchery: With its unique protagonist and the sharper than diamond wit, this one deserves to become a full-fledged steampunk fantasy novel.
2. Planet Lion: Did it depict environmental distopia, or present an allegory of neo-colonialism? You have to read to appreciate.
3. The Lily and the Horn: Aha! The subtly unfloding horror of this piece would have made Poe flinch with all its implications.
The prose is sublime. Imageries are gorgeous. But most of the world created by Valente, irrespective of whether it shows a not-so-distant future or an imaginary or mythical past, is uninhabitable.
Now you decide if you would like to land here, or go elsewhere.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I tend to find Valente’s work hit or miss. I cannot emphasize enough how much I adore In the Night Garden, but then I wasn’t able to finish The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland. The Future Is Blue thus represents a microcosm of my feelings about Valente’s work: some stories I enjoyed, others left me cold.

As it turns out, I’d also already read a number of the stories in this collection. I only reread two of these here (“Snow Day” and “Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune”), both because I couldn’t remember them well enough to immediately recognize them. I can see why. Both stories did nothing for me. “Snow Day” follows a woman who was raised in an isolated house in Hawai by her mother, a professional mistress of politicians. The speculative elements are subtler than in a lot of the other stories, as they come in later on. I don’t think that’s the reason why I didn’t care for the story. I just didn’t have a lot to latch on to. Nothing about the characters or situations interested me. “Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune” is a fairy tale retelling (of “The Armless Maiden”) I first read in The Starlit Wood anthology. It was one of the weaker entries in an overall great anthology. The protagonist is a young girl who lives with her drug-addicted father and is under threat from his dealer. It’s relentlessly depressing.

I reviewed “A Fall Counts Anywhere” in the anthology Robots vs. Fairies. Basically, it’s the transcript of wrestling matches between robots and fairies. I didn’t care for it the first time around and so skipped it this time. Maybe you need to be a wrestling fan…

On a more positive note, my favorite already-familiar story in the collection is “The Lily and the Horn,” which I read back when I did a short story column for a queer science fiction and fantasy website. In this world, battles are no longer fought on fields but instead at the dining tables. The Lily constructs a meal of poison, and the Horn seeks to provide her family’s proxies with protection from the deadly substances. As in my favorite of her works, the writing is absolutely gorgeous.

I was also an established fan of “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery”, although considering it afresh I think it falls into some tired tropes as to how characters are shown to be trans (AKA the naked reveal). The narrator is a rather odious man living in Elizabethan England. He’d be a key example that while characters don’t have to be likable, they do have to be interesting. I read this story a year ago, and it’s still quite fresh in my mind, which speaks well as to its staying power. The same is not true of “Planet Lion,” but I at least remember it as an okay story.

Then there are two stories in this collection that I’d previously read part of and DNF’d but decided to read in full for this review. I listened to the first half of “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” on audio but never felt compelled to track down the second half. The writing style and world were very similar to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, which I’ve already mentioned bouncing off of. It’s just too… self-consciously strange and cutesy? It’s largely a matter of personal tastes, and I know plenty of other people like her Fairyland series.

Oh, on that note, I had similar problems with “Two and Two Is Seven,” “The Beast Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End” (an admirable attempt at political commentary but the combination of that with the twee setting is nauseating), and “The Flame After the Candle” (a Wonderland type thing). I’m not going to go into them any further, just know that they’re included in the collection.

I also had previously read part of “Down and Out of R’lyeh” before getting bored and deciding to quit. I faired better this time, I think because I focused on imagining the story read aloud — the narration is very distinctive and one of the more memorable aspects of the story. I’m still not a big fan of this one, and it probably doesn’t help that I have a very limited interest in Lovecraft. I’ve liked a couple of books using the mythos, but my knowledge is cursory and I have no interest in reading the original canon.

At this point, you may be wondering how this collection got three stars if I disliked practically everything. But good news, there’s three more I actually liked! The title story, “The Future Is Blue,” teetered on the edges of being too twee but didn’t ultimately go there for me. The protagonist is a girl living in a future where there’s no land left. She lives on a floating island of trash, which is divided by type (electrical parts, candles, ect). I think what helped balance out the cutesy bits was some of the underlying darkness of an ecological apocalyptic future and the mystery of why everyone was legally encouraged to harass the protagonist.

In a different vein, “No One Dies in Nowhere” is an elaborate, ambitious story taking place in the afterlife. Maybe purgatory? It’s unclear, but life isn’t happy or miserable. It’s boring more than anything else. One story arc follows a woman newly arrived, which gives much necessary information on how the world works and the experiences of the human souls. The other story arc follows one of the supernatural beings tasked with policing the place (to make sure the human souls don’t go about committing crimes). He has no understanding of others but wants to be a novelist. He has no story, but one is handed to him when the impossible happens: someone is murdered in the afterlife.

“Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave” is a novelette original to this collection. Like the previous story, there are different narrative strands that eventually intertwine. I don’t want to say too much, but it uses the elegant, beautiful prose style I love, and it involves a small European country whose nobility are known to be born with fantastical birth defects. The story centers around a girl who has a tower for her torso.

There is one last story in the collection, “Major Tom,” but I don’t think it’s that notable. It’s using a lot of standard sci-fi story tropes but not doing much new with them.

If you’re a committed Valente fan, you may enjoy this collection. If you’ve got differing reactions to her styles like I do, this collection could go either way.

Review from The Illustrated Page.

I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 4 out of 5]

Чистилища
Львица Иттрий съела маленького бога именем "Офицер Медслужбы". Миллион львов, не бывших Иттрий, тоже жевали его мясо на водопое. Сотня львов, стоящих в воде лагуны, поворачивается к семидесяти львам и кричат в унисон с безнадежным отчаянием: Ты говорила, что любишь меня! One lion called Yttrium swallowed the meat of the smallgod MEDICALOFFICER. As well a million lions not called Yttrium chewed t his meat in the watering hole. One hundred lions standing in the water of the lagoon turn to seventy lions and scream together in hopeless misery: “You said you loved me!”
Сентябрь Кэтрин Валенте. Уточню, сейчас говорю не о девочке по имени Сентябрь, героине цикла о Волшебной стране, а о календарном месяце, в течение которого читала книги Кэтрин. И теперь еще продолжаю c Radiance, но об этом потом, теперь о сборнике "Thу Future is Blue". Небольшая титульная повесть лишь открывает его, на самом деле здесь пятнадцать рассказов и повестей. Некоторые приняла безоговорочно, другие так и остались для меня вещью в себе Не знаю. как скоро появится перевод и будет ли он вообще, скажу несколько слов о каждой.

"Будущее печально", The Future is Blue. Девочка подросток живет в мире превращенном в свалку (интересное и грустное пересечение с "Бывшей Ленина" Идиатуллина, кто в курсе). Друзей нет, кроме брата, которому она с детства проигрывала в состязании за приязнь окружающих. Есть два спасенных ею бессловесных существа, в чьем обществе находит утешение от травли ровесников и непонимания в семье. Есть надежда, что все как-нибудь будет идти своим чередом, двигаясь к лучшему. Есть хороший мальчик, которого неожиданно встречает. И есть мэр этого свалочного мира с его серьезными амбициями. Ну, в общем, все плохо.

Никто не умирает в Нигде (No One Dies in Nowhere) нуарная, очень графичная повесть о детективе Белаква, расследующем гибель обитательницы странного мира, ближе всего в нашем понимании соотносимым с чистилищем (собственно, все здешние миры отчасти таковы). Странно, красиво, безнадежно. Невыносимо горько в конце. Тема цветных стекол гротескно преломится в одной из следующих повестей, но здесь это исполнено тихой печали.

Два плюс два равно семи (Two and Two is Seven) Девушка (?) администратор сети микромиров, называемых Террасами, ждет прибытия своего обожаемого Короля, привычно справляясь с решением текущих проблем обитателей этих мирков, которых она называет своими девяносто девятью несчастьями. Забавно в процессе чтения, грустно в конце.

Падение Р`льеха (Down and Out in R’lyeh) По названию легко догадаться, что здесь Кэт замахнулась на Говарда нашего Лавкрафта. Лавкрафтиана настолько "не мое", насколько вообще возможно. потому воздержусь от комментариев. Ну ладно, один малюсенький сделаю: Они среди нас)).

Безграничные перспективы Мастера быстрого взгляда или Люминесценция разврата (The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescene of Debauchery). Еще одна совсем не моя вещь об одноглазой девице, получившей по наследству от отца-стеклодува секреты изготовления цветного стекла и настолько превзошедшей мастерство, что спустя некоторое время становится главным авторитетом по изготовлению искусственных глаз для европейской (и не только) знати. Дело происходит в позднем Средневековье или раннем Ренессансе, когда сифилис лишает лица знати привлекательности с той же неумолимостью, с какой делает это с бедняками. Но у богатых, в отличие от последних, есть возможность продолжать предаваться разврату.

Снежный день (Snow Day). Саги о Гудрун, если честно, не поняла совершенно, но она немало облегчила мне вхождение в мир Radiance, который читаю сейчас. Все на свете было не зря, не напрасно было)).

Планета Лев (Planet Lion) один из моих фаворитов. Филигранное совмещение лемова "Соляриса" с " Вельдом" Бредбери. Эпиграф оттуда.

Пламя, Жемчужина, Мать, Осень, Дева, Меч, Поцелуй, Кровь, Сердце и Могила (Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave). В названии слова Дёжё Костолани о десяти самых прекрасных словах. Я страшно обрадовалась, когда увидела его имя, которое помню со времени, когда учила венгерский язык, хотя по-моему, это единственное, что оттуда помню. Но повесть о несчастной Внук, которой довелось родиться в мире, где знать настолько мутировала от сочетания внутриродственных браков с магией, что никого не удивляет, если детки рождаются вовсе не похожими на людей. Хотя случай Внук особый, она, собственно, кирпичная башенка. Ну да, такая ботва, прикинь, бывает не до смеха. Так вот, про внук мне было очень тяжело понимать.

Майор Том (Major Tom) грустная история человека, чей мозг после смерти совмещен с интеллектом сателлита и обречен раз за разом вечно двигаться по кругу воспоминаний с финальным осознанием, что вот сейчас нет ни его самого, ни тех, кто был ему дорог, а есть только ледяная космическая безбрежность. и снова с начала: пробуждение, непонимание, воспоминания, осознание.

Ну вот, опять я не успеваю всего, уже нужно на работу и времени на пять рассказов неоткуда взять. Потому последним номером моя вторая любимая повесть "Пламя после свечи" (The Flame After the Candle). Это жемчужина сборника. Действие параллельно развивается в Нью-Йорке тридцатых, где прототип Питера Пэна встречается с Алисой Лидделл, да-да, той, с которой Кэрролл писал свою Алису. Вторая линия - девочка Олив, мучительно тяжело переживающая уход отца из семьи и бегство мамы в объятия алкоголя, проходит сквозь зеркало. Это чудесно. Это о том, что порталы существуют, хотя открывающий их должен обладать немалым мужеством и готовностью к самопожертвованию.

[Kenya Starflight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Catherynne Valente is one of my favorite writers for a variety of reasons. She has a gorgeous gift with words and a spectacular, dreamy writing style; her imagination is vivid and colorful, incorporating well-known myths and fantasy/sci-fi tropes while giving them her own unique twists; and she's able to make subtle but powerful statements about the world, humanity, and common problems and tropes in fiction without being heavy-handed about any of them. I've already devoured her novel that came out this year, Space Opera, and loved it... so when I learned that she would also be releasing a short story collection this very same year, I knew I had to read that as well. And I'm so glad I did -- while any story anthology is going to have its hits and its misses, this one had far more hits than misses, and even the worst of the stories are still vividly memorable.

Valente covers a wide range of topics, worlds, and concepts in this collection, veering between magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, dystopian, and even cosmic horror with ease. A girl with a tower for a torso holds the fate of a kingdom in her hands in "Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave," while another young woman living in a "Waterworld"-style dystopian future must destroy her colony's hope for a better life to ensure their future in the title story, "The Future Is Blue." A trio of rebellious teenage Lovecraftian horrors set out to bother Old Man Cthulhu in "Down and Out in R'lyeh" (this story is MUCH funnier and makes more of an impact if you've read or are at least familiar with some of H. P. Lovecraft's writing), a professional wrestling match between robots and fairies has dire consequences for humankind in "A Fall Counts Anywhere," the real-life inspirations for Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland have a fateful meeting in "The Flame After the Candle," and a newly deceased woman seeks an escape from a dreary and mysterious afterlife in "No One Dies In Nowhere." "Planet Lion" gives us a world of carnivorous cats who take on the memories of those they eat, "Major Tom" chronicles the loneliness of an intelligent satellite seeking solace and companionship, and "The Beasts Who Fought For Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still" is a return to the world of "Fairyland," and has the Green Wind and A-Through-L struggling to hold onto hope even as the Marquess secures her stranglehold on this once-wondrous land.

All these stories show Valente's gifts for vivid wordplay, fantastic imagery, and fascinating deconstructions of fiction and real life alike. She gives us worlds of green memory-absorbing lions, squirrels that give birth to time itself, bird-headed guardians of the afterlife, noblewomen with towers for torsos, rebellious cosmic horror teen punks, abandoned robots who see their human guardian as a mother figure, sheltered politician's daughters, wars fought via poisoned dinners, and far more. There are a few of these stories I wouldn't mind seeing expanded into future novels, while others stand very well on their own -- sometimes a glimpse of a fantastic world is all we need, but sometimes we want that glimpse expanded...

Of all these stories, I believe there's only one that I did not enjoy -- "Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune." It's one of her bleakest stories yet, and while I'm not against bleakness in fiction, this story felt like a relentless slog and an exercise in misery with no respite or even much meaning. It ends without resolution, and left me going "where was she going with this?" Still, one dud in an otherwise beautiful collection isn't bad...

I dearly hope Valente keeps writing, and "The Future Is Blue" is a dazzling collection that's only whetted my appetite for more. It's a gorgeous collection, and it's a shame it had such a limited print run... though at least the Kindle version is readily available...

[Marzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, reading Cat Valente's work has always been a wonderous submersion into language, one in which she allows you to revel in lush, excited prose and then socks you a punch with some point she wished to make that is poignant or powerful and, while not unexpected, she always catches you slightly off-guard. This is a collection of short stories largely dedicated to that experience. A gathering of some of her recent shorter work packaged in a stunning hardcover with a beautiful cover illustration by Galen Dara and paper of a quality that you are drawn to touch. This is the first collection of Cat Valente's short work in about five years if I have my dates right. I previously bought another volume of her collected stories from SubPress, The Bread We Eat in Dreams and love that book still.

I have not read all of the stories in this collection as of yet. A few have been published previously on Cat's blog. The short story that gives this book its title, The Future is Blue is a searing story of a post-apocalyptic future in which oceans have overtaken land and the central character Tetley struggles to survive in Garbagetown. Down and Out in R'lyeh is set in a Lovecraftian world unlike any you've seen (trust me on this one) and, as an aside, slyly takes a slap at racism with the author's characteristic humor, ("A goatsnake, a Yith, and a Ghast walk into a bar. Stop me if you've heard this one.") while a dead and dreaming Cthulhu is 0ff-center stage during all the action. The rumor is that humans (gasp) are afoot. The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, The Luminescence of Debauchery gives us a central character who makes wonderous glass eyes but in secret makes a paired eye that allows him to see the lives of his clients. The Beasts Who fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still is a short story that Cat wrote right after the 2016 election. It was, and remains, a cathartic metaphor for resistance. The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild is a longer story that is a synesthetic death adventure.

Three stories in this collection have never been printed before. Major Tom, Two and Two is Seven, and the novelette Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave can only be found in this volume.

I'm looking forward to wending my way through this collection, savoring it. This is another beautiful volume from Subterranean Press and Cat Valente.

I received a Digital Review Copy of this book from SubPress via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. I also received my hardcover copy a full week early. Yay!

[William Leight · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather mixed collection of stories, most of which are more about Valente’s language and the atmosphere than the plot or characters.

“The Future is Blue”: A post-apocalyptic tale of the last humans, who are living on a floating garbage patch. Despite the obviously sci-fi setting, Valente takes a more fairy-tale like approach: the result is an interesting take on the genre, and not just because I’m not aware of anybody else who thought to take advantage of the possibilities of garbage the way that this story does.

“No One Dies in Nowhere”: A very strange story about what seems to be Purgatory? Valente’s description of her idea is given additional life by the inclusion of a murder mystery, made extra mysterious by the fact that, as the title says, it was thought to be impossible for anybody to die there. (Nonetheless, there is a local police force, and the head of it not only loves murder mysteries but has been trying to write one himself for millennia.) If you find Valente’s idea more compelling than I did, you will probably enjoy this story more than me.

“Two and Two is Seven”: This fable is an homage to Stanislaw Lem’s “Cyberiad”, featuring a King who, after collecting a number of machines built by the constructors Trurl and Klaupacius, decides that he wants to outdo them, although the protagonist is Maribel, who tends the robots of the Valley of N. It’s whimsical and amusing, but it doesn’t quite live up to the really amazingly good original.

“Down and Out in R’lyeh”: Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos meets gonzo journalism, I guess? The story is narrated by the 997th of the thousand young of Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods, a young entity who thinks that R’lyeh is dead boring: he and his friends are essentially surly provincial youths, sick of the town they grew up in and looking only for the next change to get drunk or high. Valente has some moderately clever ideas, such as the R'lyehians getting drunk off of thorazine and Providence tap water, but the style was over the top and overall this felt a bit forced.

“The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek”: This is a story about a Dutch woman who moves to London and becomes a man in order to take up the glass-blowing trade she learned from her father. One-eyed himself, he becomes an expert at making glass eyes, and discovers that if he makes a pair and sells one, he can then use the other to see through the eye he has sold. (The closest thing we are offered to an explanation is that his family descended from the cyclops Polyphemus.) Aside from the eyes and the gender-swapping, there’s not much going on here, really: as in the previous story, it relies for its impact on the rather over-the-top style that didn’t really appeal.

“Snow Day”: This one just doesn’t make any sense. Gudrun’s mother was the mistress of a number of a powerful politicians, before opting for life in Hawaii, because she is convinced that the world has been poisoned, which might even be true; Gudrun is physically allergic to bad art; she lives in a house that contains a vast selection of erotica; she reproduces by parthenogenesis; it just doesn’t add up to anything meaningful.

“Planet Lion”: A story of the impact of high technology on the indigenous fauna of a newly-discovered planet. Psychedelic, but in a good way.

“Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, . . .”: This is very much in the style of Valente’s earlier fairy-tale esque works. It’s extremely weird — the protagonist is a girl who is born with a tower, made of stone, instead of a torso — but Valente is used to working in this idiom, and makes it work. Additionally, there’s an actual story lurking under here, which puts less pressure on the language and atmosphere to hold your interest.

“Major Tom”: An interesting conception of what it might be like to be a human consciousness transferred to a satellite. Rather well done.

“The Lily and the Horn”: More in the fairy-tale vein, this time in a world where war has become a matter of poisons and antidotes rather than weapons, and aristocratic women are trained in their use the way that aristocratic men would be trained in the use of weapons. Although all this is just window-dressing for a story of repressed lesbian sexuality, it’s very pretty window-dressing.

“The Flame After the Candle”: This one was quite strange. In one strand of the story, the real-life Alice and the real-life Peter Pan (that is, the children who inspired Carrol and Barrie, but grown up) have dinner; in the other, a girl ends up in a Wonderland that has gone sadly downhill since the Alice days. Valente handles the Wonderland part very well; I’m less sure about the other half, but it works out ok.

“Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune”: This is a poetic but extremely depressing story about a heroin addict, his young daughter, and his drug dealer. Valente ends it before it gets quite as depressing as it might, but it’s still a real downer.

“A Fall Counts Anywhere”: This is the story of a professional wrestling league which pits fairies against robots, and Valente manages to make it clever, profound, and even, at times, touching. One of the best stories in the book.

“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild”: This is reminiscent of the Fairyland books, in the way that Valente plays around with language as she invents the world: it also features a heroine, the titular Violet, on a quest. It’s also much better than the actual Fairyland story included in this collection.

“The Beasts who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still” is a response to Trump’s election: at the time, it probably helped Valente to write it, but it's sententious rather than clever, and without the context it doesn't work as well.

[The Roguish Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had completely forgotten what this was about to be honest. So I went into this thinking it was 1 story. Turns out this is a book with multiple little stories in it. This is the first thing I have read by Catherynne M. Valente and I can say that I liked some of the stories in the book but did DNF other stories. Some stories I felt were really awesome while others I couldn't read past the first couple pages because it was just... I don't even know what word to use to describe it. So I am gonna give this book a 3.5 stars our of 5.
Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this ARC for review.

[StarMan]

The title story was pretty good (3 to 3+). The stories that followed were mostly not for me.

SAY SOMETHING NICE: Imaginative. Valente can definitely write, but her style isn't for everyone.

VERDICT: ~2 stars. Most of the tales were too fantastical/silly for me. You, however, may love this odd collection.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

So hard to rate a book of short stories without feeling like you’re doing a disservice to the great ones among the collection. The ones I loved I truly did, but as there were only two of those (the rest being 5 Likes, 4 Meh and 4 Unreadables) it has to be a two star overall.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any compilation of stories, an overall review is difficult. The tales bear no relation to one another, and other than sharing the same spine they cannot be readily compared. They all betray their origins through a distinct and recognisable Catherynne M. Valente-esque prose, but are otherwise wildly varying in tone, genre, perspective, and style.

I think that in reality each story herein is pretty masterful, and undeniably thought-provoking, but this didn’t mean I personally liked every one. I’ve tried to base my individual ratings on what I got out of them, and rather suspect other readers would come to a different set of conclusions.

The Future Is Blue ★★★★½

This story is thought-provoking to the point of being uncomfortable: a post-apocalyptic tale set in a future where the seas and oceans have consumed the land and what remains of humanity scrape a living off city-sized piles of floating rubbish. Districts are distinguished by the type of detritus of which they are comprised: technological, pharmaceutical, scrap metal, toys… The protagonist herself calls a nest of wax home. In a similar vein to Among Others by Jo Walton, The Future is Blue focuses on the aftermath of a plot-crucial event, but gradually enlightens the reader through flashbacks. The world building in this novelette is exceptional, with a culture that has grown up out of the restrictive environment, and a bitter remembrance of the past: tradition and song and language all very authentic. The weight of this story comes from its status as a cautionary tale (the readership will undoubtedly share an awareness of the polluting power of consumerism), and yet the overarching theme seems to be one of hope – not for a return to glory days, but for a changed perspective, that seeks and finds beauty in the status quo. For me, one of the quotes which encapsulated this sentiment was: “Rubbing a seal’s stomach is the opposite of nihilism.” It certainly comes as no surprise that The Future is Blue won the Theodore Sturgeon Award for short science fiction.

No One Dies in Nowhere ★★★★½

A rich and textured story of theology and myth, No One Dies in Nowhere was a pleasure to read, with a mysterious but tangible atmosphere and a delicious level of detail that had me hooked. As with The Future is Blue, some expert world building is demonstrated: the world – Nowhere – is a kind of purgatory, in which more transient characters experience the various phases of afterlife trapped in a monastery, whilst characters more a part of the permanent infrastructure contemplate their own raison d'etre. In particular, a detective of sorts and against all sense an aspiring writer, attempts to solve an impossible crime. Like Death in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, the yearning of Sigril for such a human diversion in spite of his inhuman nature was endearing. The symbolism and surrealism sit comfortably within the narrative, nourishing the reader. The familiar five stages of grief for example, are reflected in the stages of death Valente describes, such as the trading away’ of one’s tokens from life, and specific sins are assigned particular significances within the monastery. An empathy is built up throughout the story, as the varied inhabitants of Nowhere begin to recognise one another as fellow non-inhabitants of heaven instead of alien-like, unfathomable others. This and other emotions conjured feel totally genuine despite the fantastical setting, in particular a shared tenderness in the ending.

Two and Two Is Seven ★★★

An original work exclusive to this compilation, Two and Two is Seven is a short but ambitious story about a microcosm looked after by a shepherdess-type protagonist. With an air of Frankenstein’s monster about it, the tale seems to be about creation and associated responsibility, and is somewhat of a literary experiment in language. Personally, I found that the alliteration used generously throughout detracted from the narrative, such as it was, and the twist at the end lacked the impact of other stories in the book, but some very interesting ideas are explored. Probably this is one to read out loud.

Down and Out in R’lyeh ★★★

An outrageous, lurid story, Valente was obviously having a lot of fun writing Down and Out in R’lyeh, which explores the Cthulhu Mythos from the perspective of one of Outer God Sub-Niggurath's "thousand young", living in the sunken, titular city. Typically verbose, this tale is unlikely to make any sense at all to readers unfamiliar with the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft. Those who are will experience a wealth of references and carefully-crafted wordplay, and beneath this, a story that deals with class wars and the plight of youth, which has simply been dressed up as Eldritch. I feel like the reflection of American culture portrayed is a fitting protest given Lovecraft’s more unsavoury, xenophobic leanings, and given how crowded the prose is I strongly imagine there’d be more to take from the story after a second or even third read: layer upon layer to be peeled away. However, whilst refreshingly different to other Lovecraftian media I’ve experienced, I personally found the style too vulgar, which detracted from my engagement with the story.

The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery ★★★★

The most notable aspect of this story is how exquisitely it is written. Reading it was like a fine dining experience. Those with little patience for “wordy” prose would do well to avoid. Personally I found it gorgeous to read, savouring the delicate glimpses of a hugely-interesting protagonist. Perhaps the glimpse-like nature of the narrative was a reflection of Perpetua‘s fate to craft her secret, glass-blown windows onto the lives of her clients. The story does a lot to subvert gender norms, not unlike Terry Pratchett’s Monstrous Regiment, and with a similarly-satisfying twist. I only wish it could have been a longer work, because the story would easily expand to fill a whole novel, though perhaps the richness of the prose would be unsustainable at such a length. A wonderful idea, with unrealised potential, and also taught me a lot about glassblowing!

Snow Day ★★★½

A story sat somewhere in the No Man’s Land between pre- and intra-apocalypse, Snow Day is set in an easily-imagined future. The use of an unreliable, possibly paranoid narrator leaves you unsure of the ending. To what extent is there a genuine conspiracy? The use of titles from an off-page character’s Erotica collection as chapter headings was amusing. Not a stand-out story for me, but an interesting read.

Planet Lion ★★★½

Acute science fiction alert! Alien planet. Giant alien lion creatures. Humans make blunder. Some really interesting ideas are hidden here amongst a rather opaque narrative. I could never quite handle this style of sci-fi myself, finding the techno-speak inevitably distracts me from the story. I feel that not quite enough of the plot was ultimately given away for it to be satisfying overall, though I loved the ecosystem described – particularly the titular species – and the concept of devoured “smallgods” somehow driving the lions’ actions was intriguing. For me, it needed to be either longer or less complicated.

Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave ★★★★★

This novelette is a masterpiece. For the first time in my entire reading life (excepting when I was quite a little thing and read to by my mum) I reached the end of a story and immediately turned back to the start to read it again. I’ve been tempted before (Gormenghast) but this time I was so totally blown away by the ending I didn’t even stop to think. Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave is a story about a girl born into a genealogy notorious for peculiar deformities. Vnuk’s is novel (and intriguing) in that it is architectural: she has a tower in place of a torso, complete with stained glass windows, portcullises, cloisters, balustrades – the lot. The concept of a lineage full of fantastical birth defects – extra parts; animal parts; missing parts – reminded me of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, but a little less “X-Men” and a little more grim(m) fairy tale. The story has the feel of Valente’s In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice, which remain, if not the, then one of my absolute favourite reading experiences. This novelette delivered a similar joyful awe, with its nested and self-contained narrative, which is intricate to the extent that I got so invested in the mythology revealed that I wrote myself accompanying notes after the second read through, because I didn’t want to miss any details which linked seemingly unrelated chapters together. Once possessed of a comprehension of the bigger picture, which the ending ultimately offered, going back to search out subtle connections was irresistible. I cannot recommend this story highly enough.

Major Tom ★★★

An interesting concept it turned out, and a thought-provoking exploration of memory and self-identity inspired in part by the Cubism art movement, but somewhat lacking in substance or body which is ironic, given the resolution. Major Tom posed a lot of questions but only really answered a selection of them. Also quite a sad story, so not one to finish a reading session with.

The Lily and the Horn ★★★★

This story felt like Valente’s answer to George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. A medieval setting with noblemen vying for power, but the focus is instead on the noblewomen. Victory has become solely their responsibility, not through strength of arms, but wisdom in the craft of poisons and antidotes. A brief, but poetic, atmospheric, empowering tale, with a fascinating subject matter, and an unconventional love story that captures the despair of women in love in a time before lesbians have even been acknowledged, let alone accepted.

The Flame After the Candle ★★★

This story was, quite simply, not for me. I like aftermath storylines and fairytale retellings or folklore subversion, but unfortunately not Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (I accept I’m pretty solitary in this view; let’s just say I can’t handle nonsense!). I had the opposite problem reading The Flame After the Candle as reading Down and Out in R’lyeh, where I appreciated the subject matter but disliked the style. Here the style is excellent, but I sadly could sustain no interest in the story. I did however find the contrasting perspectives of Alice and Peter very stimulating, and the problem raised of reality versus madness interesting to ponder.

Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune ★★★½

A very dark fairytale retold, perhaps mercifully short. Ostensibly a story about drug addiction and power relationships told through the eyes of a child who knows about neither of these things, but with a hint of something more fantastical going on just out of sight, which could just as easily be no more than hallucinations. That such adult themes of falling very low are explored from an innocent, childish perspective makes Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune a hard and harrowing read, but also somewhat of a puzzle to solve for the reader. I need to go away and reread The Girl Without Hands and reassess.

A Fall Counts Anywhere ★★★

An interesting fusion of faerie and futurism, with a powerful twist at the end, but not really for me. I found the highly-technical, often-all-caps prose jarring and difficult to read.

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild ★★★★½

Probably my second-favourite story within the compilation, The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild was nevertheless a challenging read, with little-to-no exposition and a hugely surreal landscape. Maybe I liked it because it has dinosaurs – but dinosaurs in this world are blue, and are stories. The ambitious but well-realised world Valente has built is one of metaphor. Of things having different meanings in different places. Specifically the land is divided up by colour, and concepts such as love or sorrow take on different connotations depending on the colour in which you reside. The idea of allegory is directly confronted by the protagonist, which I found hugely entertaining in context, and given J. R. R. Tolkien’s views on allegory. Grasping the plot was not always easy given all the noise, but the whole experience of reading it was immensely satisfying, and the plot was not necessarily the driving force in this experience. In fact the twist prior to the ending a murder of sorts came out of nowhere and was so brief I all but missed it. There was a sort of quantum determinism to the ending, which will need further thought! Grief and depression seemed to me to be key themes, with some very on point quotes, such as “You would rather play croquet with a plutonium mallet than feel one more drop of anything at all”. Wonderful. Definitely another story for rereading.

The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still ★★★★½

This is the only story I’d already read, but I was very glad of the opportunity to revisit the tale. A short prequel set within The Fairyland Series for children, it was a comparatively easy read, and therefore well-placed at the end of the compilation. That said, it had more weight than a lot of the previous stories, on account of the then-recent Presidential outcome in America inspiring the events described. We meet beloved characters in defeat, at an all-time low, and though we have the benefit of foresight, knowing this to be temporary, we are glimpsing a fragile collective state of mind – one that thinks the ending has already happened, and that it lost. As an allegory, the tone set is just right. Ideas of propaganda in the era of fake news, scapegoating, and intolerance are dealt with within the Fairyland canon, and the narrative is a satisfying taste of the story we’re invested in, but the protest of the whole endeavour comes across starkly; the reflection of real-world events and tactics are far from subtle (why on Earth or Fairyland would they be?). That the story ends on a note of defiance from a cherished character shows us exactly where the author is at. A clever double entendre in the final paragraph "He could see the trees drooping down in sorrow, their leaves just barely tinged with red, with autumn, with the coming of September.” hints at the hope we know the oppressed inhabitants of Fairyland will see realised, and that which we must safe keep for our own future. As I said: masterful.

[Pghbekka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know all about defiance...

I love getting lost in Catherynne Valente's words and worlds.

There is whimsy and wonder and darkness just as a story veers towards twee.

Complexity of thought and complexity of language and none of it gets in the way of a rollicking good story.

Standouts for me were Down and Out in R'lyeh, The Future is Blue, The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still, Two and Two is Seven, Snow Day, The Lily and the Horn, The Flame After the Candle and The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild.

I was not in love with Noone Dies in Nowhere, but it did remind me strongly of Helen Oyeyemi's work.

Highly recommend.

[Penny Ramirez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I jumped around - wasn't truly in the mood for brief short stories. Mostly picked it up for the title story, since a fuller book is coming out soon (The Past is Red). Glad to hear that the story will be included in the longer work.

The stories I read, I enjoyed. Valente's prose is startling at times!

I may end up owning this book I borrowed through interlibrary loan, since there was a damaging incident involving a not-all-the-way-closed container of iced tea....

[C. A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally burn through most books in a few days or less.

"The Future Is Blue" took me over a week, an unheard length of time for me for anything that wasn't non-fiction or Game-of-Throne sized, because I was wallowing in the wonderful prose. One story, "The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild," probably accounted for half that time. So much fun, so layered, every word and phrase carefully chosen and many with multiple meanings. "It's allowed to be both things."

Valente takes fairy tale tropes and rhythms and uses them to write true stories, at times realistic, at times surrealistic almost to the point of bizarro fiction, scary and exciting and often extremely funny. My own personal catnip.

The last, barely disguised story was very much appreciated.

[PAR · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 Stars. This review is only for the novelette The Future Is Blue. The story was available for free online at ClarkesWorldMagazine.

Good overall story but didn’t care for a lot of little things. Had to wait till the last page to find out why Tetley wasn’t liked. And then I didnt like her either for what she did. Haha. Didn’t care for all the useless swearing or ridiculous names for everyone and everything. It was also kind of annoying that it read like a YA book even though it was clearly meant for adults. Brighton Pier reminded me of the traveling symphony in Station Eleven. But I do still want to read The Past Is Red. So I guess I enjoyed this one enough.
Read: 6/13/22-6/16/22

Link: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/vale...

[Lia Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5* rounded up to 4

this is a difficult anthology to rate. I can't say it entirely worked for me. I couldn't help but compare it to her first collection The Bread We Eat in Dreams which was the first title I read from Valente and which to this day has stories and language inside of it that haunt and resonate with me. I've struggled with some of Valente's more recent works (Space Opera being a huge soggy bomb in my opinion) and i felt that way through quite a bit of this collection.

The stories in this felt too squeaky polished, too predictable. As though the wild racing unpredictability of Valente's earlier prose has been refined too well into a more marketable dull rock, easy to slide down the throats of the masses. This collection feels very safe, where her earlier collection or something like In the Cities of Coins and Spice feels daring. the stories in this collection are very straight forward and in being so are often kind of tedious, slow to get to their points, slow to unveil anything interesting. There are several in this collection whose endings I quite liked but surprisingly did not care for the journey.

overall, Valente feels too comfortable with her own skill, rehashing themes and "quirks" because she has to be quirky but not being particularly fresh or risky. There's shockingly little urgency in this collection. the prose is adept without being thrilling or beautiful, without sticking in my throat and lodging there to choke me.

i feel very lukewarm.

The Future Is Blue: i picked up a copy of the Past is Red prompting me to get this collection (neednt have bothered, the entire text of the short story appears as the first chapter in that novella if anyone is planning to read it). twee, predictable

No One Dies in Nowhere: one of the stories more reminiscent of her earlier work, like a mashup of In the Cities and Palimpsest, the investigative angle is the most intriguing

Two and Two is Seven: one of the stories i enjoyed the most, an interesting angle on the idea of the arch nemesis

Down and Out in R'lyeh: i remember when this was originally published online (was it in Uncanny? I think so) and it's as embarrassingly Gen Xer trying to be hip now as it was then, kind of painful to read

The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek: There's a lot of buildup just for a small gimmick. also i'm not sure if this is trying to be a trans story or not.... like it doesnt delineate whether its just a story of people dressing up across gender lines or actually identifying as trans so idk how to feel about it

Snow Day: one of several stories with themes of climate disaster, i quite liked this count down to doomsday

Planet Lion: this one stands out to me. it's also one of the truly scifi stories in the collection (not whimsical, not climate disaster) Valente riffing on classic ideas of military scifi in a way that is actually difficult, slippery, uncertain, folding on itself like origami

Flame Pearl Mother, etc: one of the ones with a great gimmick at its heart that takes forever to do anything

Major Tom: i expected more from this one, i was excited by it (could guess at things from the title alone obvs) but it was pretty straight forward in the end

The Lily and the Horn: good, one of the shorter stories and tighter for it

The Flame after the Candle: an Alice in Wonderland followup with cut always to the real Alice meeting the real Peter Pan, those bits were less strong than the other

Badgirl, the Deadmand etc: the only not explicitly SFF story in this collection, tw child abuse

A Fall Counts Anywhere: another one where the set up took forever but the gimmick is interesting

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild: slow to get going but a good journey

The Beasts who fought for Fairyland etc: extremely on the nose for the current moment.

i expect more subtlety from Valente so i think that's why i struggle with these overly sincere trump/post-trump era stories. i dont disagree with her politics or even her critique it's just that from an author who is so well read so ingenious so adroit at weaving in allusion metaphor and simile some of these stories are just painfully blunt in a way that comes across as a little trite. they're not saying anything new. of her stories that i would term deeply informed by the current times, i think her near future climate collapse takes are the best, the most thoughtful (as though theyve been thought out past just a twitter thread)

overall 3.5 stars hopefully this review makes some amount of sense.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely need a break from Catherynne M. Valente’s short fiction books.

Mini-rant: I have never been a fan of single-author collections that are compiled long enough after many of the tales have been available elsewhere (Neil Gaiman, anyone??), not just in isolated formats like on tor.com or an online magazine of fiction (Clarkesworld), but in multi-author anthologies, chapbooks, and limited edition hardcover short-prints. In an age where books and stories are quickly offered to readers I think authors could manage the publishing of their short story books much differently, so not so much of the included content is just re-reads for fans. If I follow an author, I usually acquire their output as soon as its available (book, e-book, audiobook, lending library), so for me the collections are almost entirely superfluous, as most have few unpublished stories. Maybe it’s because I almost never buy books anymore (long, uninteresting reason, ask if you want to know), so “having all the stories in one place/book” matters not at all to me.

OK, back to this 2019 Locus Award Nominee for Collection.
(Hmm, besides the name of the award (?Collection?)maybe they should change the rules for the awards so that a certain (very high!) percentage of the content must be unique to the collection, or at least published within a year of the award?)
So, the stories, where they were first published, and a short comment or three.

“The Future Is Blue” (available from Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 150, March 2019) - A dystopian soon-to-be-reality about living on a garbage pile. Lots of beautiful imagery, a smidge of tragedy, a small iota of hope. Maybe.
“No One Dies in Nowhere” (available in “The Weight of Words”, 2018) - Bird people, religion, and gloom. An imaginative world built around the stages of death.
“Two and Two is Seven” (unique) - A bit I-created-a-monster (fun), a bit heavy on the alliteration (not fun).
“Down and Out in R’lyeh” (available in Uncanny Magazine #18, 2017) - I think Cthulhu works better as gloom, doom and awful, creeping terror.
“The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, The Luminescence of Debauchery” (available in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #200, May 2016) - Tried a bit too hard to be Italian-esque. But the magical glasswork and old-fashioned naming idea were fun concepts.
“Snow Day” (available in Uncanny Magazine #11, 2016) - Art is subjective. So is erotic. Leave it.
“Planet Lion” (available in Uncanny Magazine #4 2015) - Humans fucking up other beasties. A bit close to Earth, now, but intriguing.
“Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart and Grave” (unique) - Elegantly styled interwoven tangents. The most Valente-esque piece. Lovely. Stand-out gem of the book, easily.
“Major Tom” (unique) - I don’t like how Valente does science fiction. Nope.
“The Lily and the Horn” (available in Fantasy Magazine, Issue #60, 2016) - A “feminine” approach to strength using the device of feast-battle. Yum! Ouch!
“The Flame After the Candle” (available in “Mad Hatters and March Hares”, ed. Ellen Datlow, 2017) - I read a play that developed this more effectively. Still, not awful, but why try riffing something already rather classic AND bizarre?
“Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune” (available in “The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales”, 2016) - Bleak and meandering, not Valente’s wheelhouse.Vague retelling of “The Armless Maiden”.
“A Fall Counts Anywhere” (available in “Robots vs. Fairies”, 2018) - The story’s title, as a fight. Erg.
“The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” (available in Clarkesworld Magazine Issue #102, 2015) - Quite nonsensical and a bit romantic-ish. And pregnant squirrels!
“The Beasts Who Fought for Fairyland Until the Very End and Further Still” (available on Valente’s website, ca. 2017) - “Fairyland” is one of the best fairy tale serials ever written, and this is a beautiful addition to that world.

A mixed bag, as expected, since very few authors can do a short story collection with nearly all winners (Barker, Simmons, King, Langan). Valente is losing her gleam for me right now. Her last few novels have been awful for me (Radiance, Space Opera) and she tends to overdo the Valente-ese at the expense of plot. Here’s hoping she gets publishers for her next “Deathless” book, “Green Like Dying” (a sequel novella for the titular tale in this book), and the third “Dirge for Prester John” entry. I need a new non-science fiction novel from Catherynne!

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

The color blue can evoke strong and sorrowful feelings, but it is also the color of the sky where our loftiest ideas live and fly. Which makes The Future is Blue a very appropriate title for this short story collection. Every tale contains various amounts of emotion and whimsy as Catherynne M. Valente deals with the deep and profound often through silly and absurd worlds.

For example: In the title story, all land is now underwater and humanity drifts on piles of trash, divided by the different kinds of debris they now cling to. In amongst the beautiful impossibility of living in a town made of circuit boards or candle wax floating on a world-wide ocean, is the pain of ostracization and loss as the main character is vilified for stopping Electric City’s delusional yet hopeful plan to save them all.

Valente starts with these worlds, carving these elaborate and distinct universes with precision and a knack for language that never ceases to wow me. I’m thinking here, specifically of “Down and Out in R’lyeh,” a story of teenage angst in the Cthulhu underworld, which is built almost solely on the unique slang and urban rhythm of her words. All it takes is one sentence to get my meaning:

“Harken to the eletrostatic-enigmatic low-budget belch-bowl of the low-rent disaffected disasters roaming these dumb slime-streets where there’s nothing to do but seethe.”

See what I mean?

Valente is often incredibly efficient in building her mad-cap worlds (and conveying the emotions within). In “The Lily and The Horn” in 13 short pages, she presents a history where wars are fought over dinner with wives and poison. But also weaved within is the story of a youthful relationship, complete with the euphoric taste of love and the pain of separation. While impressive in its precision and brevity, I still wanted to dive deeper, know more and see what would’ve happened next, which is either a good or bad thing depending on your opinions of what a short story should accomplish (a completeness or a craving).

However, I sometimes think she goes a little too far in creating her worlds to the point where the meaning and emotion is lost in overabundance of details. “Flame, Pearl, Mother, Autumn, Virgin, Sword, Kiss, Blood, Heart, and Grave” is the biggest example. The character arch of a girl with a tower for a body (for in this country nobles are never born normal) is lost in the zealous rush to explain the history and culture of that country. I was so overwhelmed with details that I never really understood who she was or what she wanted.

Valente’s best in this collection are the ones where she successfully balances out the world building and the emotions. One clear example is “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild.” The universe in this story is a strange one. Divided by the color spectrum, the lands each contain different personifications of abstract concepts. In the Blue Country, stories are dinosaur-like creatures, and in the Red Country, death is a red dress with a neckline down the naval. But those traits of the world aren’t just there to be interesting, they are used to explain and visualize one girl’s grief after the loss of her love.

Valente is a very odd writer, expressive and deep and utterly different. I always love picking up something written by her because I simply don’t know what to expect. There are of course more strange and wonderful stories in this collection than I took the time to tell you about. And while all might not be created equally, they’re definitely worth checking out.

[Jill Furedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings on this one. Some of her worlds are so bizarre it can be hard to follow. And so I'd be reading a story and thinking I wasn't sure about this one, but then with a few of them, by the time I was into the groove of that particular world and storytelling, it would be over and left me wanting to know more. Hence the 4 star review, that even some of the confusing stories intrigued me. The titular story was a good one. It takes place in a post apocalyptic world where the main character lives in Garbagetown. She goes exploring to Electric City and meets a boy, but the story isn't really about him. The other stories that stood out to me were Two and Two is Seven, mainly because of the alliteration and the list of Maribels's 99 misfortunes as she cares for the robots in the land as she awaited the return of the king. I remember little of one story except that the glassblower creates glass eyes, but his story was moderately interesting. There was a Lovecraft story, which I am not familiar with the source material and so didn't appreciate that one. And a story that was a little confusing but not too bad overall, of a planet populated by animals who speak telepathically, the lions in particular, and what happens when humans end up there. A story called Major Tom where I guess instead of space, he is exploring the extent of putting humanity into computers. The Lily and the Horn was interesting, a story where battles are no longer hand to hand or weapon to weapon, but fought by women at the dinner table, seeing who can survive which poisions. There was a story I wanted to like more of Peter (the inspiration for Peter Pan) meeting the Alice who inspired Wonderland, and of Peter's daughter. But it never quite caught me. A story of the Fairies vs Machines had promise as well, but it was narrated by a sports announcer robot, and that format put me off the story. The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild was one I would have liked to have more background for, with it's pregnant time squirrels rounded up by Nowboys, and the Ordinary Emperor who appears in the form of household objects, and the different nations of different colors of the rainbow, who speak the same language but the words have different meanings in each (so Violet must learn what love or death or sorrow means in each). For instance, in the purple country, Sorrow is an animal she rides on. It was strange, and hard to wrap my head around on occasion, but I was still interested in the different countries. Of course the final story was a good one...as soon as I saw the chapter title included Fairyland, I was excited. And then about 2 pages in I realized it was a not-subtle story about our current political climate and I actually liked it even more. It balanced the Fairyland story and the political morals very well. That part alone may have made it worth picking up!

[Allan Dyen-Shapiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book of short stories, Valente demonstrates a mastery over prose. Each story seems to begin with a conceit that she pushes as far as it could possibly go. The stories are all innovative, all an experience of discovery for the intellect. At her best, she pushes this technique to a brilliance that leaves one in awe.

My favorite two in this collection were Down and Out in R'lyeh and the title story. In the former, she writes in the style of a beat novelist, like Jack Kerouac, except the guys out adventuring are all Lovecraftian monsters. I was laughing through the entire read. She sets The Future is Blue on a floating garbage island, and as such, gets more biting and political than in most of her stories. Tetley, the narrator, is delightful in her perspective on the world, and the dialect Valente invents for her--dystopic to the point that one might consider this a horror story, perfused with slang, and often profane--had me marveling over the work Valente must have put in to perfect it.

Many of the other stories were also quite creative. Some standouts: In Snow Day, a cloistered heroine interprets her world with reference to the early 20th century collection of pornography left by a former resident of her house. In Major Tom, jarring fragments of memory tell the story of a space satellite whose brain used to be a surgeon's. Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune takes the perspective of a small child as an unreliable narrator, telling a tale as she slowly develops an understanding of what it means. The dramatic irony, reader superior position, yields a creepy and shocking horror, all the more so in that this is barely speculative fiction and could have flown as a purely realist story. In The Beasts Who Fought For Fairyland Until the Very End, a meta-fictional breaking of the fourth wall story, the mythical characters sit around discussing why they aren't getting a happily ever after and the world is shit.

Although she'll play with standard fantasy tropes (and riff on many other things), there's not a lazy, conventional story in this book. Her voice is unique.

Strongly recommended.

[Laura Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for an early review copy of The Future is Blue by Catherynne Valente, which will publish July 31, 2018.  All thoughts are my own.
Writing: 4 World Building: 5 Characters: 3 Story plots: 4

Wildly imaginative short stories from the author of Space Opera. Valente has a love for language, adopting a highly mutated vocabulary (with strong English roots!). Each story takes place in a differently bizarre setting with perfect internal coherence. The story evolution is excellent — most start right in the middle with characters going about their business in what to them is a perfectly normal environment and only slowly do you realize how things got to be the way they are. All very strange with utterly unpredictable twists and plenty of sensory candy on the way. Warning — many are quite raunchy. For example, the first line of one story is “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu farts in his sleep.” That is the “cleanest” line in the story!

My favorites: The Future is Blue where the garbage dwellers try to make there way in a world utterly destroyed by the Fuckwits (I can’t say any more without giving it completely away) and No one dies in nowhere — a wild “mystery” ride centered on a murdered body found in a place where everyone is already dead managed by the “Strigils” — bird headed beings who keep the dead population under control.

I liked some stories better than others, but with short stories its easy to just skip the ones you don’t care for. I’m now planning to go back and read Space Opera — a full length novel. My kindle review copy did not include any illustrations, but the cover picture on Amazon looks awesome.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every story here has its place and it’s pros and cons. There were two longer novellas that I think could have had better impact with a bit smaller word count.

But best is that it starts strongly and ends strongly. The Future Is Blue is the first story and where the title is taken from and features a protagonist who travels across the island of trash that her people live on in order to find her name. There is no land in this story and all people travel across a wasted water only planet - it’s wonderfully told in Valente’s usual style (meaning I’ve picked up some new vocabulary along the way.

The final story is a short set in Valente’s Fairyland. It features the Green Wind, his Jaguar, and a Wyvern dealing with the aftermath of a terrible battle. The Green Wind does his best to explain why sometimes it’s not the force of good that wins and why it is so important that people know not only the magic of saying No even in the face of terrible consequences, but the magic of saying Yes to “the needful, the suffering, and the lonely.... and most of all, we must say Yes to the truth and the speaking of it.”