The Reinvented Heart
Tales of Futuristic Relationships
- Publisher
- CAEZIK
- Initial publish date
- May 2022
- Category
- General, Romantic, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Adventure, Feminist
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9781647100421
- Publish Date
- May 2022
- List Price
- $36.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
A GROUNDBREAKING ANTHOLOGY ON THE EVOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIPS BY FEMALE AND NONBINARY AUTHORS.
What happens when emotions like love and friendship span vast distances — in space, in time, and in the heart?
Science fiction often focuses on future technology and science without considering the ways social structures will change as tech changes — or not. What will relationships look like in a complicated future of clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What stories emerge when we acknowledge possibilities of new genders and ways of thinking about them?
The Reinvented Heart presents stories that complicate sex and gender by showing how shifting technology may affect social attitudes and practices, stories that include relationships with communities and social groups, stories that reinvent traditional romance tropes and recast them for the 21st century, and above all, stories that experiment, astonish, and entertain.
About the authors
Jane Yolen’s 400th! book came out March 2, 2021, and yes it was fantasy—a picture book called BEAR OUTSIDE. Her work has won 2 Nebulas, 3 World Fantasy Awards, 1 Caldecott, numerous State awards (including several for Massachusetts, 1 for N York State, 1 for California, 1 for New Jersey) 3 Mythopoeic Awards. 6 honorary doctorates. She was the first woman ever to give the Andrew Lang lecture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, though the series had been running since 1927. She won the New England Public Radio’s Arts and Entertainment award and was the first writer to do so. She has been called “America’s Hans Christian Andersen.” One of her awards set her good Scottish wool coat on fire. Just a warning!
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award®, the author of four novels and over 150 short stories, and a world-class Halloween expert.
Her recent releases include Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction from Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923 (co-edited with Leslie S. Klinger) and Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances; her latest short stories appeared in Best American Mystery Stories 2020, Speculative Los Angeles, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles. Forthcoming in 2021 is the collection Night Terrors & Other Tales.
Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at www.lisamorton.com.
Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is the author of novels Beneath the Rising (2020) and A Broken Darkness (2021), and novellas These Lifeless Things (2021), And What Can We Offer You Tonight (2021), and The Annual Migration of Clouds (2021). She is also an Associate Editor and Social Media Manager for the sci-fi podcast Escape Pod. Her short fiction has appeared in a variety of venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com.
Seanan McGuire writes things. Compulsively. We have tried to make her stop. It doesn’t work. She wrote something else, and it’s in this book. She also wrote this bio. Seanan lives in the Pacific Northwest with her cats, toy collection, assorted yard skeletons, and way too many books to be reasonable.
Seanan is also Mira Grant, and A. Deborah Baker, because being three people gives her more opportunities to write things. Seanan doesn’t sleep much. When not writing, she likes to spend too much time at Disney Parks, annoy frogs, read (and write) comic books, and play too much D&D. Find Seanan at seananmcguire.com, or on most social media platforms as @seananmcguire.
Mercedes M. Yardley is a dark fantasist who wears red lipstick and poisonous flowers in her hair. She writes in a lush, lyrical style about current social issues and finding love and beauty in the darkness. She authored Beautiful Sorrows, Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A Tale of Atomic Love, Pretty Little Dead Girls, Nameless, Little Dead Red, and Love is a Crematorium. She won the Bram Stoker Award for Little Dead Red and was nominated for her short story “Loving You Darkly” and for her Arterial Bloom anthology. Mercedes lives and works in Las Vegas with her family and strange menagerie. You can find her at mercedesmyardley.com.
Mercedes M. Yardley's profile page
Naomi Kritzer grew up in the college town of Madison, Wisconsin, and lived in a Science Fiction-themed interest house while in college. Her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the 2016 Hugo and Locus Awards and was nominated for the Nebula Award. Her YA novel CATFISHING ON CATNET (based on “Cat Pictures Please”) won the 2020 Lodestar Award, Minnesota Book Award, and Edgar Award. Her most recent book is CHAOS ON CATNET. Kritzer has lived in London and Nepal. She attended Wingra School - Madison, WI (1978 - 1986); Highgate Wood School - Haringey, England (1986 - 1987); Madison West High School - Madison, WI (1987 - 1991); and Carleton College - Northfield, MN (1991 - 1995). As of 2020, she lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and blogs on local elections. She lives with her spouse, two kids, and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of the Never Let Me Sleep, and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her BattleTech tie-in novel, The Nellus Academy Incident, won a Scribe Award. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a freelance author and editor for over fifteen years after leaving a high paying tech job, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com.
Jennifer Brozek's profile page
Since first appearing on the SF scene in 2005, Cat Rambo has published over 250 fiction pieces, including Nebula Award winning novelette, Carpe Glitter, and nonfiction works that include Ad Astra: The SFWA 50th Anniversary Cookbook (co-edited with Fran Wilde) and writing book, Moving From Idea to Finished Draft. Their 2021 works include fantasy novel Exiles of Tabat (Wordfire Press) and space opera You Sexy Thing (Tor Macmillan). Rambo has been short-listed for the World Fantasy Award, the Compton Crook Award, and the Nebula Short Story Award.
A former Vice President and two-term President of the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), Cat continues to volunteer with the organization as part of its mentorship program and Grievance Committee. They founded the online school The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers in 2010, specializing in classes aimed at genre writers, which now offers dozens of classes from some of the best writers currently working in speculative fiction.
Cat has lived in Seattle the last few decades and considers it their home, but is prone to wandering sometimes. They share Chez Rambo with a palindromically-named tortoiseshell cat, a jumping spider, way too many houseplants, and a spouse.
Excerpt: The Reinvented Heart: Tales of Futuristic Relationships (by (author) Jane Yolen, Lisa Norton, Premee Mohamed, Seanan McGuire, Mercedes M. Yardley & Naomi Kritzer; edited by Jennifer Brozek & Cat Rambo)
Whenever I look at Lennie the right way, in the light of a fire in the evening, her dark hair edged red, or across the kitchen island, mid-laugh, the numbness comes and removes me from my nerve endings, an unpleasant physical static. My vision goes rosy, and words splash themselves across my vision in white capital letters: PAYWALL. PLEASE PROCEED TO EMOREG. COM FOR MORE INFORMATION.
So we have a sliding, sideways romance, Lennie and I. When we watch the sun set over the mountains, she wraps her pinky around mine, and I don’t look at her, subdividing love in my head. I don’t feel love, I tell myself, but I know duty and loyalty, patience and care, all the building blocks without the central tower. If I don’t focus on where her hand touches mine, the weightlessness of her presence next to me, if I act and don’t feel, it takes the jittery numbness a while to catch me.
But then, sometimes, I catch Lennie staring at me when I’m doing the dishes or playing with the dogs, and she has this look, and I can tell. She’s settling into love, wrapping it around her heart like a blanket, wallowing in it.
I could probably afford to buy my love back by now. Lennie’s family left us what they couldn’t take with them, and we found
plenty of money in the abandoned houses we searched through before we settled on ours. But EmoReg hasn’t been active since the last ships left Earth, since we stragglers became the leftbehinders. There’s no way to unlock my heart without finding it myself.
This is why we wake early one morning in July and feed the dogs extra, just in case, and take the lift down, bags full of water and lockpicks and food, just in case. Lennie does most of the pulling, more familiar with the pulley system than I am, and stronger, too. She takes her jacket off, though the morning is damp and cool, and pulls on the rope that lets us descend through the mountainside, and I appreciate her biceps and the fact that EmoReg did a good job differentiating between love and lust.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be doing this,” I say when we reach the bottom of the mountain, where we unlock the gate and take one of the communal motorcycles.
Lennie has already put a helmet on and thrown one leg over the motorcycle, but she walks back to me and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Daniela, you want to do this.”
“What if something happens to the dogs?”
“Miriam is going to check on the dogs three times today. They’ll be living like kings.” She twists her lips at me. “But this isn’t about the dogs.”
I don’t know how to communicate the dread to her. Ever since EmoReg packed up their skeleton crew and sent them off on the last ships, I’ve felt the warehouse’s pull—and been repulsed by it in equal measure. I like what I have. I like Lennie and the dogs and the garden and the work I’m doing trying to keep everyone connected. Asking for anything more feels like a risk.
I look at Lennie sideways, trying to avoid the rose tinge threatening at the edge of my vision. That’s the real reason we’re going today: it’s getting worse. My love for Lennie refuses to stay in its place, behind the wall I had to build around it. I’ve been casually unpicking and disentangling threads from love my whole life, taking care and patience and interest, things I needed to make myself a person, but now love is taking them back. The love seeps, into the garden I care for and the budding communities I am loyal to, just seeps and spreads, and the numbness with it.
Excerpt from "Lockpick, Locked Heart" by AnaMaria Curtis
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