Interview with Caroline M. Yoachim

Caroline M. Yoachim is one of my favorite short fiction writers (I highly recommend her collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories), so it is a big pleasure for me to team up with Leticia Lara to interview the author. Hope you enjoy it and remember that you can read the interview translated into Spanish at Fantástica Ficción. 

Leticia Lara & Odo: When did you know you wanted to become a writer? Which authors have influenced you the most? Is there any current writer that you admire? 

Caroline M. Yoachim: I wrote fiction when I was a kid, but quit when I started college. Back then I thought writing wasn't something ordinary people did--I knew books were written by people, obviously, but I didn't know any authors, so I figured I probably couldn't do it. Several years later a friend of mine casually mentioned that he was writing a book, and it dawned on me that if he could do it, maybe I could, too!

I grew up reading a lot of classic science fiction--Asimov, Clarke, Niven. I loved the vast scale and the sense of wonder they evoked, but I never really saw myself in any of the stories. At some point I discovered Octavia Butler, who is one of my all-time favorite authors. I love her ideas and her characters.

I admire too many current writers to list them all, but a few of my favorites are: N.K. Jemisin, Ken Liu, Nalo Hopkinson, and Ted Chiang.

LL&O: Does your background in psychology help you with your writing? 

CMY: It does! I think the human mind is fascinating, and several of my story ideas are drawn from by background in Psychology. "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion" was inspired by the Kübler-Ross model, which was originally used to describe the emotions experienced by terminally ill patients. "Four Seasons in the Forest of Your Mind" incorporates detailed descriptions of neurons. I also have several stories that examine the nature of human identity-- what defines us as individuals and makes us who we are?

LL&O: Lots of your stories are about family and grieving. Has becoming a mother influenced your way of writing? 

CMY: Even before I had children, family and grieving were themes that showed up in my work. I like to explore the relationships between characters, and how those relationships change over time. Having a baby is the beginning of a new relationship, one that is initially very asymmetrical because infants begin with such a limited understanding of the world around them. But as people age, children often become caregivers for elderly parents. Dealing with the loss of a loved one is almost an extension of that focus on relationships--a way of looking at what happens when a relationship ends.

Having children didn't introduce those themes in my writing, but I do think that being a parent gives me a deeper understanding of the parent-child relationship, because I've seen it from both sides now.

LL&O: You seem quite fond of using special structures in your stories, such as the flashmash or the “choose-your-own-adventure” format. Could you explain what a flashmash is and how you use it in your work? Does writing in a particular format influence the way you create your work? Or does the topic you want to write about lead you to a particular format?

CMY: My natural tendency is to write stories that are very short: flash-length stories of around 750 words. One of the things I sometimes do to write longer stories is to write a series of interrelated flash stories, which I can then mash together into one longer story. The first flashmash story I wrote was "Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion," which is a series of five flash stories, each one focusing on a different stage of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) told from the perspective of a different character.

When I'm writing a flashmash story, the structure usually comes first, and then I generate an idea to go with it. At one point I made a long list of things that I could use to divide a story into flashmash sections, many of which have since become stories: rock, paper, scissors; four seasons; five stages of grief; seven wonders of the world.

For most of my other stories, including my recent choose-your-own adventure story, the idea comes first and then I pick a structure that I think might suit the story I want to tell.

LL&O: In addition to writing, you also practice photography. Does seeing the world through the lens of a camera change your vision of the worlds you create (making them more visual, for instance)? Do you think that all arts are somehow related and that techniques can be borrowed techniques from one to another?

CMY: I think one of the reasons I'm so strongly drawn to photography is that I am not a visual person. The visual elements of my memories tend not to be particularly vivid or clear in my mind, and so photographs are sometimes a tool for me to recall the details that are not encoded in my memories. I'm not consciously aware of any ways that being a photographer influences my writing, but I don't have any way of knowing what my writing would look like if I didn't spend so much time looking through a camera lens. I've heard people say that short stories are like snapshots, and I definitely have a tendency to write things short.

I do think there are techniques that are similar between photography and writing. Perspective, for instance. A familiar subject viewed from an unusual perspective can work well in both a photograph and a story. Framing is important, too. What are the edges of your photograph/story--where does it start and end? How much of a photograph/story should the main subject fill and how much background should there be? 

LL&O: In many of your stories you explore the idea of identity and its relationship with our body, with our physical form, referring several times to philosophical problems such as the Theseus Paradox. Do you think that science fiction and fantasy are especially suitable for exploring this kind of questions?

CMY: The ship of Theseus is my favorite philosophical paradox. For anyone not familiar with the paradox, in its basic form it asks the question: If you have a ship and replace it, one board at a time, and all through these replacements it continues to sail, is it still the same ship? What if you take the boards you remove and build a second ship with those--which ship is the true ship of Theseus?

I like the paradox even when it involves ships, but where I think it gets really interesting is when you apply it to people. If you take someone and replace every one of their cells gradually over time, are they still the same person? What do we need to change about someone before we are forced to say "this is no longer the same person" or even "this is no longer a human"?

Science fiction and fantasy are well-suited to exploring these kinds of questions, because they allow me to transform my characters in a wide variety of ways. I've had sugar characters that dissolve and re-form, characters that transition from old bodies to new ones, characters that give up their bodies entirely. My goal is often to raise questions in the reader's mind, rather than to answer them. I hope my stories encourage people to think about what it is that makes us who we are.

LL&O: You write both science fiction and fantasy, and even some horror. Do you think that, nowadays, the frontiers between genres are blurring? Is there any genre that you feel more comfortable with?

CMY: I definitely think that the boundaries between the genres can be blurred. I sometimes play around with post-apocalyptic fantasy (which ends up being somewhere in between fantasy and science fiction), and some of my darker fantasy has a horror element. That said, I'm definitely more comfortable writing science fiction and fantasy than I am with writing horror. 

LL&O: You have written humoristic stories for anthologies such as Alex Shvartman’s UFOs, for instance. Is it difficult to combine humor and science fiction?  

For a long time I assumed that I couldn't write funny stories, but at some point Alex mentioned that some of the funniest stories he gets for his UFO anthology series have come from authors who didn't think they could write humor. So I decided to try my hand at it and submit a story for UFO3. Alex ended up accepting the story for the anthology, and since then I've written a handful of other humor stories.

Combining humor and science fiction was a lot easier than I expected, but only for a small subset of story topics--taxes, dissertation research, medical clinics. Overall I don't get very many ideas that lend themselves to humor, but I do enjoy writing them. 

LL&O: What are your opinions about the situation of women and POC in genre fiction? 

CMY: I tend to be a relatively optimistic person, and I'm encouraged by things that are currently happening in genre fiction. There are stories being published now that are told from a wide range of perspectives, and it is increasingly easy for people in marginalized groups to see themselves in stories, as protagonists and heroes.

I still see a tendency for white males to be the default, and everything else to be the exception. When people make reading lists, they tend not to be balanced. Reading lists that are all male authors will be labeled "top ten SF writers of all time," but a list with all female authors will generally be called "top ten women SF writers."

So overall I think we are making progress and moving in the right direction, but there is still work to do in embracing a more diverse range of characters and voices.

LL&O: Are social networks important for your relationships with other authors and with your readers?

CMY: Absolutely! Writing can be such a solitary endeavor, and social networks are a fantastic tool for connecting both with other writers and with readers. I am friends with authors around the world, and being able to stay connected with them online is immensely valuable to me. Things like fb and twitter also let me keep readers updated on what I'm working on. The main trick with social media is finding the right balance--I think it is good to spend some time there to stay connected with the online community, but if I spend too much time online I don't get as much writing done.

LL&O: What are you working on right now? Could you give us a sneak peek on your future projects? 

CMY: My fantasy story "Carnival Nine" will be out in Beneath Ceaseless Skies later this spring--of the short stories I wrote in 2016, this one is my favorite.

I've also been writing a lot of stories for anthologies recently. I have a few where the table of contents haven't been announced yet, but one that I can tell you about is that my story "Dreams as Fragile as Glass" will appear in The Sum of Us (http://laksamedia.com/the-sum-of-us-an-anthology-for-a-cause-2/), a charity anthology featuring stories about caregivers.

LL&O: Where can our readers learn more about you and your work?

CMY: I have a website: http://carolineyoachim.com and I'm also on twitter as @CarolineYoachim

LL&O: Any other thing you'd like to add? 

CMY: Thank you for inviting me to do an interview, these were fantastic questions!

Antonio Díaz reviews Beyond the Aquila Rift, by Alastair Reynolds

Today, Antonio Díaz reviews Beyond the Aquila Rift, a book that includes the best short stories of genius of science fiction, both in short and long formats: Alastair Reynolds. Hope you enjoy it!

Review Soundtrack: Antonio suggest reading this review while listening to the main theme of the movie Cube (YouTube).

Beyond the Aquila Rift: The Best of Alastair Reynolds is this short stories collection's really long title containing the selected works of the British author. My only experience with Reynolds has been the book House of Suns, a fantastic specimen of this new space opera that made me go back to read science fiction with a renewed energy. Despite my general lack of knowledge of Reynolds' universes (specially Revelation Space) and even my more profound lack of experience reading anthologies and collections (from which I always end up running away), Leticia Lara's recommendation (Reynolds resident expert who kindly shared the reading with me [you can read her review, which includes an amazing infography, here in Spanish]) I finally decided to take the chance.

Summary: after reading the anthology, I've decided that they should have named it simply The Very Best and stop wasting everybody's time (and saving a bunch of cover space in the process).

This anthology is a 770-page mammoth according to my Kindle (without which my wrist would be broken by now), containing eighteen stories of a total of sixty-something that Reynolds has written. Some of these stories take place in the Revelation Space saga, like The Great Wall, Weather, The Last Log of the Lachrymosa or, maybe, Star Surgeon's Apprentice. Meanwhile, The Thousandth Night is undoubtedly set in the same world as House of Suns (is, in fact, its prequel). In some stories the mysterious Jugglers are mentioned, like in The Sledge-Maker's Daughter or Minla's Flowers, so I understand those take place in the same universe. However, the majority of the stories in Beyond the Aquila Rift are independent or, if they're not, their links to Reynold's existing universes have eluded me. This is fundamentally a positive trait, because Beyond the Aquila Rift is a wonderful way of trying Reynolds for the very first time before attempting a longer read.

The collection includes short stories, novelettes and novellas. A handful of them are rather short (twenty pages or less), some rather long, like Minla's Flowers or The Thousandth Night (which go well over the seventy pages each). The crown goes to Diamond Dogs, which is over a hundred pages.

Some stories treat space exploration and its consequences, intended or not, like In Babelsberg, The Last Log of the Lachrymosa, Troika or Minla's Flowers. Others talk about art, like the mesmerizing Zima's Blue or Vainglory. Zima's Blue itself or Fury have a lot of elements in common, like a theory about artificial intelligence generation that stroke me as revolutionary.

Horror is ubiquitous in this anthology, specially in The Last Log of the Lachrymosa, The Star Surgeon's Apprentice or Diamond Dogs. This last one is fascinating and terrifying, talking about the exploration of mysterious ruins filled with mathematical challenges in a lost planet.

Human being's artificial modifications are a prominent topic in Reynolds' work. When does a human stop being human? How much can someone change his body or his mind until he severs the link with the rest of his species? Can someone 'undo' the path taken looking for 'perfection'? These and other questions are entertained in Beyond the Aquila Rift.

Another repeated topic is the influence in primitive civilizations. Is it good for an advanced being to interact with a primitive planet? What can the consequences be? If a being from a primitive planet gets his hands on alien technology, what will happen to him? And to the rest of his civilization?

Hate is also omnipresent. Hate of the strange, weird or simply different. Hate of machines, hate of aliens and between human beings themselves. Alastair Reynolds uses hate as an engine to power most of his stories, showing us our ugliest side. However, despite most of his stories being partial to darkness, there is some space for reflection and hope.

Is hard for me to choose among this collection's stories:  Diamond Dogs, Minla's Flowers, Troika, Fury, Sleepover and The Water Thief are excellent. Particularly the last two contain visions about science-fiction that I've never seen.It may be easier to just talk about those that I didn't like as much. Trauma Pod came as repetitive and with a very overdone main theme (the loss of identity by a human being) and The Old Man and the Sea simply bored me. The idea of having a young child as POV in order to show us the world through her eyes didn't work with me.

To sum up, reading this collection I understand why Reynolds is the million-pound man. He is an expert in short format writing. Beyond the Aquila Rift is, possibly, the best collection that I've ever read and undoubtedly one of this year's best books. If you don't know his work or if you have only read Reynolds' novels, don't hesitate, go beyond the Aquila Rift and get a copy!

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)

Félix García interviews Nathan Ballingrud

Félix García is back with us with another of his amazing interviews. In this case, he talks with Nathan Ballingrud whose short story collection, Ecce Monstrum, has been recently published in Spanish by Fata Libelli. Hope you enjoy the interview and notice that you can read a translation into Spanish at Fata Libelli's website.  

Félix García: Let’s begin assuming you, as many of contemporary readers and writers, have been attracted to literary horror by the boom that this genre had in the 70’s and 80’s (S. King, P. Straub, etc.) Nevertheless, many of you have ended up in a literature very different from these formative models. Which are the main differences between that so called golden age and this one that we could label as weird renaissance?

Nathan Ballingrud: That’s an interesting question, and one I’m not sure I have the right perspective to answer. I suspect people a generation from now will be better able to say. That being said, the writers of today have the advantage of drawing from the imaginations of those that have come before. Whereas they wrote in response to the generation which preceded them, we write in response to their own work. We’re just the latest iteration in a long conversation.

FG: As far as I know, your first stories started appearing in magazines and anthologies, kicking ass as Athenea from Zeus skull, that is, without any noticeable learning period. And this, after what I fancy to imagine as a lairdbarronesque life, working as waiter in New Orleans and cook in offshore oil rigs. How do you come to writing in that time of your life?

NB: Like many writers, I knew I wanted to do this since I was a kid. I definitely had an apprenticeship period; it’s just that I chose not to submit most of those stories for publication, and I was fortunate enough that those I did submit were mostly rejected. So though it might seem like it happened all at once, it took many years. I’m grateful, in a way, that there were less avenues into print when I was in my twenties. I’d not like to be dragging those stories behind me today. I learned that fairly early on, too; I knew I wasn’t writing the kind of thing I felt like I’d eventually be capable of, so I chose to work the kinds of jobs, and live in the kinds of places, that would put me into contact with different perspectives on the world. At some point in my early thirties, without even really thinking about it, I felt ready, and I started writing again. I think it’s extremely important for writers not to get too isolated from the world around them. You have to keep in touch with the world. That’s much more important than keeping current with the latest trends in literature.

FG: Focusing now in North America Lake Monsters, the collection Ecce Monstrum stories are taken from, I notice a clear will of drawing up the classic horror tropes but for the significant exception of the lovecraftian pantheon. Explain to us, please, this abhorrence to tentacles.

NB: I don’t abhor tentacles at all. I get great joy from reading Lovecraft, and other kinds of cosmic horror. But it doesn’t reflect what’s inside of me: my own fears or anxieties or obsessions. I don’t care about humanity’s insignificance; in fact, I find comfort in it. To write effectively -- whether or not you’re writing horror -- I think it’s important that you write about whatever unsettles you, or nags at your spirit, or puts a thorn in your heart. For me, it almost always comes down to the misunderstandings in close relationships, or the way love can lead you down strange avenues, sometimes to your peril. The classic tropes of horror fiction have always held great appeal to me; I think they’re still powerful symbols, if properly used. Part of the fun of using them is rediscovering what made them terrifying to begin with. They can be wonderful tools for magnifying a variety of themes.

FG: Your stories bring up characters living crucial moments, just in the act of making the decisions that determine them to the reader and themselves. In this sense, comparisons with Raymond Carver are justified, although in your stories that crucial moments usually include some supernatural or monstrous element that catalyzes the conflict. When it comes to build these characters, do you turn to observation, to your own personal experiences or established archetypes?

NB: I avoid archetypes with characters whenever possible. Archetypes can work well for the monsters, but you have to be mindful of how you’re using them, to avoid falling into cliche. For my characters I rely on both observation and personal experience. There’s a lot of both in North American Lake Monsters. A lot of myself, a lot of what I fear I might be, and a lot of what I see in the people around me. Writers should be observers of the human drama, which means more listening than speaking. Writers should do their talking on the page.

FG: I’m asking the same thing about the places. In a recent debate, Scott Nicolay emphasized very eloquently the need to use places you are familiar with, and it’s obviously a successful method for him. Does it also work for you?

NB: It does. Most of my stories have been set in New Orleans and the southern Appalachians, two places I’m very familiar with. Atmosphere is vital to horror and dark fiction, and setting is often the bedrock for atmosphere. Familiarity allows you to access elements of setting that will not be available to those who haven’t experience it first-hand: the smell, the air pressure, the hidden pockets. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that kind of familiarity a need, but it’s certainly a boon. 

FG: In the last years we have watched some “indie” horror films as It Follows (2014) or The Babadook (2014) that resonate deeply with what’s going on in the literary field, although it seems that Hollywood blockbusters go against the tide. How do you see the mutual influence between horror literature and horror film?

NB: I’m not sure I agree that those movies resonate much with what’s going in the current literary field. I think they resonate with the writers, because they’re terrific films, but they seem more engaged with the tropes of other, older horror films than they do with the current literary scene. The new Netflix series Stranger Things is another example of this; it engages with the horror tropes of the 80s -- King and Spielberg, most obviously -- and arguably not at all with anything from the new century. I think this is typical. Writers are often much more directly influenced by movies than vice versa. No doubt this is due to the nature of the movie making business, which tends to proceed glacially and with extraordinary timidity. Thankfully, there are signs that the filmmaking world is starting to notice what’s happening on this side of the fence, with forthcoming movies based on works by Jeff VanderMeer and Laird Barron. Others, no doubt, are percolating behind the scenes.

FG: If I were to judge by your recent works (I’m thinking now of “The atlas of Hell”), a clear influence of contemporary comic book -in the line of Vertigo or Image- can be noticed, which translates in that a growing focus on the plot without detriment of weird atmospherics. To me, this relates you even more to classic pulp. Can you talk to us about this topic and say if we can wait similar things in your future works?

NB: Oh, definitely. I love comic books, and I love pulp fiction. I think some of the most interesting writers today are working in comics -- Mike Mignola, Emily Carroll, and Matt Fraction, to name a very few. I love the wild inventiveness, the unapologetic striving for entertainment value, the pursuit of joy. None of this works at cross-purposes to the atmosphere, weird or otherwise. On the contrary, pulp and atmosphere are natural cousins. More challenging is avoiding cliche. Part of the appeal of pulp fiction has traditionally been its reliance on predictable settings or outcomes, functioning as a kind of literary comfort food. When working with these trappings, I try to subvert those expectations. As in earlier stories like “Wild Acre” and “The Good Husband”, I try to use genre trappings -- in this case, pulp or comic book trappings -- to tell different kinds of stories, which might lead to unexpected endings. I’ve been having a lot of fun pursuing this new avenue.

FG: In Spain we have a settled bias against short fiction. Press houses consider collections and anthologies as poor sellers, and readers seem anxious to punish their wrists with doorstoppers the heavier the better. Nevertheless, there’s a view in the horror field, a view that dates back to Edgar Allan Poe, that short stories are the ideal vehicle for literary horror, or even, that the sensation of dread cannot be maintained through the length of a novel. As a known short story writer who is writing at least a novel (as far as I know) at the same time, where do you stand on this controversy?

NB: I think there have been novels which maintained the atmosphere of dread very successfully -- Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Robert Marasco’s Burnt Offerings, Adam Nevill’s No One Gets Out Alive -- but I think it’s fair to say that successful examples are much rarer in the long form. Horror fiction relies as heavily on atmosphere as it does on character, so it really thrives in the short story to novella range. You can’t consider yourself a connoisseur of horror fiction if you’re not engaging with short fiction. Most of the true classics are found there.

FG: Finally, it has been two years from North American Lake Monsters release and what your devoted readers want to know is if there is another collection coming our way. If so, will it be only previously published material or unpublished one? Where would it be published?...

NB: Absolutely! My next collection of stories will be published soon -- probably in 2017 -- by Small Beer Press. It will be called The Atlas of Hell: Stories, and will have a lot of stories which engage with the pulp themes we’ve already talked about. Most of it will be reprints, but there should be two brand new pieces. It’ll be a lot different in tone from North American Lake Monsters, but it will have the same underlying aesthetic, so hopefully readers will come along for the ride. 

(You can also read this interview in Spanish at Fata Libelli's website/También puedes leer esta entrevista en español en la página de Fata Libelli)

Pawn's Gambit and Other Stratagems, by Timothy Zahn

(Disclaimer: English is my second language, so I want to apologize in advance for there may be mistakes in the text below. If you find any, please let me know so that I can correct it. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.)

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to Lugt, Schwestern! Die Weckerin lacht in den Grund from Richard Wagner's Das Reingold (Spotify, YouTube).

There is nothing comparable to starting the year reading a good book. Especially when it is an unexpected, surprising one. This has been the case for me with Pawn's Gambit and Other Stratagems, a collection of short fiction by Timothy Zahn. I picked it up without having read anything by the author before, knowing only that his was very well regarded for his novels in the Star Wars universe. And I am really, really glad that I decided to give this book a try. 

The first thing that surprised me was the wide variety of topics and styles of the many stories of this collection. You will find pure science fiction, as in "The Price of Survival" or "Cascade Point", but also classic fantasy, as in "Clean Slate" or "Trollbridge"; there are humorous stories ("Music Hath Charms") and deadly serious ones ("The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment"); tales about trolls, dogs, Wall Street brokers, voodoo dolls and magical telephone guides. In fact, one of the many pleasures of reading Pawn's Gambit and Other Stratagems is to start a new story and be surprised (again) by the imagination of Zahn.

I did like almost every story collected in the book, but there is a handful of them that I found to be truly excellent. "The Final Report on the Lifeline Experiment" is very lucid take on a highly polemic issue that the author manages to expose, explore and dissect in an unexpected way. A perfect example of the power of science fiction as a speculative tool to approach important topics of social and human interest. Highly recommended. 

"Hitmen-See Murderers" and "The Ring" are another two of my favorite stories in the book. Both deal with the consequences in the life of normal, ordinary people when they find a magical object and try to use it to make a difference. Somehow, these two tales reminded me of one of my most admired authors, Tim Pratt, who has also approached this subject several times and in a similar fashion. Again, two must-read stories. 

"Pawn's Gambit" is another highlight of the collection. Similar in topic to the classic "Arena" by Fredric Brown, but with some connections to "Laws of Survival", by Nancy Kress, and even to The Player of Games, by Iain M. Banks, this is one of those science fiction stories which you can't literally put down until you know how it ends, something that also happens with "Protocol" and "Proof", both very original and thought-provoking stories. 

The other tales included in the book are also very good. For instance, I had a lot of fun with the light "Music Hath Charms" and "President's Doll" and was surprised by the fresh take on classic fantasy topics of stories such as "Trollbridge" and "Clean Slate" and by the ambiguous but very intelligent ending of "The Price of Survival". Oddly enough, the only story that I was not entirely satisfied with was "Cascade Point", a Hugo Award-winning novella that strained too much my suspension of disbelief. 

All in all, Pawn's Gambit and Other Stratagems is an excellent collection of short stories, with an amazing variety of themes and topics and some truly marvelous stories. I highly recommend this book to each and every fan of short fiction. 

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)     

Press Start to Play, anthology edited by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams

(Disclaimer: English is my second language, so I want to apologize in advance for there may be mistakes in the text below. If you find any, please let me know so that I can correct it. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.)

Review Soundtrack: I suggest reading this review while listening to Spontaneous Devotion, by Random (YouTube).

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time playing videogames. In fact, the first thing I did after my last exam at the University was to spend half the night playing X-COM: Terror from the Deep. Now, I have nor the time neither the energy to play anymore, but I am still very interested in all the pop culture originated around videogames and I was immediately attracted to Press Start to Play, an anthology of science fiction short stories focused on electronic gaming. 

John Joseph Adams and Daniel H. Wilson have assembled a very solid collection of both original stories and reprints. For instance, in the book you will find "Anda's Game", by Cory Doctorow, which is almost a classic now, together with new tales by authors such as Charles Yu, Charlie Jane Anders, Austin Grossman or Yoon Ha Lee. 

There is a quite a variety of topics and approaches throughout the anthology, but I was pleased to find a couple of themes that are shared by many of the stories included in the book. The first one is the idea of videogames invading, somehow, real life. Many of the authors explore the frontier between games and reality, a frontier that sometimes blurs and even disappears as, for instance, in stories such as "Desert Walk", by S.R. Mastrantone, "NPC", by Charles Yu, "REAL", by Django Wexler, "Respawn", by Hiroshi Sakuraza or my favorite in the book: "Save Me Plz", by David Barr Kirtley, an excellent story which also throws some epic fantasy elements into the mix. 

A very interesting variation of the games-merge-with-reality trope is the exploration of how videogames affect our relationships with our friends and family. This is addressed in stories such as "All of the People in Your Party Have Died", by Robin Wasserman, "Coma Kings", by Jessica Barber, the very courageous "Please Continue", by Chris Kluwe, the lovely YA "1UP", by Holly Black, and the super sweet "Rat Catcher's Yellow", by Charlie Jane Anders, one of the best and more thought-provoking love stories that I've read lately. 

I was also pleasantly surprised to find that some of the stories include some of the elements that I like the most about videogame culture, but that are not that popular and are sometimes forgotten. For instance, text-based adventures are the topic of stories such as "The Clockwork Soldier", by Ken Liu, and "end game", by Chris Avellone. Also, I enjoyed a lot how the urban legends about secret games are used in "Killswitch", by Catherynne M. Valente, and, especially, in "Desert Walk", by S.R. Mastrantone, which does a superb job of creating an atmosphere that is equally ominous and fascinating. 

All in all, Press Start to Play is a very good anthology with stories of a great average quality and only a handful of weaker ones ("Twarrior", by Andy Weir, is especially bad) and I recommend it. Even if you are not that much into videogames, you will find plenty of things to like in this book. 

(You can also read this review in Spanish/También puedes leer esta reseña en español)