Lauren Beukes (Author), Carrie Vaughn (Author), Kat Howard (Author), Aliette de Bodard (Author), Delia Sherman (Author), Stephen Graham Jones (Author), Michael Cisco (Author), Nick Mamatas (Author), Selena Chambers (Editor), Jason Heller (Editor)

Genre: near-future, synthetic intelligence, bio-punk, bio-mimicry, social change, cultural change

The Dust Cover Copy

A speculative fiction safari that riffs on the traditional ideals of automata to explore our strange and competitive relationship with the natural world. Biomimicry is no stranger to literature, with canonical authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hans Christian Anderson, and Jules Verne setting the tone for a trope that has expounded and expanded upon what exactly separates humans from the animal kingdom as well as the boundary between machines and living beings. Featuring 15 original stories by today’s top science fiction and fantasy authors and contextual mecha-fauna essays by artist and Insect Lab Studio maker, Mike Libby, and SF encyclopedist and author Jess Nevins, Mechanical Animals presents a biomimicry menagerie of animalistic machines that will blur the lines between what is and isn’t nature’s design.

The Scene

Worldbuilding

This was exactly the late-summer read I needed. Part of its fun is the myriad worlds it takes you to. From the Edwardian streets of ‘Brass Monkey’ and the synthetic beehive of ‘Two Bees Dancing’ to the ethereal creep factor of ‘Glass Wings’ and the heart-rending beauty and strangeness of ‘Among The Water Buffaloes, A Tiger’s Steps’, strange worlds unfold around the reader with all the possibilities of the augmented animal kingdom. Through the series are peppered the tales of voices that planted the seeds of this genre, from Hans Christian Anderson to Nathaniel Hawthorne. At the end of the book, ‘Closer To The Sky’ brings us home with lovingly subverted Western tropes and a pony who just can’t be beat.

Along the way, I saw a lot of clever takes on bio-mimicry, and a painfully adroit understanding of both human and animal souls…as well as the intelligences of creatures who are something more, something less, and something else.

The Crowd

Characterization

Throughout this book, myriad authors give us their takes on the human and non-human condition, from the cynical take on human nature in ‘The Twin Dragons Of Sentimentality And Didacticticism’ to the powerful love and resolve of ‘The Clockwork Penguin Dreams Of Stars’.

The Lingo

Writing Style

All these stories are, in their own way, powerful, though some of the older stories hit modern readers as a bit muddled and wooly-headed, wandering off on their own musings. That was the style of their time. I did feel like ‘The Artist Of The Beautiful’ and ‘Bet The Farm’ kind of lost the thread and got too involved with themselves, forgetting that a reader was involved. But they’re balanced by the knife-sharp stories of the present like ‘The Hard Spot In The Glacier’ and the sexual tension of ‘Le Cygne Baiseur’, and that balance works for me.

The Moves

Plot

Since this piece is an anthology comprising many different plots, what I can tell you is this: every story ends just the way it needs to. No two endings are alike, but they are all right.

Overall Rating

This is a great book for opening your mind to the possible, the impossible, the wonderful and the strange. I found it delightful. My recommended reading approach: set it beside your spot to relax, and read a story a day. They’re fairly short, they’re all very different, and they all have their own charms.