Accessing the Future

A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction

2015 Futurefire.net Publishing
Edited by Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad
Stories by Nicolette Barischoff, A.C. Buchanan, Joyce Chng, David Jón Fuller, Louise Hughes, Rachael K. Jones, Margaret Killjoy, Petra Kuppers, Toby MacNutt, Jack Hollis Marr, Kate O'Connor, Sara Patterson, Sarah Pinsker, Samantha Rich, A.F. Sanchez.
Internal illustrations by Fabian Alvarado, L.E. Badillo, Jane Baker, Comebab, Pandalion Death, Rachel Keslensky, Vincent Konrad, Tostoini
Cover art by Robin E. Kaplan
Guest preface by JoSelle Vanderhooft
Afterword by Derek Newman-Stille

Table of contents

The fifteen authors and nine artists in this volume bring us beautiful, speculative stories of disability and mental illness in the future. Teeming with space pirates, battle robots, interstellar travel and genetically engineered creatures, every story and image is a quality, crafted work of science fiction in its own right, as thrilling and fascinating as it is worthy and important. These are stories about people with disabilities in all of their complexity and diversity, that scream with passion and intensity. These are stories that refuse to go gently.

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Reviews of Accessing the Future

Praise for Accessing the Future

  • “Powerful science fiction anthology, … even readers with no personal experience of disability will appreciate these thoughtful and entertaining stories and their accompanying illustrations.”
    —Publishers Weekly
  • “A creative manifesto for disability rights, self-determination and the cultural relevance of speculative fiction. … Provocative, innovative, and rich in critical material.”
    —Medical Humanities/British Medical Journal
  • “The fifteen stories herein center disabled people on every page, in every keystroke, in futures disarmingly likely and uncannily unfamiliar. And just like the futures from which they hail, no two of them are interchangeable.”
    —JoSelle Vanderhooft
  • “Accessing the Future subverts a number of tropes. Disabled people are active characters; they find ways to do what needs doing rather than being incapacitated by their disabilities. They are sometimes able to solve problems with skills that abled people lack. … I deeply appreciate the existence of stories that examine the systemic oppression of people with disabilities, stories that criticize the veneration of cures, and stories where disabled characters have agency.”
    —Rachel Swirsky in Cascadia Subduction Zone
  • “Fifteen beautiful little morsels of literature … an incredibly powerful, amazing, beautifully written book, and I urge you to read it.”
    —WafflesVeryHappy (YouTube channel)
  • “As a recent collection of disability-themed science-fiction stories called Accessing the Future notes, most of the time, when writers imagine our future bodies, they either erase or “fix” disabled people.”
    —The Atlantic
  • “The black and white illustrations … show wonderfully imaginative futures with disabled participants.”
    —Bull Spec

Bibliography

Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad (edd.), Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction. Futurefire.net Publishing, 2015. Pp. ix+233. ISBN (print) 978-0-9573975-4-5, (electronic) 978-0-9573975-5-2. $16.00 trade pb/$5.00 e-book.

    1 comment:

    Jonathan Jones said...

    This is a wonderful idea. What a shame we don't see more disabled characters, in speculative fiction and in fiction generally.

    2 October 2015 at 12:34

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