Tyrannia: and Other Renditions - Softcover

DeNiro, A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1618730711 ISBN 13: 9781618730718

Publisher: Small Beer Press, 2013

Synopsis

In these 11 stories―and the weird spaces in between―people of all kinds struggle to free themselves from conventions and constraints both personal and political. Places ranging from the farthest reaches of outer space to the creepy abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere become battlegrounds for change and growth―sometimes at a massive cost. Tyranny takes many forms, some more subtle than others, and it is up to the reader to travel along with the characters, who improvise and create their own renditions of freedom. Poet and fiction writer DeNiro uses language like no other. This second collection of stories explores our relationship to art, history, and looks at how everyday events, personal and political, never cease to leave us off balance.

About this title

About the Author

Anya Johanna DeNiro lives and writes in Minnesota. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, One Story, Strange Horizons, Persistent Visions and elsewhere, and she’s been a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. She currently writes YA novels about the adventures of trans women. She can be found online on Twitter, usually, at twitter.com/adeniro.

Reviews

DeNiro (Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead) has crafted the rare work whose setting is the realm of pure imagination. €œThe Flowering Ape€� takes us to the furthest reaches of €œwherespace,€� the stage for an emotionally poignant coming-of-age story of a young intersexed telepath. €œWalking Stick Fires€� returns to terrestrial for a tale of two buddies riding motorcycles across mean desert roads, two friends who happen to be two multi-eyed, and clawed alien friends who refuel their bikes at gas stations manned by the chained human slaves of a colonized Earth. Across these 11 stories and two prose poems, sprinkled with unrepentant weirdness, DeNiro creates emotionally compact tales suffused with humanity—even when the characters are not human. The stories are at their best when they fully embrace and inhabit their altered worlds. €œ(*_*?) ~~~~ (-_-): The Warp and the Woof€� is the standout in the collection, dedicated to the relationship between a writer and his agent in a dystopian publishing future, which seems fully felt and positively plausible. In contrast, €œA Rendition€�—a story occurring in the present that details three college students' attempt at kidnaping a professor who helped draft the torture memos used in the War on Terror—feels heavy-handed and out of place. It's worthwhile to accompany DeNiro as he follows the unmarked paths of his stories wherever they lead. (Oct.)

With just one novel and one story collection under his belt, DeNiro has already garnered a reputation as a genre-bending experimental author with an indescribably quirky but captivating prose style. His latest compilation of offbeat tales and novelettes extends his range even further, including pieces that are either comically surreal or superficially conventional with eccentric little twists calculated to throw readers off guard. “Rendition,” for instance, begins as a straightforward narrative of college students kidnapping a professor whose most famous treatise justifies torture, then slides into moral ambiguity. Taking place in a drastically altered American landscape 25 years hence, “Highly Responsive to Prayers” features fundamentalist Christians who indoctrinate worshippers in supersize shopping malls. The title story describes the fate of an executed political dissident’s corpse as beetles and birds nest in its decaying organs and skeleton. While fans of avant-garde literature will consider DeNiro’s anthology a must-read, fans of speculative fiction who don’t mind a few contortionist tricks thrown into their favorite genre might also want to take a peek. --Carl Hays

Edition details

• Publisher: Small Beer Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1618730711
• ISBN 13: 9781618730718
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200