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A review by essinink
Accessing the Future by Kathryn Allan, Djibril Al-Ayad
3.0
Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction is one of those anthologies that is thematically important, but uneven in execution. I usually read a couple of anthologies or short story collections per year, so I’m used to their mixed-bag nature.
There are 15 stories in this volume, addressing a range of visible and invisible disabilities. There are protagonists that most readers aren’t used to seeing. (e.g. a young woman with spina bifida in “Pirate Songs”, a blind pilot “A Sense all its Own”, and an aging HOH executive officer on a generation ship in “In Open Air”)
There’s also a lot of focus on assistive technology: who owns it, who uses it, and how that which is developed and tested for the disabled may later be marketed to able-bodied consumers as enhancement. (Sarah Pinsker’s “Pay Attention” is one of my favorite stories in this volume.) Rachel K. Jones’ “Courting the Silent Sun” also makes a case for agency in the use of assistive technology, rather than universal enforcement of a ‘cure’ that not everyone may want.
Finally, some of these stories address privacy concerns relating to technological assistance. (“Screens” by Samantha Rich, “Invisible People” by Margaret Killjoy, and “Morphic Resonance” by Toby MacNutt).
However uneven it is as a collection, I’m glad that I read it. Disability in fiction is often ‘inconvenient’-- it tends to be brushed aside, ignored, or compensated for in such a way that it no longer makes a difference in the way that the story is told. But in sweeping visible and invisible disabilities under the rug, creators and consumers reinforce societal taboos rather than facing up to differential experience of the world.
Full Table of Contents:
Props to The Future Fire for compiling these stories. They gave me a lot to think about, and that’s worth a fair bit.
A Note About the Art:
There are eight illustrations in this volume, each with a carefully-written image description on the reverse. With a couple of exceptions, I preferred the concept of each piece over the execution, but it was still a nice inclusion.
There are 15 stories in this volume, addressing a range of visible and invisible disabilities. There are protagonists that most readers aren’t used to seeing. (e.g. a young woman with spina bifida in “Pirate Songs”, a blind pilot “A Sense all its Own”, and an aging HOH executive officer on a generation ship in “In Open Air”)
There’s also a lot of focus on assistive technology: who owns it, who uses it, and how that which is developed and tested for the disabled may later be marketed to able-bodied consumers as enhancement. (Sarah Pinsker’s “Pay Attention” is one of my favorite stories in this volume.) Rachel K. Jones’ “Courting the Silent Sun” also makes a case for agency in the use of assistive technology, rather than universal enforcement of a ‘cure’ that not everyone may want.
Finally, some of these stories address privacy concerns relating to technological assistance. (“Screens” by Samantha Rich, “Invisible People” by Margaret Killjoy, and “Morphic Resonance” by Toby MacNutt).
However uneven it is as a collection, I’m glad that I read it. Disability in fiction is often ‘inconvenient’-- it tends to be brushed aside, ignored, or compensated for in such a way that it no longer makes a difference in the way that the story is told. But in sweeping visible and invisible disabilities under the rug, creators and consumers reinforce societal taboos rather than facing up to differential experience of the world.
Full Table of Contents:
Nicolette Barischoff “Pirate Songs”
Sarah Pinsker “Pay Attention”
Margaret Killjoy “Invisible People”
Joyce Chng “The Lessons of the Moon”
Samantha Rich “Screens”
Sara Patterson “A Sense All its Own”
Kate O'Connor “Better to Have Loved”
Toby MacNutt “Morphic Resonance”
Louise Hughes “Losing Touch”
Jack Hollis Marr “into the waters i rode down”
Petra Kuppers “Playa Song”
A.C. Buchanan “Puppetry”
A.F. Sanchez “Lyric”
Rachael K. Jones “Courting the Silent Sun”
David Jón Fuller “In Open Air”
Props to The Future Fire for compiling these stories. They gave me a lot to think about, and that’s worth a fair bit.
A Note About the Art:
There are eight illustrations in this volume, each with a carefully-written image description on the reverse. With a couple of exceptions, I preferred the concept of each piece over the execution, but it was still a nice inclusion.