Dominion

When reading through recent Otherwise award winners, while I was looking for a copy of the novella Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon I asked my library to procure a copy of the anthology it came from. I found and read that novella earlier, but my library came through as they do and so I was excited to read through more from this anthology.

I quite enjoyed Marian Denise Moore's "A Mastery of German". This is a story about a project manager being handed a new project, which turns out to be monetizing human memory by transferring knowledge along genetic lines. It brings in how the narratives of past generations aren't recorded (especially in racially disparate ways) and how this project might rectify that, but also digs into some of the perilous ethics of such a thing. The last line of the story almost feels like the first line of some sequel story exploring a terrifyingly(?) changed world in which this technology is commonplace.

I thought Dilman Dila's "Red_Bati" story was a lot of fun; this is a story about Red_Bati, a robot "dog" with too much intelligence who refuses to be relegated to the scrap heap of a mining ship after its owner has died. There's some fun action, and I like the exploration of what the difference between spirits and code is, if humans imagine both into existence.

Finally, Dare Segun Falowo's "Convergence in Chorus Architecture" is a novelette that I would best describe as Yoruba mythology speculative fiction along with horror elements. It's a ride of a story about the village Osupa being invaded by a flying boneship of multidimensional thieves; most of the village is transported away into the sky against their will, and in the end are transformed unexpectedly into something else entirely. This summary elides quite a bit of detail, but reading this anthology was worth it for this gem.