When the aliens came and cut the sky up into golden ribbons Dan Milestone ran inside to get his daughter Margaret and put her up on his shoulders in the front yard and told her that this was history and she told him to put her down because he was embarrassing her.
The stories cross genre—some are fantasy, some sci-fi, a few are horror and one seems more a crime thriller than anything else. One element that one could argue unites almost all the tales in this anthology, and indeed, gives it its own particular flavor, is the explicit connection that's drawn between speculative fiction and displacement. These are stories from many cultures and countries, but they are, in the vast majority, stories about people without countries, or between cultures. So is it really important where they were written? Well, yes—both because of the discourse each tale offers on culture, and because each tale is, in a way, a different answer to the question of why we value "world fiction" to begin with.
Hey, remember the process of becoming a young adult, when everything changed?
stark as shadows cast by sun within a cave, / but the gravity of hand answering hand,
