Michalis Manolios

If you like thought-provoking science fiction hand-picked from all around the world, then this collection of short stories is for you.

Future Fiction is an Italian house that picks out authors and translates their stories in English. We’ve posted about them before and we will do so again, because it seems they’re here to stay and we really like what they’re bringing to the international scene.

Tor called these:

(…)thirteen incredible tales from all around the globe that will not only introduce you to worlds you may not be familiar with but also expand your horizons and the horizons of the science fiction field itself.

Strange Horizons has a thorough review if you want to read an analysis of the stories. Here are some snippets:

Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Fiction. Edited by Rosarium’s Bill Campbell and Future Fiction‘s Francesco Verso, this collection brings together speculative fiction that was originally published by Verso’s Italian press. Represented here are India, Greece, Zimbabwe, China, Italy, the US, Canada, the UK, Russia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Cuba. Of these twelve stories, four are translations: “Creative Surgery” by Clelia Farris (translated from the Italian by Jennifer Delare), “The Quantum Mommy” by Michalis Manolios (translated from the Greek by Manolis Vamvounis), “Tongtong’s Summer” by Xia Jia (translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu), and “Grey Noise” by Pepe Rojo (translated from the Spanish by Andrea Bell).

There’s speculative fiction, and then there’s speculative fiction that’s been kicked up several levels. You’ll find the latter when you read stories like James Patrick Kelly’s “Bernardo’s House,” Farris’s “Creative Surgery,” Tendai Huchu’s “Hostbods,” and Efe Tokunbo’s absolutely brilliant “Proposition 23.”

Some of the stories, including Kelly’s “Bernardo’s House,” Carlos Hernandez’s “The International Studbook of the Giant Panda,” Manolios’s “The Quantum Mommy,” Huchu’s “Hostbods,” Rojo’s “Grey Noise,” and Tokunbo’s “Proposition 23,” focus on the complex and often troubling intersection of humans and machines.

Here’s a shot of a very happy Michalis Manolios only moments after he got the book in his hands for the first time.

The book is available in both paperback and ebook version. Shelf it on Goodreads.

Get Future Fiction on Amazon US Get Future Fiction on Amazon UK Get it on Amazon IT Get it on Kobo Get it on Barnes and Noble Get it on Google Play Books

There’s a project out there, that is quite interesting. Future Fiction translates sci-fi stories from selected authors around the world and makes them available in English (And Italian, apparently).

Finding the books on Amazon is a mess, to be honest. You can start with a search on Kindle here. Or you can buy directly from the Future Fiction website.

The one I want to point out to you is the one containing two excellent shorts by my mentor, Michalis Manolios. Mentor is a strong word when you’ve had as many beers together as we’ve had, but it’s accurate. I think it was 2010, maybe 2009 when he read my stories, pushed me forward and told me I could do this, and do it well. I was fascinated with fantasy back then, but my true calling has been science fiction apparently. I shifted towards sci-fi and I honed my craft every year. The results seem to be good, as shown by reader reactions and sales numbers.

So, Michalis has two of his best short stories translated into English. They are not my favourite but they are definitely good. The stories in that Greek collection are pretty mindblowing, and these two fit the bill. Aethra and Quantum Mommy.

Read this now

I Wanna Get My Mind Blown

The rest of the volumes are either a single novella or two short stories from authors around the world. It’s a shame that we don’t have access to these stories, and that’s what I like about Future Fiction, they bring these unreachable gems to English, thus making them available to us. Some authors you’ve never heard of, naturally, others are quite well known in their countries.

Everything in the collection has the feel of old-school sci-fi, like the books I have in my bookcase. The covers, the stories, the atmosphere is a way to go back to that time when science fiction showed us what was possible instead of just shoving dystopian warnings at us. Which I’m guilty of, obviously.