BOOK REVIEW: Humans from Earth!!

HUMANS FROM EARTH!!
edited by Chuck McKenzie
Available Now

A popular thought experiment has been the idea that humans are the true monsters of the science fiction world. The concept has spilled out into flash fiction online, in both humorous and surprisingly dire ways. A new anthology goes all the way with this concept, collecting sci-fi and horror stories in which humans are the bad guys.

All told, there are 18 stand-alone stories in Humans from Earth!!, covering a range of themes — and a range of quality. Nothing in this volume is outright a Bad Read; every author has strong prose and characterization and creates something technically better than average. The variation arises in how each writer approaches the theme set forth. There is, as one might expect, a lot of sameyness across many stories: straightforward sci-fi that leans on humanity's predisposition for colonization or ripped-from-the-headlines metaphor. Isolated, these stories would be strong; together between the same covers, they begin to feel less effective.

It's the stories that take the time to flip the brief on its head that really shine through. Stories that interrogate humanity's darker corners and angles rather than simply depicting it, that think beyond the obvious inverted invasion narrative suggested by the title. While initially seeming to fall into the same trap outlined above, Liam Hogan's "The Fallen God" is almost darkly comical, casting a spacewrecked human as the oblivious instigator of an alien holy war. Martin Livings's "The Boy in the Box" is a sort of subverted cosmic horror, pitting a race of brilliant thoughtforms against a seven-year-old boy. John Peel's "The Vorpal Blade" trades in hard sci-fi for an Alice in Wonderland reimagining in which Alice and the Queen go on a grisly Jabberwock hunt. And in Zac Ashford's "The Kids Are (Not) All Right," a teacher must choose between saving the life of a young alien and rescuing his marriage and career.

These four aren't the only good stories in the volume (again, there isn't a truly bad story in the bunch), but they are the ones that get the most imaginative with the theme. Again, all of these would be strong stories on their own, and editor Chuck McKenzie has done a good job keeping the more similar stories spread out from each other. But I would love to have seen a higher concentration of the more inventive concepts, perhaps saving the best two of the more standard approaches as an opener and finisher. It's not an uplifting anthology by any means: the clue is in the title. But the best of the bunch opt out of being dire for direness's sake, instead exploring why we are the way we are and how these traits turn sour when we encounter the unknown.

TEA PAIRING: Spice Chai Mélange
This sci-fi-inspired rooibos chai pairs well with the far-flung worlds of this anthology, from abandoned experimental spaceships to worlds inhabited by fuzzy crab creatures. Use my code KARA15 for 15% off this and more teas from Chapters Tea & Co.!