Book Review: We See a Different Frontier

We See a Different Frontier is an anthology of speculative fiction stories adhering to a theme of post-colonialism. It was edited by Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad, and was published in 2013 Futurefire.net Publishing.

This is an excellent anthology, one worth reading. Its stories explore the aftereffects of colonialism (in its broadest sense) from a variety of perspectives and concerns, and they generally do so quite effectively. Some of the stories here are very good, some are ok, a few didn’t resonate with me at all, but almost universally these stories take on some aspect of the theme from a unique perspective. The anthology sustains unity of theme throughout without being too uniform (or too heavy-handed, for the most part). (I should note the preface and afterword are also quite worth reading.) The end result is to create a whole that, to use a cliché, is more than the sum of its parts. Which is to say that this collections’s excellence rests not so much on the quality of the stories in it but rather on what the collection achieves in its totality.

Which is not to put down the stories themselves! “A Heap of Broken Images” by Sunny Moraine was especially worth reading; it is profound and thought-provoking. “Them Ships” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and “Remembering Turinam” by N.A. Ratnayake are also in the thought-provoking category. “A Bridge of Words” by Dinesh Rao is quite a good story, and one of the most traditionally science-fictional stories of the lot. “Dark Continents” by Lavie Tidhar is the least traditional of the stories, jumping between times and timelines, but it has in it some interesting what-ifs. I did not, as I said, like every story here, but some of that might be a matter of taste, and certainly I think the best stories more than make up for the weakest.

But whatever the artistic merits of this anthology, I think its social value is much greater. The effects of colonialism are not only worth discussing, they need to be discussed. That We See a Different Frontier explores this topic, and is so effective in doing so, is to be commended. I certainly found my thinking challenged and stretched by reading it, and sometimes, I was even uncomfortable. But I think that just demonstrates how effective this anthology truly is.

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(This review can also be found on Goodreads and LibraryThing.)