Kim Lockhart's Reviews > Meet Me in the Future: Stories

This collection of shorts takes the the genre of speculative science fiction to a whole new level. Not only is each story wildly imaginative and completely different from the one before it, but the author goes way beyond future technology. She wants to demonstrate what a completely different long-established social and political structure would look like, and how it would make people in it feel. In most of the stories, women are the power gender. Hurley also not only includes, but actually centers trans, nonbinary, pansexual, and disabled characters. Our biases and ethnocentric perspectives are challenged by her depiction of many kinds of sentient life forms, and other's reactions to them.

The stories invite discussion of:
what does it mean to be productive or useful in a society?
what ethical rules are there/should there be for interaction with other planets and their inhabitants?
what are the boundaries of acceptable family structures and relationships?
what, if any, is the standard appearance of a representative life form?
what determines personhood?

There's no one else I can think of who is writing like this right now. I would like to see this author expand on her most mind-stretching concepts. I loved all of the stories, but Enyo, Enyo is the most fearless. I'd like to see if the author trusts the reader enough to truly bend our minds even more.

Edited to add: please do not skip the into. It's the best I've ever read, and it will create a bond with reader and author.