Stories
by Justin C. Key
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2023
288 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
Black Mirror meets Get Out in this gripping story collection reminiscent of the work of Octavia E. Butler, which deftly blends science fiction, horror, and fantasy to examine issues of race, class, and prejudice - an electrifying, oftentimes heartbreaking debut from an extraordinary new voice.
Justin C. Key has long been obsessed with monsters. Reading R. L. Stine's Goosebumps as a kid, he imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a triumphant end. But when watching Scream 2, in which the movie's only Black couple is promptly killed off, he realized that the Black and Brown characters in his favorite genre were almost always the victim or villain—if they were portrayed at all.
In The World Wasn't Ready for You, Key expands and subverts the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, loneliness, and what it means to be a person in the world, while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us. In the opening story, "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," a sci-fi love story turned nightmare, a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In "Spider King," an inmate agrees to participate in an experimental medical study offered to Black prisoners in exchange for early release, only to find his body reacting with disturbing symptoms. And in the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a prejudiced world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat.
The World Wasn't Ready for You is a gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key's remarkable literary gifts—a skill at crafting science fiction stories equaled by an ability to sculpt characters and narrative—as well as his utterly fresh take on how genre can be used to delight, awe, frighten, and ultimately challenge our perceptions. Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.
"One of many distinctive new Black American voices in the fantasy genre, Key shows throughout these eight stories the range and ingenuity of such grandmasters as Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and Theodore Sturgeon, with whom he also shares acute empathy for human vulnerability...Key resolutely carries on the tradition of the modern SF writers who always found new and rueful ways of reminding readers that no matter how much technology changes, humanity, in its loneliness, folly, and constricted vision, somehow never does." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[E]qually unsettling and thought-provoking...Key's influences are wide-ranging, from genre greats like Octavia Butler to B-movies, and he has a sure-handed command of horror tropes. Readers will welcome this formidable new voice in Black speculative fiction." —Publishers Weekly
"The most profound terror is rooted in love—the terror of losing love, of love betrayed, of love in peril. Justin C. Key's work is a cold knife through a hot heart, a surgical blade unleashing gouts of searing fear." —Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues, Little Brother, and Radicalized
"This masterful collection interweaves technology and magic while exploring race relations, family bonds, and social oppression. Key's stories alternate between dread and hope, their beats delivered with confident, unwavering prose. He shows us again and again that horror doesn't need the supernatural when monsters walk among us." —S. B. Divya, Hugo and Nebula-nominated author of Meru
"Really, what is more incredible, more surreal than the widespread everyday injustices of gaslighting spouses and the racist carceral state; not to mention the unexpected joys of love in the time of cholera? (Yes, children; that last one is a reference to an older literary masterwork.) Key remixes speculative fiction and common fact to great effect, adding his own artistic vision to the insistent upwelling of African diasporic voices in this genre." —Nalo Hopkinson author of Brown Girl in the Ring
This information about The World Wasn't Ready for You was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and speculative fiction writer whose stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Tor (online), Escape Pod, and Lightspeed. He received a BA in Biology from Stanford University, and recently completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.
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