A timely and inspiring theme. One story that grabbed my attention was Jaymee Goh’s “Scholar Miaka’s Brief Summary of Memories Imbued in Memory Object Exhibit Item 132.NW.1.” You know how certain articles of clothing — your own — carry strong memories for you? This "memory object" is a skirt preserved in Old Demia’s Library of Sorcerous Arts. “Caution is advised when handling the skirt,” Scholar Miaka warns us; “there is risk of nausea, headaches, vomiting, and, in rare cases, sympathy wounds.” M...

"Resistance is an artform, and I’ve just discovered a new medium."(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for homophobia, transphobia, sexual harassment, and more. Each story is prefaced by its own content warning.)Callie’s upbringing has taught her to think everything will be fine. It will go back to normal in another week, or even if it doesn’t, people are resilient and will learn to adapt. Wait, no. They already have.("Chicken Time" by Hal Y. Zh...

Would you recognize the insidious spread of systems that would do us harm? How would you fight in the face of those systems? Recognize Fascism is syfy/fantasy anthology that answers those questions.Through the wide array of stories, we learn how to push back against fascism, racism, homo, and transphobia. We see characters fight back through music and song (We All Know the Melody). We see characters fight back by simply and boldly living their lives (The Scale of Defiance). We see characters use...

Recognize Fascism, a collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories edited by Crystal M. Huff, does what it says on the tin. Each story either explores some facet of how society can easily be manipulated into a fascist state, or explores the courage an individual must summon in order to fight against fascism that may already be entrenched in their society. Although the theme of fascism binds them, each story is unique, and, for the most part, well-developed. I want to give big props to

Giving this a solid 3 because I don't finish anthologies often since my enjoyment of the stories as a whole can go either way. I like the concepts here, using SFF to inspire people to not only recognize fascism but it stand against it when confronted with its reality.I skim the last few stories. I tried to space them out between other novels so I dont get burned out but even then I felt I held onto this book for far too long and if I didnt skim it, I'd never finish it. I suppose I'm learning tha...

An interesting collection of short-stories but sometimes confusingKey words: fascism, short-stories, fantasy, science-fiction, politicsI thought this book would be really interesting since it uses science-fiction and fantasy to carry its message. I was quite wrong. I mean, the concept is good, it was sometimes interesting and some short-stories were quite good but most of them were not. First of all, I think the biggest problem here is to make such short-stories (10 pages max for each one) in a

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Thank you to NetGalley and World Weaver Press for allowing me to read and review Recognize Fascism ahead of its publishing date on October 13th.In my opinion, the best science fiction stories are the ones that hold a mirror up to human nature and stretch our society towards its farthest reaching conclusions. Recognize Fascism: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Anthology edited by Crystal M. Huff features stories centered on how humans (and human-like creatures) recognize and respond to fascism. Alth...

To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.I got an ARC of this book.This was one of the books that I wanted, because of the cover and the title. I am really not a fan of fantasy or anthologies, so I might not have been the best audience for this.I really did enjoy the book! Most of the stories were captivating and wonderful reads. I loved how the bios were directly after the stories so I could follow up on authors right away, instead of hoping to remember at the end. It also gave me more inf...

This amazing anthology explores the various ways fascism can make itself known, both small ad large, through the lens of speculative fiction. Contributors come from a variety of countries and backgrounds, highlighting the fact that while fascism is recognizable regardless of specifics, it is nonetheless different according to individual context - fascism in the US is not the same as fascism in Germany is not the same as fascism in Chile is not the same as fascism when you're queer is not the sam...

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I'd like to thank the publishers for the opportunity to read this book. This was a good and interesting collection; in some ways the theme I think made at least some of the stories feel kind of similar in a way that made them blur together, and some of the recurring themes (we get it, "augmentation" is a metaphor and rarely about disabled people or reflecting how ableism works.) But I think it's still definitely a...

Really great collection of SFF short stories, all with some element of fighting fascism within them. My favorites were Brooklyn, The Three Magi, In Her Eye’s Mind, and Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life.

an eclectic collection of short stories centering around the theme of... recognizing fascism (surprise, surprise).i don't expect short story anthologies to hit the mark with every story, and this collection was no exception. though i did not connect with every story in this collection, overall i enjoyed my time with this book. the range of genres and levels of realism ensure that there is at least one story for most readers.special shoutout to "chicken time" for providing me the absurdist fowl d...

I bought this for the story by the excellent Octavia Cade, not having heard of any of the other authors before, and was pleasantly surprised by the quality."A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion" by Jennifer Shelby - competently written "lets kill Hitler" type if time-travel story, though the time-travel ideas are not particularly well thought out and she doesn't seem to know what the Big Bang is. "The Scale of Defiance" by Nina Niskanen - the science-fictiony bit about growing and shrinking...

Full disclosure: I backed the Kickstarter campaign to fund this anthology. The book sounded exciting. It turned out to be excellent and, despite the grim-sounding subject matter, a pleasure to read.Besides quality, what fuels this anthology is variety. The authors bring viewpoints from different countries and different kinds of narrators, including a turnip (really). While you might expect stories about fascism to be grim and angry, and some of them are, others are fun and funny, even absurdist....

[Disclosure: There is a story in this collection that I translated. I will not comment on that story. Maybe.]Huge props to editor Crystal M. Huff for rallying an amazingly diverse group of authors, commissioning completely new stories, and putting together a themed anthology that actually works, in the sense that the stories actually address the theme. And keeping the stories very short gives the reader exposure to 22 new authors, pretty good bang for your buck. I had never heard of most of thes...

Yay! I finally finished it :DMy favourite stories were ...- A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion by Jennifer ShelbyScholar Mika's Brief Summary of Memories Imbued in Memory Object Exhibit Item 132.NW.1 by Jaymee Goh-The Body Politic by Octavia Cade-What Eyes Can See by Selene dePackh

An anthology with an excellent theme. Tough reading, obviously, but worth it. Like with any anthology, not all the stories were to my taste, but that's basically how it always is! I especially enjoyed "A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion" by Jennifer Shelby, "The Scale of Defiance" by Nina Niskanen, and "A Brilliant Light, an Unreachable Dawn" by Phoebe Barton.

Creative, imaginative short stories depicting tales of realization and wonder confronting fascism. The stories are so short they could easily be a bedtime devotional. Huff finds a wide selection of authors and the bio lines were just as much fun to read and explore as their tales. Here are a few brief comments (hopefully without spoilers) to describe to the stories within: Huff - sadness Niskanen - please turn this into a novel Goh - innovative Swanson - I’ve lived there Top tales - Benavides; L...

Fascism has many different faces.In “The Scale of Defiance,” everyone’s bodies grew larger when they were happy and smaller when they felt fear or other negative emotions. I liked Leena immediately and couldn’t wait to find out why she was so tiny when the audience first met her. She was a sensible person who seemed to understand the danger she was in due to living in a dangerously homophobic society. Seeing how she coped with the stress of being queer in those circumstances only made me more cu...