Just Finished Reading: Speculative Los Angeles edited by Denise Hamilton (FP: 2021) [301pp] 

Los Angeles may be the City of Angels, but it's also the City of Dreams and the City of Illusions. Here we are presented with 14 of those illusions, dreams and nightmares from all across the city. 

This volume certainly started well with ‘Antonia and the Stranger Who Came to Rancho Los Feliz’ by Lisa Morton. This was a tale of alternate worlds and desperate people and certainly set the tone – often dark – for the subsequent stories. Continuing with the dark side of things was ‘Detainment’ by Alex Espinoza where a recent immigrant mother is overjoyed to be reunited with her child only to find him ‘changed’ by the separation. Inevitably Cyberpunk gets a look-in with stories like ‘Where There are Cities, These Dissolve Too’ by S Qiouyi Lu where homemade robots fight each other in vast city dumps, or in ‘If Memory Serves’ by Lynell where some try to retain memories of the city as it was before rising sea levels or slash and burn development destroys everything around them. One I found particulary interesting was ‘Love, Rocket Science and the Mother of Abominations’ by Stephen Blackmore where a group of hackers search for a lost relic that is MUCH more esoteric than it seems with disastrous consequences. I was intrigued enough to wonder exactly how much of the background story was real. 

Speaking of reality (or otherwise), a shift to the more horror side of things – in Part 3 – kicked off with ‘Purple Panic’ by Francesca Lia Block which was decidedly creepy. ‘Walk of Fame’ by Duane Swierczynski was an interesting spin on the arrival of human mutants in the guise of psychics with an axe to grind with celebrity culture. Finally, I’ll mention a racial, cyberpunk, rebellion story ‘Jaguar’s Breath’ by Luis J Rodrigez which got me thinking (at least a bit) of Terminator. 

Overall, this was an above average collection of stories based around an individual city. Apparently, it was supposed to be the first of a series of such books (yeah!) but nothing has been produced since. I am hoping though that something further might be in the pipeline. I’ll certainly be looking out for them. Definitely recommended for all SF nerds.