Snaring New Suns, Speculative Works from Hawai’i and Beyond

by Tom Gammarino (Editor)

Edited by Tom Gammarino, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada, D. Keali?i MacKenzie, & Lyz Soto. A collection of speculative work that goes beyond the genres of science fiction and fantasy featuring forty-eight established and emerging authors and artists from around the world who have a connection to Hawai'i and the Pacific. Thoughtfully curated and arranged to amplify each piece within a larger reading experience, SNARING NEW SUNS is a special anthology that experiments with form and mixes genres to include stories and poetry of the supernatural, alternate reality, climate fiction, and more. Plus, art, graphic stories, nonfiction, and even a stage play. "In this challenged and challenging modern world, we need the upheaval that comes from imagination, speculation, and envisioning our traditions anew. And that is what this collection of speculative writing is writing into being new nets for snaring the sun. . ." Fiction. Poetry. Anthology. Art. Asian & Asian American Studies. Native American Studies. Magazine.

273 pages, Paperback

Published October 28, 2022

Reviews

[Cory]

Multimedia collection of speculative fiction with a strong sense of place and home, a rarity among the genre.

Traditional sci-fi is about warping to the dys/utopic future, and watching boys playing their tech toys, but this collection seeks something more complex. The stories often play with past-present-future as one, allowing the natural world to be a powerful actor, one whose story does not end with being tamed or tarnished, as things will certainly flow the other way in deep time. Furthermore many of these stories are set on Earth, reminding us that we do not need to go far in space or time to find realities we find are “science-fiction.”

Some pieces I found amazing, others I found a bit flat and insipid in their use of tropes or language on the level of the sentence. A few had brilliant concepts, but I wanted to see them imagined in a world instead of just a description (particularly “Quartet” that describes what if AI was built with the Native Hawaiian values of Aloha ‘Āina [love of the land], Kuleana [responsibility], ‘Ohana [family], understanding the universe as flow, and acts as an octopus [alien, familiar, decentralized power, translator])

My favorites were:
“Ku’umaka 599-89-6930” by Brandy Nālani McDougall
“Hummingbird in the Forest of Needle and Blood” by Ahimsa Timoteo Bodhrán
“The Bluest Angel” by Don Wallace
“Cacaroach and Slippah” by Darrel H.Y. Lum
“Waiwai as Why” by Lee A. Tonouchi
“The Promise (III)” by Melissa Michelle Chimera
“The Return of the Ko’ko” by Craig Santos Perez (!)
“Stars May Hunger, Suns May Still” by Sloane Leong