The World Wasn't Ready for You
Stories
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- $189.00
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- $189.00
Descripción editorial
“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
“An electrifying collection of stories that would make Octavia E. Butler smile.”—Ebony
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The eight horror shorts in Key's equally unsettling and thought-provoking debut collection dip into different subgenres, including historical fiction ("Afiya's Song"), science fiction ("The Perfection of Theresa Watkins") and medical horror ("Now You See Me"), but are united in their deep explorations of racial, gender, and class inequality—and in their truly stomach-churning imagery. Key has a talent for crafting memorable characters, among them Darnell Lee in "Spider King," a father and ex-con whose prison sentence is erased in exchange for his participation in a drug trial that causes him to hatch spiders from under his skin. The conceit is emblematic of the way Key employs fantastical elements to highlight social justice issues, in this case the exploitation of the incarcerated. The horror elements hit just as hard: "One Hand in the Coffin," in which an autistic child's late abusive brother is reanimated in a puppet, is so upsetting many readers may struggle to get through it. 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.
