They don't make plus size spacesuits
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
“They don’t make plus size spacesuits” is a sci-fi short story collection, featuring an introductory essay. It is written by long-time fat activist, Ali Thompson of Ok2BeFat.
This book is a incandescent cry from the heart, a radical turn away from utopian daydreaming of future body perfection to center a fat perspective instead.
Ali invites people to experience a fictional version of a few of the many ways that fatphobia can manifest in a life. The ways that the people closest to fat people can subject them to tiny betrayals on a near constant basis. The disdain that piles up over the years, until it all becomes too large to bear.
And while some of the fatphobic tech in these stories may seem outrageous and downright unbelievable, it is all based on extrapolations of so-called “advances” by the diet industry, as they search for ever more efficient ways to starve people.
The modern day worship of Health promises a future peopled only by the thin, a world where the War on Fatness is won and only visually acceptable bodies remain.
What will that future mean for the fat people who will inevitably still continue to exist?
Nothing good.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This short but razor-sharp debut collection of five dystopian tales of fatphobia is a deeply emotional battle cry. Kicking off with "Fat the Future," an impassioned essay about the erasure and condemnation of fat bodies in science fiction, these pieces range from intimate looks at their protagonists' personal lives to larger commentary on the way the world treats fat people. "I'm Not Sorry," which reads like an episode of Black Mirror, paints a discomforting portrait of a future where fat people must "volunteer" to get implants that monitor their activity and blood sugar in order to keep their jobs and partake in everyday activities like entering coffee shops. In the powerful "Nothing Left to Burn," a young woman endures emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her mother who will stop at nothing to keep her daughter from growing taller, forcing her to try pills and experimental surgeries. Though the dystopian horrors of many of these stories can feel extreme, Thompson sends the collection out on an optimistic note in "We Shall All Be Healed, at Last, at Last," about a budding rebellion among the fat citizens of the oppressive planet Utopia. This heartfelt, empathetic collection is a knockout. (Self-published)