Multispecies Cities (ebook)

Cities are alive, shared by humans and animals, insects and plants, landforms and machines. What might city ecosystems look like in the future if we strive for multispecies justice in our urban settings? In these more-than-human stories, twenty-four authors investigate humanity’s relationship with the rest of the natural world, placing characters in situations where humans have to look beyond their own needs and interests. A quirky eco-businessman sees broader applications for a high school science fair project. A bad date in Hawai‘i takes an unexpected turn when the couple stumbles upon some confused sea turtle hatchlings. A genetically-enhanced supersoldier struggles to find new purpose in a peaceful Tokyo. A community service punishment in Singapore leads to unexpected friendships across age and species. A boy and a mammoth trek across Asia in search of kin. A Tamil child learns the language of the stars. Set primarily in the Asia-Pacific, these stories engage with the serious issues of justice, inclusion, and sustainability that affect the region, while offering optimistic visions of tomorrow's urban spaces.

"Listen: A Memoir" by Priya Sarukkai Chabria
"By the Light of the Stars" by N. R. M. Roshak
"Old Man's Sea" by Meyari McFarland
"Deer, Tiger, and Witch" by Kate V. Bui
"Vladivostok" by Avital Balwit
"The Exuberant Vitality of Hatchling Habitats" by D.A. Xiaolin Spires
"Untamed" by Timothy Yam
"It is the year 2115" by Joyce Chng
"A Rabbit Egg for Flora" by Caroline M. Yoachim
"Iron Fox in the Marble City" by Vlad-Andrei Cucu
"Mariposa Awakening" by Joseph F. Nacino
"A Life With Cibi" by Natsumi Tanaka
"Children of Asphalt" by Phoebe Wagner
"Down the River" by Eliza Victoria
"Becoming Martians" by Taiyo Fujii
"Abso" by Sarah E. Stevens
"In Two Minds" by Joel R Hunt
"Arfabad" by Rimi B. Chatterjee
"The Mammoth Steps" by Andrew Dana Hudson
"Wandjina" by Amin Chehelnabi
"The Streams Are Paved With Fish Traps" by Octavia Cade
"Crew" by E.-H. Nießler
"The Songs That Humanity Lost Reluctantly to Dolphins" by Shweta Taneja
"The Birdsong Fossil" by D.K. Mok

Excerpts

"Down the River" by Eliza Victoria

The surplus allowed us to support a larger population. Allowed us to build permanent settlements. Cities. Fortifications. Apartments. Hotels.

Whosoever lived near the water thrived, sold its surplus grain to other towns, grew wealthy. Some crops were considered more valuable than others. So valuable that people went to war, forced other lands to produce only the crops they wanted, filled ships to the brim with people and sailed across the sea and forced the people in the ships to tend to the highly valued crops until they fell down dead.

Coffee. Sugar. Cotton. Tobacco.

Opium poppy. Coca leaves. Ephedra sinica.

Many cities became wealthy because of this, with monuments and palaces and golden fountains, and hundreds of years later they would block the people they once enslaved because they resented the extra burden.

How dare these people travel across the sea into our ports without papers, they say to one another. How dare they ask for food and water. How dare they not do the right thing.

We crawled out of the river, and we put bodies back in the river, hands tied, faces covered in tape, or drowned when the rafts capsized in the storm.

Praise

"The 24 stories of this joyously ambitious solarpunk anthology chart a broad map for integrated relationships between humans and nature, spotlighting award-winning and emerging speculative fiction writers from Asia and the Pacific. The linguistically and culturally diverse lineup excels when entwining relational nuance with keenly handled futurist ideas."
--Publishers Weekly

"Every story in this collection is a powerhouse, there’s not a weak one in the bunch. Written by Pan-Asian authors and set in locations from Northern China to Australia, each of these stories brings a new perspective and voice to the ideas of how we can better interact with our environment. Each has an overriding sense of hope that makes this collection a uniquely pleasurable reading experience."
--Maryanne S., NetGalley Reviewer

"Firmly planted in the new genre of solarpunk, the stories are filled with a polyphony of voices—some non-human and a few non-alive—working together to bring about solutions that address global warming, the extinction of animal species, and coming climate disaster… What is so interesting about Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures is the call for changes not just in terms of content, but about form, questioning progress-based narratives, stories of the individual, the lone hero, people against people, and others."
--Books on Asia

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