The People's Republic of Everything

July 23, 2018
The 15 stories in Mamatas’s strong collection show impressive imaginative range, cutting across the boundaries of fantasy and science fiction and veering into territory that defies genre pigeonholing. In “Walking with a Ghost,” H.P. Lovecraft is resurrected as an AI and suitably horrified at being (like a character in his fiction) a consciousness trapped in an unnatural form. “Arbeitskraft” follows a Marxist organizer in a steampunk 19th-century England whose efforts to rally a partly mechanized working class are repeatedly undermined by capitalist mendacity. In “A Howling Dog,” an app for posts from community members turns into an internet echo chamber that morphs an urban legend into near-reality. Mamatas (I Am Providence) writes in a witty, sassy style that invigorates all of his narratives, from the social satire “Under My Roof,” about a family that declares its household a sovereign nation armed with nuclear capabilities, to “The Phylactery,” a poignant nonspeculative tale about familial and cultural identity. This collection highlights the work of a refreshingly versatile storyteller.

Starred review from August 1, 2018
Mamatas' (I Am Providence?, 2016) voluminous output of short stories has been spread across the periodical publishing landscape. Thankfully, he has compiled 13 previously published stories, one brand-new tale, and his preferred text of his short novel, Under My Roof, a brilliant but overlooked tale based on Aristophanes' Acharnians in which a Long Island family builds a nuclear bomb in their garden to use as leverage to secede from the U.S. From the first story of the collection, Walking with a Ghost, an unsettling yet intriguing tale about the creation of a Lovecraft AI that has achieved singularity and is not happy with being resurrected, readers get a sense of Mamatas' expertise at simultaneously embracing and skewering the speculative genres. Each tale is entertaining on its surface, but all hold a deeper meaning for readers inclined to ponder it. The inclusion of Mamatas' author's notes, offering a peek into his personal evolution, is worth the price of admission. This collection will be an easy sell to readers who enjoy genre-blending authors of thought-provoking and topical tales, such as Jeffrey Ford, China Mi�ville, and Jeff VanderMeer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)