A Planet for Rent

Description

One of the most successful, decorated, and controversial science fiction writers in Cuba, Yoss (a.k.a. José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is known as much for his unrepentant rocker aesthetic as for his acerbic portraits of the island under Communism.

In his bestselling A Planet for Rent, Yoss critiques '90s Cuba by drawing parallels with a possible Earth of the not-so-distant future. Wracked by economic and environmental problems, the desperate planet is rescued, for better or worse, by alien colonizers, who remake the planet as a tourist destination. Ruled over by a brutal interstellar bureaucracy, dispossessed humans seek better lives via the few routes available — working for the colonial police; eking out a living as black marketeers, drug dealers, or artists; prostituting themselves to exploitative extraterrestrial visitors — or they face the cold void of space in rickety illegal ships.

This inventive and raucous book marks the English-language debut of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice. A Planet for Rent is the inaugural title in Restless Books' Cuban Science Fiction series, launching digitally in the fall of 2014.

Reviews

"One of the most prestigious science fiction authors of the island."

—On Cuba Magazine

"A gifted and daring writer."

—David Iaconangelo

"José Miguel Sánchez [Yoss] is Cuba's most decorated science fiction author, who has cultivated the most prestige for this genre in the mainstream, and the only person of all the Island's residents who lives by his pen."

—Cuenta Regresiva

About the Author

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba's most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books of sci-fi and realism, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. Alongside novels, the Yoss produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto. A Planet for Rent is the inaugural title in Restless Books' Cuban Science Fiction series, launching digitally in the fall of 2014.

About the Translator

When he isn't translating, David Frye teaches Latin American culture and society at the University of Michigan. Translations include First New Chronicle and Good Government by Guaman Poma de Ayala (Peru, 1615); The Mangy Parrotby José Joaquín Fernandez de Lizardi (Mexico, 1816), for which he received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship; Writing across Cultures: Narrative Transculturation in Latin America by Ángel Rama (Uruguay, 1982), and several Cuban and Spanish novels and poems.