The Ephemera Collector
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson. Liveright, $29.99 (352p) ISBN 978-1-324-09340-4
An ambitious homage to Octavia Butler, this stunning near-future mosaic novel from debut author Jackson melds prose, poetry, memos, advertisements, and dream journal doodles. Linking the disparate elements is the story of archivist Xandria Brown, curator of ephemera at the Huntington Library, whose work cataloging the Butler Archives is interrupted by a hostage situation that involves Huntington’s new CEO. Fighting physical and neurological decline due to long Covid, Xandria contends with her overly concerned healthbots and a coworker intent on implicating her in the CEO kidnapping, all while attempting to protect her life’s work, an impossible collection of ephemera from the undersea city of Diwata, which won’t be founded for over a century. Glimpses of this collection chart the future history of Diwata, a city in Monterey Bay established after an asteroid strike rendered much of the Southwest uninhabitable, chronicling the varied hopes of its governor, her daughter, and an ex–Space Force captain who repurposes machines designed for extraterrestrial exploration to aid the oceanic colony. As the propulsive story barrels forward, Jackson trusts readers to keep up with the myriad time skips and tonal shifts while also finding the time to dive deep into African American history and art. Jackson is an exciting new voice in Afrofuturism. Agent: Kima Jones, Triangle House Literary. (Apr.)
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Reviewed on: 01/29/2025
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror