That is not to say there are not some traces of unexplained fantasy, such as a girl who sprouts wings from her ankles, but mostly, Fu’s monsters manifest from modernity.Ĭatastrophe looms on the horizon for all these characters, but the devastation remains personal. Technology, rather than magic, catalyzes these changes. The dangers are less ethereal and more present. The threats are less existential and more imminent. In the last century, we would have labeled these stories as magical realism, but the twenty-first century has moved beyond the fabulism of the twentieth. This latest book contains twelve stories drawing on speculative and fantastical elements. This is not a collection filled with fantastic beasts, although a sea monster does make an appearance, but instead illuminates the monstrous nature of humanity.įu is the author of two previous novels and a collection of poetry. In Kim Fu’s new collection of stories, Lesser Known Monsters Of The 21st Century, the horrors are more intimate, smaller, and less global in scale. Pandemics, climate change, volcanic eruptions-each sweeping horror seems worse than the last.
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