Monsters in My Mind

Ada Hoffmanns MONSTERS IN MY MIND anthologizes 49 pieces of the authors speculative fiction and poetry published between 2010 and 2017 including ten new never-before-seen pieces. The authors range is on full display in this collection: the 49 works alternate among traditional short stories flash fiction microfiction poetry and prose poems creating a rhythm and flow to the collection as a whole and uniting stories with otherwise multitudinous and divergent content. Much of the work is suitable for readers of all ages although it is worth noting that several stories deal frankly with issues of gender queerness sexuality grief and loss. Every piece in the collection constructs an immediate and effortless world whose rules are self-evident although rarely explicit plunging the reader again and again into an ever-expanding literary multiverse. When it comes to themes MONSTERS IN MY MIND spans the speculative fiction universe demonstrating that the genre itself is bound only by the limits of the human imagination and that its raw materials continually reemerge shift act and process in ways few can articulate. The collection is not merely weird as so much speculative fiction is; it is weird in the best ways weird in the service of and underscoring the true expansive potential of the human. By exploring deeply human experiences like loss grief duty love courage and loneliness within the context of parallel universes fantasy quests reimagined fairytales near-sentient AI velociraptors and the occasional cephalopod the collection creates a form of access for the reader: a way to approach understand and even befriend the monsters in ones own mind through the exploration of worlds that are vividly different yet achingly familiar. The collection is essential reading for anyone interested in speculative fiction the shifting boundaries of more traditional science fiction and fantasy genres queer theory or monster studies.