The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria
by Carlos Hernandez
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Pub Date Jan 25 2016 | Archive Date Jan 27 2016
Description
Assimilation is founded on surrender and being broken; this collection of short stories features people who have assimilated, but are actively trying to reclaim their lives. There is a concert pianist who defies death by uploading his soul into his piano. There is the person who draws his mother's ghost out of the bullet hole in the wall near where she was executed. Another character has a horn growing out of the center of his forehead—punishment for an affair. But he is too weak to end it, too much in love to be moral. Another story recounts a panda breeder looking for tips. And then there's a border patrol agent trying to figure out how to process undocumented visitors from another galaxy. Poignant by way of funny, and philosophical by way of grotesque, Hernandez's stories are prayers for self-sovereignty.
Advance Praise
—Delia Sherman, author of Young Woman in a Garden
“Hernandez’s The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria is fantastic and sincere, seamlessly blending science, magic and love. Whether rescuing trickster jellyfish frozen on Mount Everest, or reattaching legs to a lover’s husband via superportation, Hernandez cuts to the human heart of each story and wraps an ebo around his readers.”
—Eden Robinson
“In his debut collection, Carlos Hernandez explores the ways in which we conform our identities to fit into worlds that would otherwise break us. But all of his characters strive to reclaim the parts of themselves that could easily be thought of as lost. Funny, smart, and fierce, these stories are a breath of fresh air in a tightly constricted world.”
—Christopher Barzak, author of Wonders of the Invisible World
“These delightful stories from Carlos Hernandez dance with a light step and a knowing wink, and yet that effervescent surface wraps jaw-dropping twists and mind-bending concepts within its boundaries. Science fiction and magical realism freely fraternize, quantum fluctuation and ritual incantations just two aspects of the same great mystery. In these intimate stories of families rent apart and repaired, that mystery is just as likely to be encountered in a humble kitchen or a lover’s bed as it is in outer space or the deepest trenches of the ocean. Each story is a shimmering pond that once dived in proves bottomless. The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria is a remarkable debut, an intoxicating breath of fresh air.”
—Mike Allen, editor of Clockwork Phoenix, author of Unseaming, Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award finalist
“The Assimilated Guide to Quantum SanterÍa is fiercely smart and entertaining; a polished collection of stories by one of speculative fiction’s most distinctive and original voices.
“Hernandez’s science fantasy transfixes as it explores technological paradoxes and inhuman intelligences in compellingly human (and humane) ways. And the Latino urban (and suburban) fantasy pieces sprinkled into the collection are like the best dark añejo rum: warm, smoky, exquisitely sharp and sweet.
“Hernandez’s stories go down smooth and easy, and finish with a kick.”
—Sabrina Vourvoulias, author of Ink
“Carlos Hernandez treats science, culture, and genre with a bracing irreverence. The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria is a zany, kaleidoscopic whirl of a book that delivers both tantalizing “what ifs” and moments of true pathos.”
—Sofia Samatar, author of A Stranger in Olondria
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781495607394 |
| PRICE | $15.95 (USD) |
Average rating from 18 members
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 237563
This was an incredibly weird, and wonderful collection of sci-fi/fantasy goodness. Each story was very unique (the panda one especially!), yet each story meshed well with the next. There was a lovely flow to the book.
I'd highly recommend this to anyone interested in weird fiction/sci-fi/fantasy.
Josh F, Reviewer
What a wonderful and wholly engrossing collection of stories.
But first let me tell you that I typically do not read short stories. The idea of getting invested in characters and entering into their world for 20-30 pages at a time seems senseless. So much so that originally when I saw Quantum Santeria profiled on io9 I simply skipped past. However after seeing a chance to read it on NetGalley I decided to try it on a lark.
This book offers about a dozen meditations on the blurred lines of science fiction and fantasy, and a glimpse at a world where life and death are similarly blurred. In one story unicorns appear after the LHC opens up black holes to other dimensions. In another, someone's mother appears and disappears several times after her death.
An added bonus to these stories is that they all have a delightful Cuban/Latino flavor. One Hispanic reporter shows up across several of the tales. This lent substance to the world and had me thinking of the tales as a cohesive depiction of another world not too far from ours in the multiverse. This feeling gave a satisfactorily feeling of completeness to the whole ordeal.
Laura J, Reviewer
The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria is a 4 star collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories by Carlos Hernandez.
The topics of the stories are varied and most have a Cuban as the lead character. From the ghost of a man's mother living in a bullet hole in a wall, to a selkie-like creature, to people masquerading as robotic pandas the book is full of interesting stories. The last story in the book is the one that gives the book it's title. It wasn't my favorite, but it shows that Santeria is an adaptable religion if nothing else.
Most of the stories have some humor to them as well as being creative. Some of the stories end kind of abruptly, but it works for them. They are short stories after all and not novellas.
I would recommend this collection for people who enjoy their science fiction and fantasy with a dash of humor and an interesting cultural perspective.
I gave this book 4 stars for the quality of the writing and because I enjoyed it. It's due out February 15, 2016 from Rosarium Publishing.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
The review also appears on Goodreads.com https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1516742370
and Amazon.com https://www.amazon.com/review/R2LQSA6QWDCS3E/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B01AR4ZF26
Tamara D, Reviewer
Basically what it says on the tin. It made for some fantastic stories. The Gabby Reál stories, especially the one about panda breeding, were my favorite.
[I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review.]
Yzabel G, Reviewer
Well, this was a pretty original collection of stories, mixing science fiction and fantasy elements against a backdrop of Cuban culture (sometimes with clashes of various, if only generational ones) and magical realism. In this book, you’ll get research centres on space stations, aliens visiting Earth and confronted to ubuesque situations, reality TV shows about hitmen, a piano haunted by the soul of his previous owner, artificial brain implants meant to help people recover from owful brain injuries, giant pandas prodded into mating through robotics, unicorns… Basically, quite a few different ideas here, but all looking, in the end, as perfectly logical and well-integrated. Suspension of disbelief? Totally. (Yes, even when Margaret Thatcher waltzes in.)
The writing style in general was pretty good, bordering on poetic at times, making it easy to picture items (the piano), situations and places. Owing to their cultural background, some characters sometimes spoke in Spanish, or what is close to it; I can’t say whether this is annoying or not, because my own experience with that language, albeit very rusty, was still solid enough to allow me to understand.
My favourite ones:
“Homeostasis”: a take on cybernetics/neural implants and what it may mean in terms of envisioning “the soul”. When half your brain has been taken over by an eneural to help reconstruct your persona and allow you to function again as a full human being, can you be sure the person inside is still the person, and not an artificial intelligence?
“The International Studbook of the Giant Panda”: bizarre, with a dash of humour, a little disturbing, too… but surprisingly enough, past the first “WTF” moment, I realised I was enjoying this story a lot.
“The Macrobe Conservation Project”: disturbing too, in different ways. On a space station, a scientist tries to help preserve a fragile ecosystem based on parasites/symbiants living on corpses. Meanwhile, his son’s only contact with his on-planet family is through robotic versions of his mother and brother.
“American Moat”: when aliens meet the local border patrol… hilarity ensues. And yet, there is something deeply worrying in this story, because it makes you wonder: is humanity really worth it, or are we just stupid bags of meat who’d better be left to rot?
“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria”: the eponymous title and last story of the book. After his mother’s death, a little boy desperately wants his father to be happy again instead of lonely, and turns to (dark) magic to help him. Bonus for the magical dead cat. Again, there are funny elements in there… but also reallyl touching ones. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And with pigeons.
The other stories were good as well, and none struck me as abysmal—if I had to rate them, they were all 3 stars minimum for me.
As for the cultural backdrop, apart from a couple of heavy-handed pokes at racism, these stories had a natural flow that made the characters appear as well-integrated within their surroundings (whether contemporary Earth or space), even when those weren’t Cuba. I’m not sure how to express what I felt here, but I think it’d be something like: you don’t need to understand this different culture to enjoy these stories, and it doesn’t matter if some themes, character quirks, idioms and/or mannerisms aren’t easy to understand because they’re not yours—they’re part of each story in a natural, logical flow, and while this isn’t “my” culture, it both gave me nice insights into it, while also making me feel like there was no cultural divide. (Hopefully this makes sense.)
4 stars out of 5. I definitely recommend this book.
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