Latest Review: "Trafalgar" by Angélica Gorodischer

The latest addition to our Reviews Section is by Chad W. Post on Trafalgar by Angélica Gorodischer, from Small Beer Press.

Here’s the beginning of Chad’s review:

The author of more than twenty works of science fiction—both story collections and novels—Angélica Gorodischer was first introduced to English readers in 2003 with Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was, a patchwork novel that uses a variety of writing styles—fairy tales, oral histories, and political commentaries, among others—to depict the rise and fall of a nameless empire. Although Trafalgar works in the opposite direction—this book is a collection of intertwined stories wherein Trafalgar, merchant to all parts of the universe, tells stories about a cornucopia of strange worlds that he visits in his travels—the same literary touchstones are there: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick. And although Trafalgar fails to surpass the best works of its literary forebearers, it is a really charming book that highlights Gorodischer’s incredible world-building abilities.

Each chapter takes the form of someone (usually the narrator) listening to one of Trafalgar’s wild tales about some unique world or other while he pounds gallons of coffee and digresses all over the place. Like something dreamt up by Kilgore Trout, these worlds often have strange societal arrangements—like in “By the Light of the Chaste Electronic Moon,” which describes a civilization ruled by 1,000 women who retain their power in part by having sex only once a year, via a virtual reality creating machine—that illuminate something interesting about human nature.

For the rest of the review, go here.