Today on Bookish Brews I’m inviting the editors of an anthology I’m super excited to dive into! The Reinvented Heart is an anthology on the evolution of partnerships by female and nonbinary authors. So often when we think of science fiction we think about what technology and society will look like in the future without taking into account what social relationships might look at. The Reinvented Heart Anthology asks us to examine how our social structures could change as we change together alongside society and technology.
Most excitingly for me, it contains stories from authors that I’ve been watching for quite some time. All in one anthology! I even did a cover reveal for one of the authors recently (be sure to check out the cover reveal & mini interview for Maria Dong’s debut novel LIAR, DREAMER, THIEF)! Since I’m so excited about this, I have the amazing editors, Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozak here with me today to tell us ten things they love about The Reinvented Heart Anthology.
Bookish Brews Snapshot
The Reinvented Heart: Tales of Futuristic Relationships
The Reinvented Heart presents stories that complicate sex and gender by showing how shifting technology may affect social attitudes and practices, stories that include relationships with communities and social groups, stories that reinvent traditional romance tropes and recast them for the 21st century, and above all, stories that experiment, astonish, and entertain.
- Genre: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction
10 Things We Love About The Reinvented Heart Anthology
one.
Cat: I love the fact that this anthology’s stories are not just about romantic relationships, but reaches out further to stories of friends, family, pets, and even in one case, a parasite and its host. Human beings interact in so many ways and romantic love is just a small subset of those interactions.
two.
Jennifer: I love the fact that I got to work with Cat Rambo on this creative project that has now become a series. I’ve worked with Cat before on business related projects, but collaborating on a fiction project together has been as enlightening as it has been fun.
three.
Cat: I love the fact that we surprised Jane Yolen by using her poems as a way to organize the stories. I interviewed her recently and she said that she hadn’t realized we had done that until she saw the book, and she thought it was the first time someone had used a set of poems in that way. The idea was Jenn’s, and it was a way to accommodate the fact that she had generously sent us not just one poem, but three. We’ve done it again with the next anthology in the series, The Reinvented Detective.
four.
Jennifer: I love the fact that not only do we have NYT Bestselling authors in this anthology, we have a couple of first time story sales, too. There is nothing better than discovering new talent while enjoying the pleasure of publishing polished professionals.
five.
Cat: I love the gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous cover and the way it manages to show a futuristic interior, while still managing to have some of the grandeur of space implied. The colors are just beautiful, and those women, are they lovers, siblings, friends? It doesn’t matter, those are all relationships explored in the book.
six.
Jennifer: I love the way the stories in the anthology lead into each other and explore the different types of relationships without trying to subvert them. One of my favorites is the epistolary story that has such an unexpected ending that I was stunned. As an introvert who doesn’t want to be forced to meet up with people, it was a story that really resonated with me.
seven.
Cat: I love the way many of my students and friends are included in it, and showing off their spectacular talents. I’d hoped Lauren Ring would turn in an amazing story she wrote in my fiction class, “Sunrise, Sunrise, Sunrise,” but she sold it before I had a chance to ask—and then promptly wrote and turned in something just as terrific. Sophie Giroir wrote “No Want to Spend” in a class, and this time I knew to jump on it. Sam Fleming did a lovely job with “In Our Masks, the Shadows.” And so many friends! Names that jump out at me from the TOC such as Beth Cato, Naomi Kritzer, Seanan McGuire, Xander Odell, Rosemary Claire Smith, and Fran Wilde.
eight.
Jennifer: I love that we had such an embarrassment of good stories to choose from. So much so, that Cat and I really had to bargain with each other to make sure our favorites got into the anthology. Cat and I have different tastes, and I think that is one of the beauties of our collaboration. The anthology is more well rounded as a whole.
nine.
Cat: I love the fact that Justina Robson managed to break our word limit by turning in a story so good that we were forced to ignore the fact that it was easily twice the limit. That’s the novelette “Our Savage Heart Calls to Itself (Across the Endless Tides)” that finishes up the anthology. I had specifically asked her for a story, so we did consider it, but I don’t want anyone in the slush taking this as a challenge.
ten.
Jennifer: One of the things I love the most about The Reinvented Heart anthology is the fact that it is the first of a series. I’ve done an anthology series before (The Beast Within) and enjoyed the experience of it. With the Reinvented series, we have so many interesting topics to explore the future of. We’ve got The Reinvented Detective anthology (about crime and justice in the future) on the way. “The Reinvented Coin”, “The Reinvented Fable”, and “The Reinvented Assassin” are just a few of the anthology ideas we are tossing about. I hope we get to do them all.
