The Other Shore

Campbell follows her Ursula K. LeGuin Award–winning novella Arboreality with this insightful and impressive collection of 10 genre-defying stories centered on “possibility and transformation, even in pain.” The tales approach the theme of how humanity has arrived at this precarious point in history—and where it can go from here—from several surprising angles. The fairy story “Lares Familiares 1981,” for example, is really about the decline of the Canadian logging industry as experienced by the dysfunctional Thorne family of loggers. Changing tacks entirely, the spine-tingling “The Bletted Woman” follows a widow with early-onset dementia who agrees to join a study that allows just-barely-alive corpses to fuse with natural surroundings, giving humans the potential to communicate with the plant world. The staggering “Conclusion: An Incomplete Catalogue of Miraculous Births, or, Secrets of the Uterus Abscondita” provides a grand finale, examining the strange and mundane miracle of birth through historical oddities like Mary Toft, birther of rabbits, and historical monstrosities like the atom bomb. Throughout, the author’s story notes provide fascinating context. This thought-provoking, wide-ranging collection stuns. (Nov.)