"Android number 57821, it's finally time to come home my dear" Brilliant. Blends afrofutirism, queerness and hope to create a unique and beautiful vision of Jane's Metropolis. Drawing stories from Janelle Monaé's incredible concept albums this is the perfect book for anyone who loves Sci-fi or indeed those albums. Read it!

This co-authored series of short stories brings to life many aspects of Janelle Monae’s discography. Their vision of Dirty Computers who do not conform to the totalitarian regime they are controlled by is so clever. I’ve never read a set of short stories that are cumulative before. As you progress through, more and more becomes apparent about the world and who does and does not fit. Themes of queer liberation, Black power, and social justice thread all the way through it. There is also emphasis on the radical and transformative power of small communities and of making art to resist conformity. These are all big words for saying that the layers of the dysptopia get richer and your love for the different characters and modes of resisting get more powerful the more of the book that you read.

The Memory Librarian And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe and Collaborators. As a big fan of Monáe and in particular Dirty Computer, I was all over this from the moment it was announced, and the list of collaborators only intensified that. I'll run through each entry in turn. Breaking Dawn. This is very much Monaé setting the scene, giving us the story of the journey from here to the (horribly plausible) tech-nationalist dystopia of Dirty Computer. Simple but very effective. The Memory Librarian, with Alaya Dawn Johnson. This is a really smart story about grief, and love, and memory; and about assimilation, and the costs of sacrificing self to power. Johnson and Monáe weave a story of subversion from the point of view of a Black gay woman who has reached a senior position in a racist and homophobic dictatorship by learning to mask and suppress herself. It is a smartly written and beautifully told story, and the layers of love and betrayal of and by Seshet, its main character, could have been overcomplicated messes but instead work to powerful effect. A really solid first piece. Nevermind, with Danny Lore. This is an absolutely fantastic story of community building, identity, abolitionist politics, solidarity, and compassion; not only really smartly conceived, but really brilliantly executed .Lore and Monáe give us the Pynk, a community outside the New Dawn of "dirty computers" (yeah, the album links are strong), and their leader-but-not Jane, and Neer, a Black genderfuck woman in the commune.The stories of Jane, iconic figurehead of resistance, and Neer, barely tolerated in the Pynk by some because of their complex feelings about gender, twine together, and Nevermind sees each learning from the other and lending each other strength. It's a really smart story, well woven together, of women standing together, and the ways in which certain ideas of feminism - and the alliances they make - destroy women; Nevermind is fundemantally a a warning about TERFs, and the TERF-fasc alliance. And written really, really well. Timebox, with Eve L. Ewing. This is quite a different story to the early ones in the collection, in quite an interesting way; Ewing and Monáe have given us something more magical, and something more grounded directly in our world, than the first two pieces. This is a story about a couple, and the points of tension in their relationsip; about the ways class and wealth play into assumptions and actions; and the ways differences an amplify into breakpoints. This is a quietly fascinating and sad story, which reminds me of Amal El-Mohtar's Pockets in its observations despite being emotionally, in many ways, the inverse of that story; an interesting inflection-piece to centre the book. Save Changes, with Yohanca Delgado. This is another quieter story, although it retains adrenaline aplenty; violence is implied, or referenced, rather than primarily on show. Delgado and Monáe give us the story of the children of a dissident who appears to have been taken by New Dawn and, in the process of "cleaning", given serious cognitive impairments; her daughters have reacted in very different ways. The story touches on resistance, and on submission; and especially on the ways trying to camouflage into an oppressive society will always have limits, and point when that might become personally impossible. It's also very much interested in choice and agency, and in picking the moments to take action to the greatest effect; Delgado and Monáe pull off a fantastic reveal at the end of the story and switch it around brilliantly. Timebox Altar(ed), with Sheree Renée Thomas. This story is a different kind of story again; rather than a narrative about action, it is a narrative of possibility, even if it resolves with-slash-into action. Thomas and Monáe create what feels like a world further into the New Dawn future than the other stories, and then presents its characters with a world beyond that; the possibilities of a utopic future outside the New Dawn structures and strictures. It's a fascinating story for its balance of pain, in the present lives of its child protagonists, and joy, in the possibilities it shows them, and the futures it opens up; and the way Thomas and Monáe evoke those emotions together is really powerful. The Memory Librarian is an incredible collection; not only has Monáe assembled a stunning cast of collaborators, they've worked together to present a diverse but cohesive set of stories that really set out a sociopolitical project of joy and resistance stunningly well. Incredible work.