A press release from Gavin Grant of Small Beer Press:
Small Beer Press is happy to announce that Chris N. Brown has posted his first subtitled video, Alberto Chimal of Mexico City reading his story “Variation on a Theme of Coleridge” from the forthcoming book he co-edited, Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press, January 2012), an anthology of 34 Mexican stories never before translated into English.
The video is available at this link. (Video by Daniel Rojo of Mexico City/Tijuana, postproduction by Morgan Coy of Monofonus Press/Teleportal Readings in Austin.)
This huge anthology of more than thirty all-original Mexican science fiction and fantasy features ghost stories, supernatural folktales, alien incursions, and apocalyptic narratives, as well as science-based chronicles of highly unusual mental states in which the borders of fantasy and reality reach unprecedented levels of ambiguity. Stereotypes of Mexican identity are explored and transcended by the thoroughly cosmopolitan consciousnesses underlying these works. It is a landmark of contemporary North American fiction that deserves a wide readership.
Contents of the book include:
“Second-Hand Pachuca” by Lucía Abdó
“Today, You Walk Along a Narrow Path” by Maria Isabel Aguirre
“The Mediator” by Ana Gloria Álvarez Pedrajo
“Pink Lemonade” by Liliana V. Blum
“Murillo Park” by Agustín Cadena
“Warning and Three Messages in the Same Parcel” by Ana Clavel
“A Pile of Bland Deserts” by Yussel Dardón
“Wittgenstein’s Umbrellas” by Óscar de la Borbolla
“Luck Has Its Limits” by Beatriz Escalante
“The Infamous Juan Manuel” by Bruno Estañol
“In Waiting” by Iliana Estañol
“The Drop” by Claudia Guillén
“Trompe l’œil” by Monica Lavin
“The Pin” by Eduardo Mendoza
“Rebellious” by Queta Navagómez
“Amalgam” by Amélie Olaiz
“The Stone” by Donají Olmedo
“1965” by Edmée Pardo
“The Last Witness to Creation” by Jesús Ramírez Bermúdez
“The Náhual Offering” by Carmen Rioja
“Returning to Night” by René Roquet
“Mister Strogoff” by Guillermo Samperio
“Variation on a Theme of Coleridge” by Alberto Chimal
“Photophobia” by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras
“The President without Organs” by Pepe Rojo
“Mannqeuin” by Esther M. Garcia
“Lions” by Bernardo Fernández
“The Transformist” by Horacio Sentíes Madrid
“The Hour of the Fireflies” by Karen Chacek
“Hunting Iguanas” by Hernán Lara Zavala
“Future Perfect” by Gerardo Sifuentes
“The Guest” by Amparo Dávila
“Nereid Future” by Gabriela Damián Miravete
“Wolves” by José Luis Zárate