"Iraw + 100" is, according to Hassan Blasim, the editor of this project, “the first anthology of science fiction to have emerged from Iraq.” That alone makes it worthy of attention from the broader sci-fi community. There has been increased interest in non-Anglo-American sci-fi in recent years, but I admit I was actually surprised to see an anthology focused on Iraq by Iraqi officers. However, it makes sense in that great art often thrives under adversity.

So, how are these stories as works of sci-fi? I think the one telling feature of the stories is that they are for the most part pretty heavily situated in Iraq. These aren't just sci-fi stories by Iraqis, they're sci-fi stories about Iraq. The stories presume some familiarity with Iraq's history and Iraq as a country. Some of the stories envision an Iraq in 100 years that is far better than the current situation. This might limit the appeal of these stories for some readers used to more sci-fi not tied to a specific place or region, but the stories still do work on a universal level.

Another thing I found surprising about the anthology is that it's surprisingly optimistic given the current situation in Iraq. These writers value Iraq's heritage and history of scholarship. Some of them clearly hope Iraq can one day reclaim its place as an intellectual capital of the world. Hopefully, this book helps set the country towards that goal by giving Iraqis a hopeful vision of the future.

<a href="https://skiffyandfanty.com/2017/10/20/reviewiraq100/">REVIEW LINK AT SKIFFY AND FANTY</a>

Our world is dark and full of terrors. I won’t bother enumerating them here. Either you already know them or you’re already hiding in the peace and safety of your own personal new dark age. And anyway, it all will have changed utterly by the time we hit publish on this review.

Bummed out? Now think about the people of Iraq, the cradle of civilization that we’re only the most recent society to have somehow decided would be better off blown to splinters. As exiled Iraqi artist Hassan Blasim reminds us in the introduction to Iraq + 100, the ordinary people of Iraq haven’t known peace in anyone’s lifetime, and that’s just for starters.

But some people have gotten out, including some amazing artists, including the aforementioned Blasim, primarily a filmmaker, but also a writer and anthologist, who, from faraway Finland saw that if there was one thing his beleaguered countrymen (and the rest of us) needed these days, it’s some speculative fiction, some stories created under the assumption that Iraq (and the rest of us) will still be around in 100 years. And thus was born Iraq + 100, an anthology of fantastic, disturbing, wondrous and deeply historically grounded stories by authors and translators who now live all over the world but once called Iraq home.

iraq

Right away some interesting themes emerge. One we might expect is occupation, and indeed three stories, Blasim’s own “The Gardens of Babylon”, Khalid Kaki’s “Operation Daniel” and Hassan Abdulrazzak’s “Kuszib” envision important Iraqi cities under outsider rule in a hundred years, with Blasim and Kaki imagining Chinese rule, and Abdulrazzak imagining extraterrestrials in charge of a human population kept mostly as livestock. This latter story may not seem like it fits the criteria for inclusion in this anthology, until one learns that “Baggy-Dad” was chosen as the first city to conquer because it “was already war-torn and its inhabitants weary of fighting.”

“Kuszib” is as necessarily Iraqi as anything in the anthology.

Disease also rears its head, chiefly in Zhraa Alhaboby’s “Baghdad Syndrome”, in which an architect faces deteriorating health and incipient blindness due to a genetic condition with origins in the pollution of the petroleum industry and of decades of military activity and occupation that poisoned his ancestors (our contemporaries). The only story in the collection that I know was written by a woman*, it might be my favorite because of its concern with a pair of statues that once occupied Baghdad’s Lovers’ Square. The architect has been set the task of redesigning that square, his last project before he loses his sight, and he enlists his college-aged niece to help him discover the history of the square and the statues of Scheherazade and Shahryar that are haunting him. As his sight fades, his understanding grows as he learns of how the artwork disappeared bit by bit but is still waiting, after a fashion, for him.

Another theme is the loss of religion, either through competition with other human endeavors that makes it fall out of fashion and favor or (especially in the aforementioned “Operation Daniel”) because it has been suppressed. Ibrahim Al-Marashi’s “Najufa”, though, treats Islam as something that has been cherished even as it’s adapted over the century; when the petroleum runs out, religious pilgrimage becomes Iraq’s primary revenue source, and a whole new infrastructure for managing, educating and providing experiences for these pilgrims has sprung up, complete with maglev trains connecting Baghdad to the shrine cities and android guides. Meanwhile, the terroristic religious extremists are now the Americans. That’s all just by way of background, though; the story itself concerns a young man making such a pilgrimage with his family, and is full of accounts of his parents’ and grandparents’ experiences of the Sectarian Wars and other conflicts before he was even thought of. The focus, though, is on his relationships with them, with the science fiction trappings mere details in a nice story of generations.

And then there’s my other favorite, Diaa Jubaili’s dreamlike and darkly funny “The Worker”, in which the theocrat of an Iraq depleted of every possible resource including its sand and gravel spends most of his time addressing his people via mandatory broadcasts, that he might admonish them not to feel too downtrodden as many in history have had it much, much worse. “If we cast a discerning glance over the path of prior nations, the size of our current calamity would shrink in comparison,” he says.** Meanwhile, he is preparing to exploit the country’s very last resource: its numerous bronze statues. The narrative and point of view then shift to an account of one of those statues and what it has witnessed, which includes a period in which robots were the main workforce but now fill mass junk/graveyards. At times the statue-narrator seems to have once been one of these, as it bizarrely describes itself moving around, collecting corpses and performing helpful deeds before it meets its final fate, rescued from the forges but misidentified and mistakenly revered.

Other entries feature a kind of time travel, weaponized snot (yes, snot) and, hauntingly, a woman who escapes an arranged marriage to a mullah only to become a media icon until yet another version of the “truth” of her story casts her down again.

A collection like this isn’t just about the editor or the authors, though, and each story in Iraq + 100 has a different translator. These are uniformly brilliant, with beautiful command of English prose and impressive resumes from work in literature, film and education. Not all are Iraqi. All were necessary to bring us this book as it is, full of graceful sentences, startling images and potent ideas. Not every story is going to be to your taste, but there’s bound to be one that grabs you, stays in your memory, and reminds you that where there is art, there is hope.



*Unless Anoud, whose “about the authors” entry simply advises that “Anoud is an Iraqi-born author living in London”, is also a woman? Anoud’s story, “Kahramana”, relates a woman’s experience vividly, so it’s possible. But then again, Anoud might be trans. Or intersex. Or whatever Anoud wants to be. Since we don’t even get the clue of a pronoun, Anoud is Anoud, a mystery. That’s OK.

**Diaa Jubaili is one of the few authors in this collection who still lives in Iraq, and the stories were actually composed in 2015, so I don’t think this theocrat was necessarily inspired by anyone who might now be, say, a resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but then again, who’s to say how things wind up in the zeitgest?

In the introduction, editor Hassan Blasim explains that contemporary Iraqi literature typically sticks to realism and veers away from science fiction and fantasy. But he sees SFF as a way to imagine a different future, something he feels needs to happen more often. So he pitched the idea: what might your home city look like in the year 2103—exactly 100 years after the disastrous American and British-led invasion of Iraq? And the 10 stories from these Iraqi authors are the ones he chose to compile into this collection.

If you're interested in reading more about the philosophy behind this anthology, Tor has published <a href="https://www.tor.com/2017/09/08/science-fiction-in-arabic-literature/">several</a>
good <a href="https://www.tor.com/2017/07/27/excerpts-hassan-blasim-iraq-100/">articles</a>
that I recommend reading.

The authors explore many similar themes in these short stories.

"History is a hostage, but it will bite through the gag you tie around its mouth, bite through and still be hear." --goes a slogan from "Operation Daniel"

And in these stories history screams louder than the future. All but one or two of the stories are dystopias, depicting a government that dehumanizes, and often a populace that, even while recoiling from this dehumanization, learns to live with it. My favorite of these is the very first story, "Kahramana," where a teen girl tries to flee Iraq after gouging out the eye of her fiance, who also happens to be the ruler.

But my other favorite story from the collection presents a future that has both frightening and hopeful aspects--"Baghdad Syndrome" by Zhraa Alhabody. In this story, an architect quickly descending into blindness and hallucinations due to 'Baghdad Syndrome' attempts to discover what the woman in his hallucinations wants, and to recreate the statue of Scheherazade. Really interesting and focused story.

My favorite SFF and dystopias create rich characters struggling within their community and society, and that's why these two stood out as the strongest in the collection.

Some premises are more science-fictional than these, such as alien conquerors that harvest and eat people (Kuszib) and futurist, insect drugs (The Gardens of Babylon), but I preferred the ones with complex characterization over fantastical premises.

This collection is well worth reading, especially if you want to read diversely in SF (and you should want this), even though I only enjoyed a few of the stories. Some of them were so bizarre I had difficulty relating or determining what was going on, perhaps due to potential cultural and language barriers. But I would definitely enjoy reading more Iraqi SF, particularly from Anoud and Alhabody.

You can read my reviews for each story following. Thanks to Tor Books and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

Kahramana by Anoud: A satirical story about a woman (actually a teenager)--Kahramana--trying to flee Iraq after gouging out the eye of her fiance, who also happens to be the ruler. Well told commentary and story. 4/5

The Gardens of Babylon by Hassan Blasim: A very weird stream-of-conscious story about a guy who's supposed to write a video game based on a classic short story. To find inspiration, he takes futuristic drugs and goes to a pleasure house. I struggled knowing what was going on. 2/5

The Corporal by Ali Bader: A Corporal is killed and goes to heaven, but because he was killed trying to make peace with the Americans, he's put in limbo. But God decides to send him back to Iraq, and when he does, 100 years have passed, and the city is now a mecca of progress and humanity. 3/5

The Worker by Diaa Jubaili: A compilation of tragic past events, that a Governor uses as propaganda. Very strange story! 2/5

The Day by Day Mosque by Mortada Gzar: A brief synopsis of the life of Salman Day By. I just have no idea what happens in this story, and I reread it! 1/5

Baghdad Syndrome by Zhraa Alhabody: An architect diagnosed with Baghdad Syndrome--a future genetic abnormality that cause blindness and hallucinations--starts dreaming of a woman, and he must go on a quest to figure out who she is, and what connection she has to the statue he's been hired to build. I really enjoyed this one. Great connections to Scheherazade, and the main character is interesting. This could've been even longer--possibly a novel. There are several areas where the author summarized the protagonists findings, which could've been shown instead. And the character is interesting enough that I'd enjoy spending longer with him. 4/5

Operation Daniel by Khalid Kaki: The 'beloved' ruler has decreed that artifacts must be confiscated and those with artifacts 'archived'--or turned to ash and then to diamonds that encrust his clothes. Eww! 2.5/5

Kuszib by Hassan Abdulrazzak: An alien couple struggle with libido and marriage difficulties in a future where their alien race has taken over Earth and now harvest and eat people. Very weird! And another Ewww! 2.5/5

The Here and Now Prison by Jalal Hassan: Helen is infatuated with Samir, a fellow student, whose mother 'died' of some kind of disease, and was condemned to the 'old city,' or the 'exhibition.' 3/5

Najufa by Ibrahim al-Marashi: A future with droids and robots. 2/5

[Reviewed on Goodreads 09/08/2017]
[Reviewed on Book Riot 07/25/2017]
[Reviewed on personal blog (margaretkingsbury.com) 10/09/2017]

I am so glad that this collection exists however many of the stories just weren't to my taste. This is of course always the risk with collections. My favourite story was Bagdad Syndrome which I just found to be enthralling and really well crafted. My least favourite was the one about the alien occupation of earth which I found disgusting and I felt was disrespectful towards its intersex character. I will link my video review when it is live.

Formatted review available at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1832668741?book_show_action=false

3.5 Stars. Ten short stories by Iraqi writers that envision Iraq 100 years after the US-led invasion. I love short speculative fiction, but I was mostly interested in this book because I have a huge blind spot in my knowledge about Iraq. Everything I've read about Iraq has been from the perspective of the American military or Western journalists! I had trouble nailing down the central message of some of the stories, but I recognize this book's importance. These futuristic tales provide insight into Iraq's present-day situation from a much-needed perspective.

In the introduction, Hassan Blasim explains that it was a challenge to collect stories for this compilation because science-fiction isn't usually written in Iraq. Religious extremism and constant conflict don't exactly provide a fertile ground for imaginative expression. This unique assignment allowed the writers to look at Iraq through "the long lens of speculative fiction." While these stories are set one hundred years in the future, the 2003 invasion is never far from the writers' minds. In some of the stories, Iraq is still occupied by foreign forces or grappling with the effects of the neverending conflict. In other stories, the war is so far behind them that the younger generation can't even comprehend it. Each short story is written by a different author, but common threads run through many of them: suspicion of religion and strongman leaders, the selling off of everything, and the loss of history by either governmental decree or as an act of survival. In many of the stories, the United States has succumbed to its own problems with extremism. Futuristic technology is featured, but what interested me most were the humanistic aspects.

My favorite stories are bolded. For the stories that were more opaque to me, I just noted the parts that struck me as most important.

• Kahramana by Anoud - Sixteen-year-old Kahramana bravely escapes an arranged marriage to the head of the Islamic Empire. She flees to the American occupiers for safety, only to be used as propaganda and carelessly tossed aside when she outlives her usefulness.

• The Gardens of Babylon by Hassan Blasim - The narrator designs smart-games based on old stories. He'd prefer to design original smart-games, because he doesn't see how the past has any relevance to him. With the help of a hallucinogenic drug to cure his creative block, he sees he has an unexpected connection to the past. Through the narrator's research, we see the constantly shifting alliances and senseless, escalating violence that tore the nation apart.

• The Corporal by Ali Bader - An Iraqi soldier who was optimistic about the U.S. invasion is killed by an American soldier. After one hundred years in limbo, he convinces God to let him return to Iraq in place of a prophet. The world the soldier returns to is a completely different place; the United States is gripped by religious extremism, while Iraq is a secular utopia. The reversal of circumstances puts the resurrected soldier in a dicey situation.

• The Worker by Diaa Jubaili - The religious strongman who now leads Iraq urges the citizens to remain calm and appreciate their circumstances because their suffering could be much worse. As a mysterious figure wanders through the streets collecting corpses, we witness the full extent of suffering.

• The Day by Day Mosque by Mortada Gzar- People have resorted to selling their own snot. This one went completely over my head! I think the important parts are the commodification of everything (including biological waste), the ridiculousness of the urban improvement projects, and the absurdity of George W. Bush's statement that "day by day, the Iraqi people are closer to freedom."

• Baghdad Syndrome by Zhraa Alhaboby - Architect Sudra Sen Sumer is diagnosed with Baghdad Syndrome, a disease that renders its victims blind. The specter of blindness makes him passionate about his latest commission to design a city square, because it might be the last project he's able to see. Haunted by a vivid dream of a woman's desperate plea to find her lover, he sets out to find the statue of Scheherazade that was looted from the square many decades ago and return it to its rightful home. Just as the woman was forcibly separated from her lover and the statue removed from the square, Iraqis were forced to flee their homes and deny their family history to survive. I think the title is a play on Stockholm Syndrome. Despite the horrors the Iraqi people have endured, they can't abandon their beloved homeland.

• Operation Daniel by Khalid Kaki - All audio recordings of forbidden languages are banned "to protect the state’s present from the threat of the past." Anyone possessing forbidden material is ground down into diamonds to adorn the Venerable Benefactor's accessories. But can the past truly be erased?

• Kuszib by Hassan Abdulrazzak - The extraterrestrial occupiers of Iraq are farming humans. The alien invaders easily rationalize their cruelty to the "uncivilized" humans. Ona realizes that some of the criticisms of humans could apply to her own species, but her superiors assure her that the humans are much worse. Ona feels sympathy for the poor humans, but she determines her own desires supersede the humans' autonomy. This story is really strange (tentacles!), but the message is clear. It shows an invader deciding they know what's best for the occupied territories and how they exert their will over those they deem beneath them.

• The Here and Now Prison by Jalal Hasan - Everything from the past, including the dead, is relegated to the Old City, a place that can only be accessed by scholars. A young man suffering from a disease sneaks into the area to visit his dead mother. His girlfriend follows him and discovers the past is more vibrant than their present "where everything you touched became obsolete because you touched it, everything you said became a lie because you said it." This story deals with the limitations of language in describing the state of things and how that makes us grow accustomed to bad circumstances without even realizing it.

• Najufa by Ibrahim Al-Marashi - A man takes a pilgrimage to Iraq with his grandfather Isa. Isa has never visited his ancestral homeland because of his own father's experiences, so his grandson hopes to convince him there's more to Najufa than bad memories. As Isa shares his memories with his grandson, we learn of the sectarian conflicts that consumed people after the 2003 invasion and the unbreakable spiritual connection one has to their homeland. There's a passing reference to the Christian Assembly of Kansas and Arkansas (CAKA), a domestic terrorist group in the futuristic U.S. that rivals ISIS.

This was a challenging read for me, but it was well worth my time. What I saw most in these stories is a yearning for a peaceful future. I didn't fully understand every story, but that might be because of lack of knowledge about the region. Many of the stories came into sharper focus as I read more nonfiction about modern-day Iraq. Some of the strange little details were born from reality, such as the invaders disorienting the natives by renaming all the streets in "Kuszib." These fictional stories also made my nonfiction reading even more impactful. After the compilation of these stories, the future of Iraq grew even more uncertain. Blasim reminds us in the "Afterword" that many of the stories were written before June 2014 when Iraq's second largest city Mosul fell to IS. The Iraqi army recaptured Mosul in July 2017, but there's still a long road ahead. (Washington Post: ISIS is near defeat in Iraq. Now comes the hard part)

If you are looking for more books by authors from the region, you might be interested in Ayub Nuri's memoir Being Kurdish in a Hostile World. A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War was also very educational. It's written by a Canadian journalist and is set in Syria, but it focuses on Iraqi refugees and familiarized me with some of Iraq's history.

“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

There’s no question that whoever first coined this maxim was absolutely right. For example, when 19 al-Qaeda terrorists, 14 of them Saudis, hijacked four airplanes on September 11, 2001, few would have predicted that within about 18 months the United States would invade Iraq. Even fewer would have predicted the U.S. would occupy the country for another eight years. So why would anyone want to predict where Iraq will be in 100 years?

Ten Iraqi authors attempt to do so in Iraq + 100. Actually, they’re speculating about — inventing — the future, not predicting it, so technically the book is speculative fiction. Perhaps attitudes toward that genre led to the book being subtitled Stories from Another Iraq when originally released in the U.S. last December. Forge, an imprint of noted science fiction publisher Tor Books, isn’t put off by the label, though. The edition of the book it releases this week bears the subtitle The First Anthology of Science Fiction to Have Emerged from Iraq. That doesn’t alter the book’s mission.

Rather than asking Iraqi writers to wrap fiction around the 2003 invasion, something editor Hassan Blasim did in his own 2014 short story collection The Corpse Exhibition, Blasim asked the writers to do something rare for Iraq. As he notes in his introduction to the book, “Iraqi literature suffers from a dire shortage of science fiction writing.” In fact, Blasim was concerned it would be difficult to find writers willing to imagine Iraqi cities 100 years in the future.

Like most anthologies, the end result is mixed. Additionally, Western readers’ perception or appreciation of the book may be affected by the fact seven of the 10 stories were originally written in Arabic and each has a different translator. To the extent this is science fiction, it is “soft” sci fi exploring the cultural, political and psychological effects of the invasion and occupation of the country. There’s also a little magical realism and surrealism utilizing Iraq’s and Islam’s history and culture.

Some stories offer optimism. In “The Gardens of Babylon,” Blasim’s own story, while Baghdad is managed by a Chinese corporation, it has become “a paradise for digital technology developers.” Likewise, despite desertification and environmental degradation, this Baghdad is divided into 24 Chinese-designed domes, each a new garden of Babylon. The city exports the world’s best software and extraordinary scientific discoveries.

Ali Bader imagines a peace-filled future, at least for Iraq. In “The Corporal,” an Iraqi soldier returns to Kut, where he died in the 2003 invasion. “There are no more Sunnis, Shi’as, Christians” in Iraq, he is told, because organized religion is viewed as an impediment to knowing God. The country is long free of conflicts or civil wars. America, however, has become “an extremist state” ruled by religious radicals much like the Taliban governed Afghanistan. In fact, the U.S. is “part of the axis of evil.”

Other futures are far more dystopian. In “Operation Daniel,” the Kirkuk envisioned by Khalid Kaki is a wealthy city-state cut off from the rest of Iraq and governed by the Chinese. All languages but Chinese are forbidden and the punishment for anyone speaking or reading in them is being incinerated and “archived” in a synthetic diamond.

Diaa Jubaili bases “The Worker” on a statute of that name in Basra. The city exports or has consumed every imaginable resource. It never lacks corpses, whether from disease or starvation. Despite a virtual total collapsed, “the Governor” reassures those still in the city with a monthly address about historical events that surpass the city’s own catastrophes and suffering.

Whether hopeful or despairing, these stories may have Americans ruefully recalling what Gen. Colin Powell reportedly told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq: “You break it, you own

It's not an overall excellent anthology but has awesome tales set in different futures, some criticizing the current situation, others spinning thru a totally alien society.

This book contains short stories about Iraq, and the only criteria the authors needed to meet was that the stories should happen 100 years into the future. Other than that they could write about what they wanted. As it is a selection of short stories, some of them was not for me, and others was just perfect. I still found most of them intriguing and surprising.

In a country so characterized by war, it was nice to read about 100 years into the future. Some of the stories showed an author still full of hope for the future, others an author who's view was very dark. This is the charm about short stories, they are characterized so much by the base of the author.

This is a book I would love to by for friends who are both interested in history and science fiction. Just because of the history of Iraq, as new as the history is it is still awful now in newer time, and because of the science fiction part of the book was beautifully done in most of the stories.

First I’d like to thank Macmillan-Tor for the ARC of this book. It had been on my to-read list for a while as it looked perfect for my Read Around the World challenge and so when I saw it was being re-released I jumped at the chance to get an ARC.

This is a collection of short stories all set 100 years in the future and all written by Iraqi authors and translated by a variety of translators. It’s incredibly fascinating to see all the different ideas they have about what Iraq will be like in the future as they are all so different and varied – and I found it amusing that quite a few all ended up with the same ideas for the US.

Because it’s a collection of short stories, it’s naturally hard to discuss too much without spoiling them but I will say that I really enjoyed all the stories in this collection. Some were definitely stronger than others, but they were all excellent and it was very refreshing to read about Iraq from the perspectives of those who live there themselves rather than from a Western perspective.

This book is a perfect choice for those wanting to read more Muslim authors and I’m very pleased to use it as my pick for Iraq on my Around the World challenge. There is also a fantastic introduction to the collection which discusses the literary scene in Iraq which was very interesting.

Blasim asked contemporary Iraqi authors to write short pieces speculating on their homeland in the year 2103, and the prompt resulted in this collection of stories that span science-fiction, a clever twist on the aṣḥāb al kahf (People of the Cave), sharp political critique, a vision of Baghdad as Chinese-built domes to protect against desertification, and the way the giant 1970 concrete statue of "The Worker" sees a century pass before being stuck in a museum and mistaken for Saddam Hussein. This is a challenging insight into Iraqi popular culture and a twist on western familiar genres.