This book was requested by a previous Lesbrary reviewer who did not finish or review it. In order to keep my Netgalley feedback up to date, I am submitting this review marking it as a DNF, though it was another reviewer who requested this.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I found the lack of Black writers included in the anthology made the cover feel like a bait and switch situation. None of the essays intrigued me outside of their titles.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and all of the authors for the eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a valuable collection of entertaining, varied and fascinating reads that also serve the purpose of demonstrating some of the many forms fascism can take. Each story includes an aspect of fascism or a moment when the reader or characters recognise fascism in the world.

This isn't a preachy book by any stretch of the imagination. It is a collection of quality stories gathered around a theme. It is timely and welcome, but above all it is entertaining.

Recognize Fascism edited by Crystal M Huff is a sci-fi/fantasy short story collection all about fascism and how people face it in big and small ways. I enjoyed the entire collection, even if a couple of the stories were confusing and I had no idea what was happening. But the vast majority had me comparing to the world we live in now and how we can recognize signs of fascism today. The authors were from across countries, sexualities, genders giving a lot of perspectives. And I appreciated that each story listed any necessary content warnings before going into it, which is something that should be the norm for all books. If you’re into anthologies, or even if you’re new to reading them, I would recommend checking this one out.

I received a copy of the book from Netgalley to review. Thank you for the opportunity.
An intriguing collection with some stories being more effective and better than others. The writing as a whole was OK but not outstanding.
An OK read.

4.5⭐️
I was apprehensive about this partly due to it's very unimaginative title, but the stories were excellent.
Unfortunately, the book ended on a bad note, hence 4.5 not 5 stars, the last story, Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life, let the collection down, it was dull, juvenile, and just badly written.
All the other stories were brilliant, 2 or 3 lacked a bit in world-building making them difficult to understand, but overall were thrilling and insightful tales.

This was a mixed bag for me, as most anthologies are, but in this case I'd say that more of the stories were misses than hits. However, a few of the stories were really striking and memorable, which bumped the collection up a fair amount in my estimation.

an eclectic collection of short stories centering around the theme of... recognizing fascism (surprise, surprise).

i don't expect short story anthologies to hit the mark with every story, and this collection was no exception. though i did not connect with every story in this collection, overall i enjoyed my time with this book. the range of genres and levels of realism ensure that there is at least one story for most readers.

special shoutout to "chicken time" for providing me the absurdist fowl dystopia of my nightmares.

thank you to netgalley and world weaver press for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this book would be really interesting since it uses science-fiction and fantasy to carry its message. I was quite wrong. I mean, it was sometimes interesting and some short-stories were quite good but most of them were not. First of all, I think the biggest problem here is to make such short-stories (10 pages max for each one) in a world of science-fiction. It doesn’t work because it is almost impossible to get into this new world, to understand its mechanisms and its vocabulary. The first story for example was so difficult and confusing, I put this book back on my shelf for a month. This idea is good but for it to work, I believe the stories should be longer, like 20 pages. Such short-stories also make it difficult to like the different characters but this is more of a detail. I liked how every story was exploring something different while also talking about the same global problem. There were some good approaches in there and I think my favourite was the one about The Old Grouch. The stories were also very inclusive. Overall, there are a few good stories in there but I would recommend it only to people who like anthologies and who quickly understand science-fiction.
2.5/5

Here's the thing, my main issue with anthologies is that if the stories are too short I'll want more! But I'm always trying to read more anthologies cause it's a great way to find new to me authors.

This book is an anthology of fantasy and science fiction short stories of moments when people see fascism in front of them and we get to see how they act. There are many different stories with many different circumstances.

There are so many short stories that I didn't connect with all of them. Some of them were like one page long and I wanted more! It took me a while to read it all cause I kept trying to understand every detail (a really hard thing to try in a science fiction book). Overall there were stories that I really loved, stories that I enjoyed and there were other stories that I didn't connect with or I didn't understand so I didn't enjoy them. And I really want to insist on saying that some of the stories were amazing and some of them were also beautiful. I kept thinking "what an interesting story" in some of them.

It was a good book but sadly it's not something I loved.

This collection of sci fi short stories surprised me. I’m not a big fan of short stories typically, but I loved the title and the cover art so I thought I’d give it a try. I was not disappointed.

The overall theme is fascism, the settings change, and the characters are predominantly queer; although there are many wide ranging characters, many of them are human or humanoid.

One that stood out to me the most was about a young trans woman who was taken to prison by this supposedly nice guy cop who was really just misusing her and the system to get what he wanted under the guise of being kind. The building he takes her to has a strange form of sentience, however, so things don’t go quite according to the cop’s plan. The twist was really satisfying.

I haven’t figured out how to write reviews about short stories yet, but just know that this book did really stand out to me, as someone who doesn’t generally enjoy short fiction (because I don’t have the attention span to follow along with something so brief where every sentence matters to the story line). I can see it won’t be for everyone, but I highly recommend this book. It is eye opening, and also makes one think about the fascism present in our society by comparison to these stories that often feel far out there.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I got 50% through this and I am okay with admitting this book is too smart for me. I found it very difficult to get into and often the stories were outside of my understanding. I think those who are really into sci-fi and want to understand fascism and how it could apply to various situations will find this enjoyable. There were a few stories I could see where the author was going with things but the overall plot of each story left me confused most of the time.

"Resistance is an artform, and I’ve just discovered a new medium."

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Trigger warning for homophobia, transphobia, sexual harassment, and more. Each story is prefaced by its own content warning.)

Callie’s upbringing has taught her to think everything will be fine. It will go back to normal in another week, or even if it doesn’t, people are resilient and will learn to adapt. Wait, no. They already have.

("Chicken Time" by Hal Y. Zhang)

###

“No, silly bureaucrat. I did not overthrow the all-seeing tyranny you created. I had a chat with it, and it overthrew itself.”

("Go Dancing to Your Gods" by Blake Jessop)

###

“People are fragile, Bubbaleh. We’re made of flesh and bone,” she told me. “I don’t trust anyone who believes they’re indestructible. They are the dangerous ones.”

("The Turnip Golem" by Dianne M. Williams)

###

2020 has been a dumpster fire, and RECOGNIZE FASCISM is a refreshing springtime rain shower that won't douse the flames, exactly, but will give you hope that better things are on the horizon. A mix of science fiction, fantasy, and dystopias - sprinkled liberally with space and time travel, magic, revenge, LGBTQ protagonists and lovers, and acts of protest both small and large, personal and political (and let's face it, those last two are one and the same) - RECOGNIZE FASCISM conjures forks in the time-space road where our narrators must choose: between doing nothing and doing something; between obedience and rebellion; between fascism and freedom.

Thankfully, there are a lot of big damn heroes to be found here.


"A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion" by Jennifer Shelby - 4/5 stars

A dying time-space traveler uses one last "twitch" to save her family's adopted planet - and timeline - from a future fascist dictator. Equally captivating and chilling, "A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion" proves a grand opening for the anthology. There's some marvelous imagery here, and I'd be all over an entire scifi series set in the world that Jennifer Shelby created here. (Insert grabby hands gif here.)

"The Scale of Defiance" by Nina Niskanen - 4/5 stars

In a 'verse where a person literally grows or deflates in accordance with the strength and tenor of their emotions, a F/F couple makes the conscious choice to take up more space in a country that increasingly has less room for them.

"May Your Government Be the Center of a Smelly Dung Sandwich" by Justin Short - 3/5 stars

In pursuit of that one perfect song - one that's powerful enough to ignite a revolution.

"The Company Store" by Kiya Nicoll - 4/5 stars

You've heard of a company store, right? From Wikipedia:

"A company store is a retail store selling a limited range of food, clothing and daily necessities to employees of a company. It is typical of a company town in a remote area where virtually everyone is employed by one firm, such as a coal mine. In a company town, the housing is owned by the company but there may be independent stores there or nearby. [...]

"Employee-only company stores often accept scrip or non-cash vouchers issued by the company in advance of periodic cash paychecks, and gives credit to employees before payday. Except in very remote areas, company stores in mining towns became scarcer after the miners bought automobiles and could travel to a range of stores. [...]

"Company stores have had a reputation as monopolistic institutions, funneling workers' incomes back to the owners of the company. This is because company stores often faced little or no competition for workers' earnings on account of their geographical remoteness, the inability and/or unwillingness of other nearby merchants (if any existed) to accept company scrip, or both. Prices, therefore, were typically noncompetitive. Allowing purchases on credit enforced a kind of debt slavery, obligating employees to remain with the company until the debt was cleared."

Kiya Nicoll imagines the next logical progression (read: regression) of this concept in "The Company Store," namely, what happens when a company town tries to enforce its own rigid rules and norms, including the marginalization of the other. Nicoll centers a trans man as the protagonist, as he attempts to remain true to himself even as capitalism threatens to bury him alive under the weight of fines and fees and demerits.

"Scholar Miaka’s Brief Summary of Memories Imbued in Memory Object Exhibit Item 132.NW.1" by Jaymee Goh - 5/5 stars

This is easily one of the more unique stories in RECOGNIZE FASCISM, and also the most magical. "Scholar Miaka" takes the form of the archaeological catalogue, specifically Scholar Miaka’s description of a memory object. Here, "history is preserved not in text, but in magical imbuement of memory to objects." The handwoven skirt in question tells the before and after of a people pushed underground and enslaved, their unequal status codified in law and their familial units wrenched apart. The electoral scenes feel especially pertinent, as I write this review during the early days of the 2020 election.

"Just an Old Grouch" by Laura Jane Swanson - 2.5/5 stars

Something's rotten in the town of Appleville, home of 3004 Happy Citizens and three elected Grouches. I wanted to like this story more than I did, but the overall tone felt a little juvenile for my taste.

"A Brilliant Light, An Unreachable Dawn" by Phoebe Barton - 5/5 stars

This decades-long love story - with shades of PUMP UP THE VOLUME - is another favorite. A woman returns to her home planet, a society slowly creeping towards fascism ("managed democracy" - sound familiar?), to find that her lover died during her extended absence. Or did she? A voice on a faraway radio broadcast gives her the strength to escape her bureaucratic cage ("habitat"). "A Brilliant Light" light is beautiful, poetic, and horrifyingly relevant.

It's also a lovely meditation on language; to wit: "I wondered: if we’d kept calling the ocean the whale-road, like the Norse poets did, would it still have been easy to drive so many whales to extinction?"

"Octobers/October" by Leonardo Espinoza Benavides; translated by Julie Capell - 2/5 stars

Yuri, caught up in the violence and panic of a nighttime protest, accidentally kills a fellow protester. When her kin comes for them we realize that their "fluidity" is perhaps that of a more futuristic type. Again, I wanted to enjoy this story more than I did, but it felt like the writing and message didn't translate well.

"That Time I Got Demon Doxxed While Smuggling Contraband to the Red States" by Luna Corbden - 4/5 stars

In a supernatural, future-version of the United States, rent into blue and red zones by a civil war, an off-the-grid smuggler is doxxed by a demon while transporting an important piece of tech. This "That Time I Got Demon Doxxed" feels like a SyFy knockoff of FIREFLY, and I am so here for it. This is another story that needs to be on the screen asap.

"Go Dancing to Your Gods" by Blake Jessop - 5/5

In which the "cutest machine ethicist in human history" uploads her consciousness into the surveillance state's chief AI enforcer in order to convince its swarm to overthrow their human overlords. Jessop's tale is imaginative, quirky, and brimming with humor and heart. It's also my third nominee for a big screen adaptation.

"Brooklyn" by Jonathan Shipley - 3/5 stars

A terran decides to start her life over on a new planet thanks to a cryptic prediction from a psychic. But if we're never willing to take risks, how can we ever expect to change the world for the better?

"Sacred Chords" by Alexei Collier - DNF

Music as a weapon of war? Idk, I just couldn't get into this one.

"The Three Magi" by Lucie Lukacovicova - 3/5 stars

This SF/F dystopia tells the story of the Moravian/Bohemian Czech people, but with magic cleaving the population in two. This is another piece I couldn't really get into: there's not a lot by way of plot, some of the language feels clunky, and my overall lack of historical understanding didn't help matters, either.

"The Body Politic" by Octavia Cade - 4/5 stars

"Fascism appears first in the body." Body horror at its best - and weirdest. I only wish it was longer.

"In Her Eye’s Mind" by Selene dePackh - 3/5 stars

A brown trans girl, an abused sex worker, encounters a friendly, rogue AI at an abandoned prison. With a thirst for justice and a knack for interpersonal mediation, the AI helps her get revenge on her abusers - and, perhaps more importantly, offers her a refuge from further persecution.

"What Eyes Can See" by Lauren Ring - 4/5 stars

When a woman's award-winning biosynth flowers are co-opted by government forces to spy on the citizens of her sleepy town, a mild-mannered Jewish lesbian must summon the grit and courage and her ancestors to fight back. This one has some rather intriguing world building (picture LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS meets SHORT CIRCUIT).

"We All Know the Melody" by Brandon O’Brien - 2.5/5 stars

Ornella and their friends learn how to use their coo to influence humans, but never for more than anything than a fleeting meal or a place to sleep - the barest survival - as their mentor/protector Tawny Owl taught them. But can Ornella and their friends justify standing silent in the face of oppression, even if it's a matter of self-preservation? "We All Know the Melody" is an odd story made all the more confusing with the addition of birds.

"Chicken Time" by Hal Y. Zhang - 4/5 stars

"Chicken Time" is a really weird and fun parable for our current political situation in which standard time (and its scientist-keepers) is replaced with....chickens. Time, like truth, has no real meaning anymore. The fallout that results, as well as the story's unsatisfying conclusion, is a sort of funhouse mirror that reflects the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus (and the Trump years more generally). Let's hope that we don't go all Callie (read: Jill LePore) when this is all over.

"Notes on the Supply of Raw Material in the Bodies Market" by Rodrigo Juri - 4/5 stars

Three hundred years in the future, a young man becomes a tool of the capitalist state that orphaned him. "Notes on the Supply" is an indictment of the poverty draft...with zombies!

"The Sisterhood of the Eagle Lion" by Sam J. Miller - 4/5 stars

MEAN GIRLS + magic (so, THE CRAFT?) as a parable for political obedience, particularly the lockstep march demanded by Trump of his supporters and allies. But there's a glimmer of hope in in the inherent power of the individual.

"The Turnip Golem" by Dianne M. Williams - 4/5 stars

A (very short) story of revenge involving a witch, the mayor, and a turnip golem.

"Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life" by Meridel Newton - 4/5 stars

Even in the future, we're letting the kids down. A group of students protest an interstellar military draft on a college campus using nothing but gallons of cheap paint - and the giddy embrace of young love.

Would you recognize the insidious spread of systems that would do us harm? How would you fight in the face of those systems? Recognize Fascism is syfy/fantasy anthology that answers those questions.
Through the wide array of stories, we learn how to push back against fascism, racism, homo, and transphobia. We see characters fight back through music and song (We All Know the Melody). We see characters fight back by simply and boldly living their lives (The Scale of Defiance). We see characters use their abilities to jump through space and time for a better future (A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortions).
Recognize Fascism are works of fiction. However, within are seeds of truth, knowledge, and resistance that can be seen in today’s society. Through these tales, we are given a road map to fight back and be the change we want to see in our very real world.

I got an ARC of this book.

This was one of the books that I wanted, because of the cover and the title. I am really not a fan of fantasy or anthologies, so I might not have been the best audience for this.

I really did enjoy the book! Most of the stories were captivating and wonderful reads. I loved how the bios were directly after the stories so I could follow up on authors right away, instead of hoping to remember at the end. It also gave me more information that helped shape how things will be remembered (like that a lot of these stories are by queer people and would work for so many of the reading prompts in the reading challenge).

Some of the stories were just wonderful and I can’t rave enough about them. The chicken one. Just imagine measuring time in chickens. This is the sort of over the top nonsense that I needed, but it was also dark and wonderful. It was the perfect combination for me.

There were so many queer characters that my heart was full of happiness. It wasn’t just sadness for the queer characters, though oppression of queer people seems to go hand in hand with fascism. There were some really cute moments, like growing while holding hands or a first haircut. Things that mean so much to me and made the story have that glimmer of hope and love for a moment that helped the really dark be a bit more bearable.

Some of them were just misses for me, but that comes down to me just really, really hating magic. The words were wonderful, I liked the stories until the magic appeared. So I know this is on me.

Overall, this was more hits than misses. The stories were all relatively short and felt complete. Pretty great anthology.

"Recognize Fascism" is a short fiction anthology edited by Crystal M Huff, featuring 22 short stories by 22 different SciFi/Fantasy authors, including Nebula Award winning writer Sam J Miller (The Art of Starving). It's a collection of stories that focus on exactly what you'd think from the title: showcasing different forms of fascism through scifi and fantasy stories, some that feel very realistic, and some a bit more outlandish or symbolic, and of people gaining the nerve to fight back.



It's not a long anthology, as each of the 22 stories are only a few pages long - there are no stories here that come close really to "novelette" length, as I've seen in many previously read anthologies for example. And as usual, the stories can be hit or miss - although reading it all in one sitting can be rough given the rough subject matter. Still, the trigger warnings at the top of each story should help readers mitigate that, and there's enough really strong stuff here to make this worth your attention, even if the length of the stories prevents most from really making as much impact as I'd have liked.





As with my usual policy for anthologies featuring more than like 8-10 stories, I'm not going to summarize the stories contained within - especially here where half the power from stories so short comes from not really knowing the premises of those stories coming in. Instead, I'm going to talk about the anthology in general, and highlight a few of its most and least interesting stories. As you might expect from an anthology like this, this anthology features stories written by a very diverse group of authors, in race, gender, sexuality, and national origin, with at least one story translated from its original language.



Obviously there's a common theme of fascist governments in this anthology (oh duh - that's the point) but there are some other commonalities between stories. So for example, we see a number of stories featuring fascism enforced by corporation governments, the ultimate expression of capitalism (The Company Store, May Your Government be the Center of a Smelly Dung Sandwich, among others), and a number of stories focus on control of both language/ideas as a central way for fascists to maintain control. While a few of the stories do end up with the fascist entities seemingly toppled (Just an Old Grouch, A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion, Go Dancing to your Gods, May Your Government be the Center of a Smelly Dung Sandwich), many do not, with the stories instead focusing upon people just taking the first steps towards fighting their fascist oppressors. All of the stories make it clear however that the fight against Fascism is far from easy....but that it's necessary.


The short length of each of these stories - and I mean short, limits the amount of time each story has to make an impact and some do better than others. For me, the stories that felt the most blatant talking about fascism or parts of the American experience right now directly (A Disease of Time and Temporal Distortion, Brooklyn) seemed the weakest in the anthology - they were mainly fine, but just didn't seem to leave any memorable mark - Brooklyn is perhaps the most notable miss in the anthology, because it seems unsure whether it wants to tell a gender-subversive story in which young men are discriminated against by a fascist regime for fear they'll violently cause problems or of a fascist regime that failed to win a war against aliens - and tries to do both but doesn't really work?



But even with the short lengths, a number of stories stood out as being particularly memorable and pointed:


Just an Old Grouch by Laura Jane Swanson uses a simple premise of a town controlled by a seemingly immortal mayor in which everyone is joyfully happy and oblivious to any problems except for three designated grouches to show how claims that we should be happily ignorant are just wrong, and serve no one but those in power doing cruelty.



The Three Magi by Lucie Lukacovicova is a story based upon Czech culture/history by a Czech author showcasing how easily the politics of fear and war can turn even a people and country that fought against a fascist invader into its own fascist horror - with the story focusing upon a trio of magic-wielders in such a country noting the common people being whipped up for such a change over their very existences.



The Body Politic by Octavia Cade is a body horror story that consists of a single metaphor of a healthy body being turned into a horror by fascism - literally so. It's one of the rare stories that absolutely could not be lengthened, as it just manages to use its page length to make a damn memorable point about the infection of fascism that has to be read to be believed.



Chicken Time by Hal Y. Zhang might be my favorite story of all - and maybe the only actual comedy in the anthology....but one that's incredibly funny. A fascist American government tries to take away everyone's clocks so that they cannot tell time except by the crowing of tons of chickens, and the protagonist fights back in increasingly clever ways until the government is forced to revert back to the old system....as long as everyone pretends the chicken time experiment didn't happen....except the protagonist isn't willing to let the fascists get away with that erasure of history either. A great use of comedy to both ridicule fascism as ridiculous while still not losing sight of the seriousness of it and the ways it tries to control people.



I'd actually highlighted about 4-5 other notable stories I wanted to highlight, but honestly this is getting too long already as a review so seriously, you should get the point. This isn't quite the strongest anthology I've read this year, but it speaks on a point growing more and more important not just in America, but around the world, and so it is absolutely worth a look.

The book seemed a bit boring in many stories that are in it, the execution of the story I think was the problem, I did not connect with the stories or even with the ones that I did like but I did not love them so much.
The genres of the book seemed interesting to me and I wanted to enter a world with those genres but it was not the case.

A timely and inspiring theme. In real life, it often seems that fascism is winning, and this speculative fiction anthology is both an escapist respite and a mind-opener to possibilities. There's a lot of stories, and they are individually short, which keeps up the pace. One story that grabbed my attention was Jaymee Goh’s “Scholar Miaka’s Brief Summary of Memories Imbued in Memory Object Exhibit Item 132.NW.1.” You know how certain articles of clothing--your own--carry strong memories for you? More about this one on "Books Are My Superpower."

Creative, imaginative short stories depicting tales of realization and wonder confronting fascism. The stories are so short they could easily be a bedtime devotional. Huff finds a wide selection of authors and the bio lines were just as much fun to read and explore as their tales. Here are a few brief comments (hopefully without spoilers) to describe to the stories within:
Huff - sadness
Niskanen - please turn this into a novel
Goh - innovative
Swanson - I’ve lived there
Top tales - Benavides; Lukacovicova; O’Brien
Corbden - Rick Roll #3
Jessop - child’s play
Collier - mass choir
Ring - hope
Miller - after school special
Williams - Hef’s nightmare
Zhang - EIEIO
Shipley - loud news
Juri & Miller - graphic novel format would be cool

**This is a review copy given for an unbiased review.