Collapse Years

In turns hopeful and horrifying, a gripping foray into our plausible futures. Each of them the grim product of human malice, each of them focusing, in some way, the spirit of human resilience. Collapse Years haunts the way it does because it proves there is no bridge between today and tomorrow anymore. We do not have that luxury. The future is already creeping up on us. It's right here, and it's ruinous.

I enjoyed that Salkovic placed stories of characters that had they been in the same place would have been antagonists on the same footing, they're all just cogs trapped in "the machine", as are we.

The imagery was pretty good especially for someone who enjoys the juxtaposition of high tech and infrastructure decay.

My favorite story was Carriers, I don't think it will surprise anyone when I say it featured a virus and a whole lot of bleakness. It was also significantly less sci-fi oriented than most of the other stories.

Overall, I wish the stories had been longer. Especially since there wasn't a lot of them, and that we had gotten a little more about the characters, something to make them a little more memorable, there were only 2 stories where I feel that I got enough about the characters to be actually invested in them, Freehold and Line of Duty.

I loved, loved! this collection of (eventually I worked out) linked stories that are set in our (potential) future: climate change has ravaged the world, sea levels have risen, and the corps run everything that matters. (The book’s blurb is excellent, because that’s exactly what it delivers.) Salkovic sets these stories in unnamed countries around the world, which is truly wonderful because too much of this kind of SF is entirely focused on the US.

So, the stories. Hantu is the disturbing story of a Big Pharma refugee-turned-concentration camp hidden away in the jungle, and includes folkloristic elements (the hantu of the title). Carriers is an actual nightmare about a pandemic and again, a concentration camp—completely plausible after (we’re not even really after yet, are we) COVID. It’s also a bit of a zombie story. Spook feels like the logical next step in corporate espionage, and features an arcology, an exciting chase, and the chilling Tranh, who’s a spook with a modified face. I’ve never read a story quite like the chilling and excellent Freehold, where Big Agric is in deadly competition with farming co-operatives in the US’s heartland. Line of Duty takes things from the perspective of a corporate security officer who completely believes in and takes the side of the corps. The heartbreaking Beached depicts the impact on the poor of this corporatised world, where the scramble for resources—food!—is about who gets there first, and where corporate control means corps will destroy food so as to profiteer. And, finally, On Rails takes the opposite view of Line of Duty, with corporate security learning what’s really going on with the indigenous people who live in the jungle where they’re stationed.

This is such a thoughtful and well laid out collection. I commend the author for their fully realised world with its logical conclusions about corporatisation, and its international, planet-spanning scope. It’s a warning for anyone who’s listening, and feels really prescient about our future; even if we’re going to do nothing about it, prophets like Salkovic must and will speak. And so, although this will fall into the genre of speculative fiction, it’s really a voice from the future.

Many thanks to BooksGoSocial/the Mad Duck Coalition and NetGalley for access to a DRC.

Collapse Years is a collection of short stories set in a dystopian close future. They could be happening in the same setting or slightly different ones but they feel connected.
The stories all deal with the aftermath of a climate change apocalypse where governments fell and the world is run by capitalist business conglomerates. It also mostly happens in what feeks like the global South.

Overall the stories were all pretty good, I think the strongest were the ones dealing with pandemic or illnesses issues and the least interesting to me was the one about the corporate hitman.
There's a good array of main characters some being good and or/innocents while some are actively working for terrible people and yet they never feel like stereotypes.
I think the first story is a great opener and tiptoes the line between magical realism and scifi perfectly. It really gives a good idea of what the rest of the collection will be.
All of the stories are open ended so beware if you do not enjoy that plot device.

All in all I enjoyed this book, the stories are entertaining and interesting even if nothing was truly groundbreaking. The stories are a perfect length and there's not too many of them so that's great editing.

I would just like to add that most, if not all, of the stories take place in the global South with POC main characters, but the author is white. I am white myself so cannot comment on the appropriateness of the representation but I thought it was a relevant point to highlight.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.
Find my reviews on Goodreads and The StoryGraph