Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

by Julian K Jarboe

Overview

In this debut collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age, these are the tools of storyteller Jarboe, a talent in the field of queer fabulism. Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be "fixable." Winner of the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590216927
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	03/05/2020
Pages:	222
Sales rank:	362,382
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

Editorial Reviews

★ 01/20/2020

Jarboe’s outstanding debut collection demonstrates a flair for queer surrealism and an ear for lyrical prose. In the powerful “Self Care,” a nihilistic youth, who identifies as a “gay transsexual witch,” is displaced by apocalyptic flooding and takes refuge in Our Lady of Good Voyage, a Catholic church. “I Am a Beautiful Bug!” turns Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” on its head with a tale of a person undergoing surgery to look like the giant bug they’ve always wanted to be (“Gimme the works, doctor! Just like Gregor Samsa!”). The pieces range from brief vignettes that read like prose poetry to much longer works like the title story, which tells of a young man deciding to join the masses of ”defunct service cyborgs, addicts, migrants, drop-outs, single parents, estranged children” on the holy colony of the Moon. Throughout, Jarboe melds tenderness, humor, and righteous anger into insightful tales of characters navigating the margins of society. Readers are sure to be blown away. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"Jarboe's outstanding debut collection demonstrates a flair for queer surrealism and an ear for lyrical prose." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Reading this book one discovers how the tools of speculative and fantasy fiction can be so essential to queer expression. In the end, Jarboe is able to honestly grapple with this world, as a great artist will, for what other mother do we have?" - Lambda Literary Review

"There is no greater joy in genre fiction than finding a book that attempts to tug the status quo toward something new, and Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel is one of those books. Julian K. Jarboe is exactly the voice we need in genre fiction." - Locus Magazine

"This slim collection of only 222 pages draws on myth, fairy tale, apocalyptic visions of the future - capitalism and climate change gone further awry, and a necessary dose of dark humor." - The Seattle Review of Books

From the Publisher