Ten Planets: Stories. by Yuri Herrera. 2019. Translated by Lisa Dillman. 2023
TEN PLANETS: STORIES
Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman
RATED 80% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE 3.8 OF 5
20 STORIES : 4 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 6 AVERAGE / 1 POOR / 0 DNF
I have no idea when or why I bought this book …. but I’m glad I did. Mexican author Yuri Herrera’s prose dances with a literary lightness rarely found in science fiction. Each of these twenty very-short stories takes an idea and seems to banter with it. It feels like wacky conversation with your smartest friend after many drinks. Not what a transcript of those conversation would show. It reads like your warm memories of the experience.
““He hadn’t planned on doing so, it was just that the sea had devoured the earth and the trash had devoured the sea, so he commenced walking till he reached the end of dry land and then kept on walking across the solid crust and by the end of the day he could no longer see the ruins behind him—the humongous ruins of the United States embassy, the angular ruins of the Chinese embassy, the monumental ruins of the Nicaraguan embassy—and that was when he decided there was no turning back.””
Not every story here is great. Many aren’t stories at all, but the kind of idea you find scribbled in a writer’s journal years after they’ve passed away. What is pretty wonderful is the joy and warmth that you experience by reading them. I’d suspect that everyone one of these stories is more enjoyable when read aloud, where the duration is longer and you can revel in Herrera language.
““The public devoured them, not only to learn what a person had done without having had to put up with them while they were alive, but because many had high hopes that accumulating certain things would enable them to manipulate obituarists into telling better stories about them.””
Which leads up to Lisa Dillman’s translation. She gives a really interesting look behind the curtain in her epilogue, but the real compliment is how much we forget we are reading translation. A lot of science fiction in translation gives me the feeling of LLM-assisted prose (even when the translation predates LLMs.). This does not. It is excellent!
““The vespertine coliform existed, complexly, in the summer of 1999, in the region of Norfolk, England; specifically, in the town of Sheringham; to be still more exact, in the small intestine of one Roger Wolfeston, former manufacturer of fake documents, who’d had a bit of a boon.””
It is difficult to assign a publication date for these stories as some appear to have been published elsewhere in Spanish, and this book was published in Spanish in 2019, but I am going with 2023 for filing purposes because that is publication date of the English translation that I read.
Four Stories Join the All-Time Great List:
Whole Entero . Great. A quirky and bittersweet story of intelligent life that evolves inside a man’s small intestine. Could have been a joke, but is actually treated seriously.
The Cosmonaut. Great. A man becomes a preternaturally good detective solving cases by inspecting the interior of people’s noses. One day, secret police take him to inspect the nose of a cosmonaut that the State believes is keeping secrets about his latest mission.
The Conspirators. Great. A story about language and cultural and oppressive power. A planet has two human-descendant groups, but they arrived at different times and with different levels of cultural capital. A meeting of “The Conspirators” centers the idea that an anti-insurrection vaccine is keeping one side from revolting, but some believe it is more complicated than that.
The Last Ones. Great. A sprawling post apocalyptic story that begins with a man walking the entire Atlantic Ocean by foot and ends with a trans-humanist exploration or potential future planets.
TEN PLANETS: Complete Story Reviews
20 STORIES : 4 GREAT / 9 GOOD / 6 AVERAGE / 1 POOR / 0 DNF
The Science of Extinction
Good. A beautiful story from the perspective of a man who is losing all his memories. He is in a room that is becoming more and more unknowable while something monumental is happening outside.
Whole Entero
Great. A quirky and bittersweet story of intelligent life that evolves inside a man’s small intestine. Could have been a joke, but is actually treated seriously.
The Obituarist
Good. In a world where technology allows everyone to be invisible unless they choose to be seen, the protagonist writes the obituary of people based only they things in their apartment when they die.
The Cosmonaut
Great. A man becomes a preternaturally good detective solving cases by inspecting the interior of people’s noses. One day, secret police take him to inspect the nose of a cosmonaut that the State believes is keeping secrets about his latest mission.
House Taken Over
Good. A ‘smart-house’ increasingly gets a mind of its own. Initially to the benefit of the family within….
Consolidation of Spirits
Average. A man has a unique way of dealing with haunting spirits, but it becomes more difficult when he dies.
The Objects (#1)
Good. When her daughter goes missing, a mother uses a (GPS-like) MiniMinder to try to find her but it seems like the device itself is trying to prevent that.
The Objects (#2)
Average. In a world where you change into an animal after crossing the vestibule, our protagonist tries to find their rat friend,
Flat Map
Average. Since the world has been proven to be flat, people think about what it means.
The Earthling
Average. A martian tries to find the Earthling but it isn’t the kind of Earthling you are expecting.
The Monsters’ Art
Good. A warden goes around to imprisoned monsters, beats them, and takes their art.
Obverse
Average. Quick little joke of a short short featuring beings that go past the end of the earth and hope there aren’t dragons there.
Inventory of Human Diversity
Good. Biting bit of satire in which an alien zookeeper puts an ‘equivalent’ species in the cage with the human.
Zorg, Author of the Quixote
Poor. Muddled story of alien with multiple sex organs who seems to have written Don Quixote.
The Other Theory
Good. Now that we know the Earth is flat, it is a taco or a cracker?
The Conspirators
Great. A story about language and cultural and oppressive power. A planet has two human-descendant groups, but they arrived at different times and with different levels of cultural capital. A meeting of “The Conspirators” centers the idea that an anti-insurrection vaccine is keeping one side from revolting, but some believe it is more complicated than that.
Appendix 15, Number 2: The Exploration of Agent Probii
Good. A world where sex is the only way to communicate and various kinds of orgy are necessary to form a big idea.
Living Muscle
Average. Ultra short-short about a planet of muscle that sings.
The Last Ones
Great. A sprawling post apocalyptic story that begins with a man walking the entire Atlantic Ocean by foot and ends with a trans-humanist exploration or potential future planets.
Waring
Good. A horrifyingly hilarious terms and conditions.
