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Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic Paperback – February 14, 2012

by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo (Editor), Chris N. Brown (Editor), Bruce Sterling (Introduction)
3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
See all formats and editions
A huge, energetic, and ambitious groundbreaking anthology from emerging and established Mexican authors which showcases all-new supernatural folktales, alien incursions, ghost stories, apocalyptic narratives, and more. Stereotypes of Mexican identities and fictions are identified and transcended. Traditional tales rub shoulders with mindbending new worlds. Welcome to the new Mexican fantastic.

Eduardo Jiménez Mayo's translations include books by Bruno Estañol, Rafael Pérez Gay, and José María Pérez Gay.
Chris N. Brown lives in Austin, Texas. He is a contributor to the blog No Fear of the Future.
Bruce Sterling lives in Turin, Italy, and blogs at Wired's Beyond the Beyond.
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  1. Print length
    300 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Small Beer Press
  4. Publication date
    February 14, 2012
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1931520313
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1931520317
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“By turns creepy, self-consciously literary, and engagingly inventive, these 34 stories selected by translator-scholar Jiménez Mayo and writer-critic Brown offer some excellent and ghastly surprises. . . . These are punchy, ghoulish selections by south-of-the-border writers unafraid of the dark.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Encompassing a definition of fantasy that includes the extraterrestrial, the supernatural, the macabre, and the spectral, these stories are set in unusual locales and deal with bizarre characters. All are very short (some just two pages), and most offer a surprise twist at the end, though occasionally the only reaction these endings may elicit from the reader is “Huh?” The universal scope of the themes transcends the Mexican provenance; for example, one detects an apocalyptic influence in Liliana V. Blum’s “Pink Lemonade,” and Argentine Julio Cortázar’s “Bestiary” influences Bernardo Fernández’s “Lions.” Most of the volume’s 34 authors, half of whom are women, are relatively unknown to American readers, and for many of them, publication in this anthology represents their first exposure to an English-reading audience. The translations, several of which were done by the editors, convey the individuality, if not idiosyncrasies, of these tales. VERDICT This collection will appeal mostly to fans of fantasy and sf and, to a lesser degree, those interested in contemporary Mexican literature.”
—Library Journal

“Langorous, edgy, sumptuously beautiful by turns, Three Messages expands our understanding of contemporary Mexican literary production, collapsing high-low boundaries and pre-established ideas about national identity.”
—Debra Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Spanish Literature, Cornell University

“By turns creepy, self-consciously literary, and engagingly inventive, these 34 stories selected by translator-scholar Jiménez Mayo and writer-critic Brown offer some excellent and ghastly surprises. . . . These are punchy, ghoulish selections by south-of-the-border writers unafraid of the dark.”
―Publishers Weekly

“Encompassing a definition of fantasy that includes the extraterrestrial, the supernatural, the macabre, and the spectral, these stories are set in unusual locales and deal with bizarre characters. All are very short (some just two pages), and most offer a surprise twist at the end, though occasionally the only reaction these endings may elicit from the reader is “Huh?” The universal scope of the themes transcends the Mexican provenance; for example, one detects an apocalyptic influence in Liliana V. Blum’s “Pink Lemonade,” and Argentine Julio Cortázar’s “Bestiary” influences Bernardo Fernández’s “Lions.” Most of the volume’s 34 authors, half of whom are women, are relatively unknown to American readers, and for many of them, publication in this anthology represents their first exposure to an English-reading audience. The translations, several of which were done by the editors, convey the individuality, if not idiosyncrasies, of these tales. VERDICT This collection will appeal mostly to fans of fantasy and sf and, to a lesser degree, those interested in contemporary Mexican literature.”
―Library Journal

“Langorous, edgy, sumptuously beautiful by turns, Three Messages expands our understanding of contemporary Mexican literary production, collapsing high-low boundaries and pre-established ideas about national identity.”
―Debra Castillo, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Spanish Literature, Cornell University

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Small Beer Press (February 14, 2012)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 300 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1931520313
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1931520317
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 3.7 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Bruce Sterling

    Bruce Sterling

    Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, and critic,

    was born in 1954. Best known for his ten science fiction

    novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews,

    design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions

    for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne.

    His nonfiction works include THE HACKER CRACKDOWN:

    LAW AND DISORDER ON THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER (1992),

    TOMORROW NOW: ENVISIONING THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS (2003),

    and SHAPING THINGS (2005).

    He is a contributing editor of WIRED magazine

    and writes a weblog. During 2005,

    he was the "Visionary in Residence" at Art Center

    College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008 he

    was the Guest Curator for the Share Festival

    of Digital Art and Culture in Torino, Italy,

    and the Visionary in Residence at the Sandberg

    Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2011 he returned to

    Art Center as "Visionary in Residence" to run

    a special project on Augmented Reality.

    He has appeared in ABC's Nightline, BBC's The Late Show,

    CBC's Morningside, on MTV and TechTV, and in Time,

    Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times,

    Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis, Technology Review,

    Der Spiegel, La Stampa, La Repubblica, and many other venues.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Christopher Brown

    Christopher Brown

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Christopher Brown is the Philip K. Dick, World Fantasy and John W. Campbell Award-nominated author of the novels Tropic of Kansas, Rule of Capture and Failed State. His newest book A Natural History of Empty Lots, which combines nature writing, literary nonfiction and memoir in an exploration of the wild spaces of cities, is forthcoming from Timber Press in October 2024. He lives in Austin, Texas, where he also practices law.

    See more on the author's page
  3. Eduardo Jiménez Mayo

    Eduardo Jiménez Mayo

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
3.7 out of 5
9 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Don J. Webb
5.0 out of 5 stars The Opening of an Important Gate
Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2013
This book is the first Mexican SF anthology ever to be published here. I tried to get one published 20 years ago and found no buyers. Chris Brown has done an excellent job getting all sorts of the current scene represented. Because of this book there was a Spainish langauge programing track at the World Science Fiction Convention this year -- this book opens a gate of dialog between the US and Mexican Sf worlds that a similar volume in Spainish edited by Pepe Rojo is about to open there. This is a great time for cross-fertilization. This should be in every library in the country. By spanning both magic-realist and hard SF schools of writing, this book unifies the field. Well done! I think the book should win some major awards.

When it does I think you should say nice things about my high taste level :)

Best,

Don Webb
 The War with the Belatrin: Science Fiction Stories / A Velvet of Vampyres: Tales of Horror (Wildside Double #28)
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Randy Stafford
2.0 out of 5 stars Unsatisfying But Where Else Are You Going to Get These Stories in English?
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2012
If you like your stories to have a dramatic arc with a conflict and a resolution, this is not the anthology for you.

If you like your stories to read like completed projects and not story fragments or philosophical speculation inadequately fictionalized, this is not the anthology for you.

If you think that, when you buy a book, you're paying for a writer to tell the story - not present you with a literary version of "choose your adventure", this is not the anthology for you.

If you think studied vagueness and elliptical endings are usually an abrogation of authorial responsibility, this is not the anthology for you.

If you think maybe Bruce Sterling's name and the word "fantastic" in the title means you will get significant Mexican science fiction, this is not the anthology for you.

If you think "microfiction" and "flash fiction" are sometimes excuses for presenting incompletely worked out ideas, this is not the anthology for you.

If you don't want to sigh in exasperation at the end of nearly every one of these 33 stories (and one poem), this is not the anthology for you.

Because there are so many stories here with so few that are satisfying, I'll mention the ones I did like.

Iliana Estañol's "Waiting" may or may not have a fantastical element, but I liked its account of a man driving his dead brother's body around so he can be buried in the seaside town he wanted to rest in.

The apocalyptic ghost story "Photophobia" by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras was my favorite story. The deserted cityscape, almost completely depopulated after some never completely explained event, reminded me of J. G. Ballard and, in its philosophical ruminations about man "fondled by eternity", of H. P. Lovecraft's cosmically themed horror though the author explicitly mentions Peter Weir's movie The Last Wave and dedicates the story (nearly all the stories here are dedicated to someone) to Juvenal Acosta and Andrei Codrescu.

Two of the stories I liked satirize politics, one Mexican politics in particular. They were Bernardo Ferñandez's "Lions", which details the consequences of zoos releasing their lions into the city after budget cuts, and Pepe Rojo's "The President Without Organs" which has bodily secretions and removed organs purchased by Mexicans for many of the same reasons saint's relics were popular in the Middle Ages.

"Nereid Future" from Gabriela Damián Miravete was a predictable tale of lovers separated by time, but I liked its style and method of working out the plot.

Genuine science fiction stories are few and far between here, and the only one that worked and seemed to have a decent amount of logic and extrapolative rigor behind it - as opposed to fablistic satire like "Lions" -- was Liliana V. Blum's post-apocalyptic "Pink Lemonade" which has, during a worldwide famine, a young woman hiding out in a warehouse of animal food and encountering one of the people who may be responsible for the whole mess. I read it as a nice comment on eco-terrorism and luddite GMO opponents.

"Three Messages and a Warning in the Same Email" from Ana Clavel was sort of a variation on the doppelganger theme.

"Wolves" by Jóse Luis Zárate wobbles a bit from mixing wolves as a symbol for man's lust for blood and natural disasters with the imagery of a flood. Still I liked it.

"The Infamous Juan Manuel" by Bruno Estañol is a fun variation on the treasure hunt story.

Now while I may complain about many of these stories committing the sins of current "literary" fiction, I didn't find a consistent relationship, given the author biographies, between the quality of work of genre and literary writers.

Sterling and the editors warn the reader not to expect uniquely Mexican content here. Given that the editors and Sterling note that, in Mexico, "no problem-solving stories, and very little ideational extrapolation" exist in fantastic literature, that the stories here are products "of a world that the authors all understand cannot really be explained with numbers and laws", it's tempting to say it's no wonder Mexico is not exactly synonymous with contributions to science and technology. However, the perils of assuming this anthology is a representative of contemporary Mexican fantastic literature, much less Mexico itself, make me unprepared to go quite that far. And, it must be noted, several of the unsatisfyingly mystic and vague stories are from people that are actual scientists or science journalists.

Yes, I'm still giving this anthology two stars even after liking over a third of its entries. Only "Photophobia" is a true stand out.

However, your calculation may be different, and, certainly, I don't know where else you are going to find a sample of Mexican fantasy translated into English, and I'm pretty sure that goes for many of the authors here too.
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AMM
3.0 out of 5 stars Very hit and miss
Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2012
This collection gathers 34 contemporary Mexican short stories featuring fantasy, scifi, and literary, clearly a wide range.

For me this collection was very hit and miss, and alas even the hits weren't that wonderful. Part of the issue is there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind the order in which the tales are presented. It feels as if 34 completely random stories were selected with the only thing they have in common being Mexican authors. I generally prefer a short story collection to have a more universal theme or play upon similar tropes, but there is none of that here. The stories range from young boys hunting iguanas to figuring out how to dispose of a body to a trophy wife on vacation in Las Vegas to a pact with the devil. It was a bit of an exhausting collection to read.

Overall this collection is an interesting peek into contemporary Mexican writing, although it does seem the editors could have done a better job in selecting what to include. Recommended to those with a marked interest in modern Mexican writing.
2 people found this helpful
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