Robots vs. Fairies

Written from secondary sources (reviews and reference listings of the anthology), not from the text.

An anthology of eighteen original stories, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe and published by Saga Press in January 2018. The premise is a playground argument: which is better, robots or fairies? Each writer picked a side, and after every story the author declares for team robot or team fairy and says why. The book is science fiction against fantasy, with the reader left to call the winner.

Most stories take one side, but the first and last carry both. Seanan McGuire opens in a Disney-like theme park where animatronics and the fae meet. Catherynne M. Valente closes by taking the title literally: a wrestling-style fight night, called by a robot and a fairy. Between them the tone swings from John Scalzi’s comic three robots, picking through what humans left behind, to Madeline Ashby on elder care and memory loss. Reviewers most often single out Alyssa Wong’s story. The common complaint is that the collection is uneven, and one reviewer called it a step down from the editors’ earlier anthology, The Starlit Wood.

The stories, in order:

1. “Build Me a Wonderland”, Seanan McGuire
2. “Quality Time”, Ken Liu
3. “Murmured Under the Moon”, Tim Pratt
4. “The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto”, Annalee Newitz
5. “Bread and Milk and Salt”, Sarah Gailey
6. “Ironheart”, Jonathan Maberry
7. “Just Another Love Song”, Kat Howard
8. “Sound and Fury”, Mary Robinette Kowal
9. “The Bookcase Expedition”, Jeffrey Ford
10. “Work Shadow/Shadow Work”, Madeline Ashby
11. “Second to the Left, and Straight On”, Jim C. Hines
12. “The Buried Giant”, Lavie Tidhar
13. “Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind From the Era of Humans for the First Time”, John Scalzi
14. “Ostentation of Peacocks”, Lila Bowen (a pen name of Delilah S. Dawson)
15. “All the Time We’ve Left to Spend”, Alyssa Wong
16. “Adriftica”, Maria Dahvana Headley
17. “To a Cloven Pine”, Max Gladstone
18. “A Fall Counts Anywhere”, Catherynne M. Valente