Starship Librarians edited by Shannon Allen and JR Campbell

Reviewed by Robert Runté

When I first selected this collection for review, I had assumed it would be an example of cozy SF. I imagined quiet little stories about the library of the future: massive collections of all knowledge like in ancient Alexandria, or a compact, one-room, repurposed kitchenette storing the space colony’s tiny stack of pioneer journals and memoirs. Starship librarians would be these approachable, all-knowing guides to lead seekers to the one precise volume they needed to continue their quest. Such cozy fiction would offer a respite and refuge from life in our increasingly worrying real world.

Yeah, well no.

Two-thirds of the collection are stories of resistance: librarians stubbornly facing off against the forces of oppression, with seven stories focused specifically on the stand against censorship. Donna JW Monroe’s "Words of Power", for example, is a nice retelling of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Mackensie Baker’s "What They Don’t Tell You", follows the transformation of a meek librarian into someone willing to sacrifice her career and freedom to oppose censorship. Shannon Allen’s "Between the Heavens and the Embers" and Lisa Timpf’s "The Space Librarians’ Code" are both about finding ways to hide books from those intent on deleting them. Overwater’s gritty "Fifth Book from the Sun" follows a mercenary smuggling a library data bank past the custom officials trying to intercept it. Given the abrupt increase in book banning in the US, and Alberta’s nonsense banning of books from school libraries even here in Canada, these are timely tales of courage and resilience.

Similarly, Kara Race-Moore’s upbeat story of whisking the colony’s book collection to safety in the face of an approaching enemy in "The Librarian of Mars" reflects the all too common need to do so in the real world: ISIS’s destruction of ancient scrolls at Timbuktu, Russia’s deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s libraries and cultural centres, and the recent, only partially successful attempt to evacuate artifacts from the al-Kawthar archaeological collection in Gaza.

"Is There Anybody Out There?" by Rhonda Parrish and E.C. Bell is about the last librarian on Earth, preserving her bunker full of books. I can’t tell if that is optimistic because the books are saved and life goes on, or darkly pessimistic because of the assumption of the inevitability of the collapse of human civilization.

There are even two stories of librarians as pirates: Aggie Novak’s "Pirate Librarian Wanted" which addresses the very real issues of who owns your personal data, and Jennifer Rahn’s "Synapses", in which our librarian heroine is shanghaied.

The theme of how stories are essential to our mental health is implicit in all of these entries, but Wheaton’s "How to Save a Life" and Lauderdale’s "Librarian’s Assistant" focus in specifically on the need for interpersonal connection through the sharing of stories.

There are, nevertheless, a few unrelated and cozy stories. Liz Westbrook-Trenholm’s "All that Glitters" is an engaging glimpse of future archaeologists searching for ancient libraries from our time. Her world-building is fun, clever, and believable. Nocito’s flash piece "Through Time and Calamity" gets to the heart of what makes 'librarian' a crucial profession. Trisha Jenn Loehr’s "Tetrominoes and Seekers" is a cute romance about a librarian helping to solve a math problem.

My favourite story in the collection was JR Campbell’s ingenious "Inscription". It, too, is an upbeat romance, but taking into account the time dilation of faster-than-light travel. Brilliant! I teared up a bit at the story within the story.

My least favourite story is Leslie Moody’s retelling of sleeping beauty in "Archived". I have the same beef with it as with the original: it’s not that romantic when the protagonist kisses the sleeper when they cannot consent. It was also a bit slow, predictable. Hinton’s "Retrofit" was similarly meh, though the ending was good.

Finally, there are two stories about gardening. Kayla Whittle’s "The Thriving Green" was a delightfully cozy story about a colonist on a generation ship looking for gardening advice.

In contrast, "The Revolution Will Not Be Fertilized", follows a group of guerilla gardeners led by a rebel librarian. I dreaded reading this one! First, it's written in the second person, which rarely works. Second, it's by horror writer, J. W. Schnarr. Schnarr is one of the gentlest people I've ever met, but his writing . . … Years after first discovering his stories, I'm still trying to excise a couple of the nightmares he's given me. So, throughout this story, I found myself reluctant to turn the next page as things got progressively darker. But . . . it's wonderful! Inspired. A rare example of the perfect use of second person, and a truly unique take on resistance to dystopia.

Overall, Starship Librarians is a first-rate collection with some standout stories. I'm willing to bet at least some of these turn up again in 'best-of-year' collections. Kudos to editors Allan and Campbell. I hope we can look forward to more themed anthologies from them.

Starship Librarians is published by Tyche Books.