Cosmic Diaspora

Book excerpt: "Growing up on the outskirts of the universe-provincial Ukrainian steppes, Jake Marmer was a devout reader of science fiction, in particular that of Eastern European masters, Strugatsky Brothers and Stanislaw Lem. At some point coveted translations of American sci-fi classics started to slide under the curtain. They were to him all the more otherworldly for their foreignness, for the shadow of another language and culture, which, even without aliens or portals, felt as remote as an extraterrestrial civilization. After settling in the U.S., he let go of sci-fi for nearly two decades. Perhaps because "alien"-"resident alien," "legal alien"-were trigger words for him as an immigrant. Encountering the work of Samuel Delany, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Sun Ra not only rekindled his interest in the genre but altered his understanding of its possibilities. Rather than imagining a defamiliarized present or the evolution of technology, these artists searched for the deep future of the myth, spirit, and language. In COSMIC DIASPORA you may also find more than a hint of the Talmud, Midrash, and Zohar-texts that allude to alternative realities: some of which exist alongside our own; others, tangled within; and others yet, completely unrelated, made of pure Light or pure Text. Living in the Silicon Valley for the past four years with self-driving cars, security robots, drones, and remotely operated librarians may have something to do with all of this, too"--