Creative Surgery

Book excerpt: In Clelia Farris' mind-bending tales, you'll find captivating characters with elusive identities like Kieser, who longs to transform himself through horrific procedures in "Creative Surgery," or Yuliano ("Secret Enemy"), a man with no aesthetic taste, or Gabola, engaged in the battle of a lifetime against the expropriation of the Little Tuvu Hill. With dry and polished prose, like the stones of her native Sardinia, Clelia Farris takes us on adventures among the ruins of a future marred by climate change ("A Day to Remember") and in a haunting prison inhabited by the enigmatic figure of "Rebecca." Collected and translated into English for the first time, these seven stories represent some of the greatest works from one of Italy's best science fiction authors. Born in Cagliari in 1967, Clelia Farris graduated in psychology with a thesis on epistemology. A favorite with both readers and experts, she is considered one of Italy's best science fiction authors. She won the Fantascienza.com award with Rupes Recta, the Odyssey award with No Man Is My Brother, and the Kipple prize with The Weighing of the Soul. In 2012 she published The Justice of Isis, set in the same futuristic Egypt of The Weighing of the Soul. In 2015 she published the novella, "Creative Surgery," which has been included in the anthologies, Storie dal domani 2 and Rosarium Publishing's Future Fiction: New Dimensions in International Science Fiction and Fantasy. She was a finalist for the Urania Mondadori Award 2016 with her story, "Uomini e Necro." Her stories have also been published Italian and international magazines such as Robot, Fantasy Magazine, Future Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. Rachel Cordasco has a Ph.D in literary studies and currently works as a developmental editor. She's written for World Literature Today, Strange Horizons, and Samovar Magazine and also translates Italian SFF. Jennifer Delare is a full-time Italian-to-English translator.