Fans of interplanetary adventures that range from macabre to dystopian will find ample pleasures in Ten Planets, a collection of stories by Mexican writer Yuri Herrera (Kingdom Cons). In these 20 pieces, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman, Herrera explores feelings of longing among protagonists human and otherwise. Some stories are tender, such as "The Science of Extinction," in which a man who possesses only fleeting memories of his family and realizes "he'd soon be lost," props a notecard on his windowsill as a reminder. Others are more ghastly, like "The Obituarist," in which the protagonist's task of finding personal details for obituaries is complicated by his inability to see people who are "protected by a buffer that blocked" everything about them. For full-bore gruesomeness, check out "The Cosmonaut," featuring a man who has a gift for sniffing out unpleasantries, such as the skeleton of an ex-girlfriend's baby brother, "dressed in a blue crocheted baby jacket" and secured in a shoebox.
One of the trickiest literary feats is to make grisliness poignant. Herrera meets that challenge in several works, including "The Monsters' Art," where a bailiff collects artwork from monsters in a dungeon while yearning to produce his own. And some pieces are whimsical: in "Zorg, Author of the Quixote," a man with multiple arms seeks editing advice for a story that features windmills and characters named Sancho and Dulcinea. An editor finds the work adolescent and suggests he revise: "use a little imagination," she says. As this collection proves, Herrera could give Zorg plenty of pointers. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer