Anyone who yearns for a world of universal acceptance, where one can live as one wishes, may nod in agreement at the four stories and one novella in Uranians, Theodore McCombs's assured debut work of speculative fiction. In "Toward a Theory of Alternative Lifestyles," a gay lawyer breaks up with a boyfriend who "chafed at monogamy," and references quantum mechanics as he pines for an existence where "you got everything you ever wanted, and were loved as much as you loved." "Lacuna Heights" features a lawyer who represents a company that makes a device that is implanted into people and can make them forget certain facts. And in the macabre "Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women," women sentenced to death in 1909 evade execution--ropes break, bullets don't appear--until a police superintendent's wife suggests women become the executioners.
After "Talk to Your Children About Two-Tongued Jeremy," a story about an app that offers encouragement yet also sexts, cyberbullies, and worse, the collection concludes with the novella "Uranians," an imaginative tale of an expedition in which queer participants, including "power lesbians" and a trans priest, journey into space to build "a queer moon in the heavens." If a couple of stories are clever rather than compelling, the others are marvelous, especially the title work. "Our survival requires we embrace our nature as outsiders," the priest says. As this debut makes clear, that fact is more universal than some may be willing to admit. --Michael Magras, freelance book reviewer