The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer Reviews

• 
  John Mauro

  My complete review is published at
  Grimdark Magazine.
  
  Janelle Monáe is widely acclaimed as a singer/songwriter, film star, fashion icon, and social activist. Her list of awards has its own Wikipedia page , with 137 nominations and 48 wins at the time of writing this review. With the release of her debut book, The Memory Librarian, Monáe can now add published author to her impressive list of accomplishments. Is there anything Janelle Monáe can’t do?
  
  Monáe is a lifelong science fiction enthusiast, even stylizing an android alter-ego for the recording of her first album, The ArchAndroid. Her most recent album, Dirty Computer, is a genre-bending Afrofuturist masterpiece rooted in hip hop but with varied influences ranging across pop, rock, funk, and soul.
  
  Dirty Computer is a concept album that imagines a dystopian future where technology is used to wipe the memories of non-conformists living under an Orwellian techno-authoritarian regime. The album is a perfectly crafted sonic masterpiece, brimming with emotion and delivering an impassioned message about social justice.
  
  The world of Dirty Computer comes visually to life in Monáe’s 44-minute companion film, or “emotion picture,” which is freely accessible on YouTube . The emotion picture incorporates Monáe’s full set of music videos for the album, interwoven with narrative snippets that provide context for the story and show how the individual songs fit together within her overarching theme. With the publication of The Memory Librarian, the totality of Monáe’s vision has come to life, spanning across the auditory, visual, and now the written word.
  
  The Memory Librarian contains five stories set in the world of Dirty Computer. Monáe has recruited five well-accomplished collaborators for her literary debut, one for each story. The first two stories are novella-length and co-authored by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Danny Lore. The remaining three short stories are co-authored with Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado, and Sheree Renée Thomas. Monáe’s collaborators bring remarkable credentials and a long list of literary awards and achievements to this project.
  
  Before opening the first pages of The Memory Librarian, I was honestly a bit concerned that having a different collaborator for each story might lead to an inconsistent tone or style across the book. Fortunately, my concern was unfounded, as Monáe’s voice shines vibrantly across the pages of all five stories with remarkable fluidity.
  
  While many sci-fi novels devote excessive time explaining their world and related technologies, Janelle Monáe takes the opposite approach, focusing on the people who inhabit this dystopian world governed by the neofascist, technocratic New Dawn regime. Individuals who fail to meet New Dawn’s strict rules of conformity are labeled as “dirty computers,” having bugs that must be eliminated through violent attacks, imprisonment, and memory erasure.
  
  The stories in The Memory Librarian address issues of racism, feminism, homophobia, and more, as New Dawn specifically targets members of the queer Black community. Readers will be profoundly moved by the experiences of these characters who face such violent intolerance just for being themselves and living their own authentic lives. I found Monáe’s treatment of gender identity and transphobia to be especially powerful. Although the discussions of morality could come across as heavy-handed at times, I believe this is the right approach for addressing such critical issues in basic human rights.
  
  Janelle Monáe is one of the finest lyricists in modern music. Although The Memory Librarian doesn’t quite rise to those same poetic levels, it remains beautifully written and eminently readable throughout. Long-time fans of Janelle Monáe (lovingly dubbed “fandroids”) will appreciate the subtle references to her discography scattered throughout the book.
  
  While The Memory Librarian can stand on its own as a powerful work of literature, the impact of the book is greatly enhanced when read in the context of Dirty Computer and the accompanying emotion picture. Janelle Monáe has completed an extraordinary trifecta of artistic expression across three forms of media. As a combined artistic work, Janelle Monáe earns an enthusiastic 5/5 from this appreciative fandroid.
• 
  laurel [the suspected bibliophile]

  This was brilliant.
  
  I don't know that I've ever read an entire interconnected anthology based off an album before, but wow. What a concept, and what an interesting execution.
  
  As with most anthologies, some stories were absolutely amazing while others didn't land quite as well, but the overall concept and execution was good.
  
  I'm bouncing between a four and five star rating...landing on five for now.
  
  Full RTC.
  
  I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  These stories link back to Dirty Computer the album and Dirty Computer [Emotion Picture] that you can watch in YouTube. Written in collaboration with Yohanca Delgado, Eve L. Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, and Sheree Renée Thomas, all stories are set in this dystopian tech-totalitarian society where people who are outside the norms (aka Dirty Computers) are hunted down and imprisoned, memories wiped, and more.
  
  All stories are full of queerness, feminism, quirky creative elements, and positive spins on how humans could interact with one another.
  
  Thanks to the publisher for providing access to this title via NetGalley. This book came out April 19th, 2022.
• 
  Peter Lyon

  From her debut EP of Metropolis and the introduction of Cindi Mayweather to Dirty Computer, her latest album and "emotion picture" that centers on Jane's celebration of freedom, Monáe has spent her music career building a world where its inhabitants fight memory control, explore identity, navigate technology, and ultimately, organize towards liberation. The Memory Librarian is a culmination of that narrative and, just like her music, the results feel electric, hopeful, and new.
  
  The stories shift from city apartments to desert hideouts, from coworkers to families (both birth and chosen), from couples to communities but are united in their exploration of what it means to be free. References to songs and lyrics from Monáe's discography are sprinkled throughout the book which, beyond being just plain fun for her fans, serve as a reminder of how this years-long narrative has evolved. Already a formidable storyteller herself, Monáe collaborates with some super stellar and exciting writers (like the one and only Eve Ewing!) and it is their collective love of Afrofuturism, of queerness in its endless facets, of hope, community, and of love itself that comes together to send currents of energy humming throughout these pages.
• 
  Tim

  DNF
• 
  Obsidian

  Did Not Finish-2 and a half stories in (can't find the book and mark what page I got to) 
  
  So sad I could not get into this collection at all. I know that Janelle Monáe did her "dirty computer" thing and I get where she was going with this. If you pretend it's just a continuation to her songs/album it kind of works. But if you never listened to her songs or watched the movie based on these songs, you are going to be totally lost. Also I thought the stories were not really cohesive as a whole. I think I kept going okay this is symbolism while I was reading. I felt like I was back in high school English class and I was going to be quizzed on what did I think the author meant by this after a while. In the end I found myself getting bored and DNFed it at 90 pages in (yes I bought the hardback...yes I am annoyed at myself). I do feel bad since it appears this was got tons of acclaim. She also came to this year's National Book Festival and pulled a huge crowd. 
  
  The Memory Librarian (2 stars)-We follow the so called memory librarian named Seshet. Seshet works for New Dawn and is in charge of deleting and replacing people's memories. Hey, you keep a population under your thumb, you can win right? Well of course there are rebels, and of course Seshet starts to wonder if she is in the right for what she has been doing. I honestly could not get into it. I thought the story was kind of all over the place and I had so many questions about New Dawn. 
  
  (2 stars)-Jane from the movie who runs away from New Dawn to stay in a hotel called Pynk (yeah symbolism). Jane's friend Neer is there and of course there is a lot going on with people questioning whether certain women really belong at Pynk. I started thinking about J.K. Rowling and grimacing. 
  
  Timebox (?)-I stopped here. I was going eh I am not enjoying this and then someone told me the ending and I went what and then I put this book down.
• 
  Gabriela Pop

  3.5/5
  Very curious about whether there is anything Janelle Monae ~can't~ do, as it seems that they can and will excell at any art form they take on.
  I loved the concept behind Dirty Computer, so it was very exciting to see that world being expanded in these short stories. I thought this was a solid example of literary speculative fiction that is likely to appeal to both fans of Monae or readers engaging with this world for the first time through the story.
  Ultimately, however, I think the stories didn't feel fully cohesive to me and I found that while the symbolism was gorgeous, it felt a bit heavy handed and overexplained at times.
  Overall a solid read. If you are thinking of picking it up, consider this your sign to do so!
• 
  Kaa

  Overall a three star read, bumped up to four for the last story, because I really needed some utopia this week.
  
  This is an intriguing exploration of the world built in Monáe's Dirty Computer emotion picture (
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdH2S...) and previous albums. I'd suggest the Dirty Computer video as part of your experience with this book, as the story told there is a direct prequel to one of the stories in Memory Librarian. I also recommend her other music/videos on general principle, and there are a lot of references/connections with her music across the collection, but I don't think being familiar with her entire body of work is required to enjoy the collection.
  
  I liked seeing a more fleshed-out version of the world and characters across these five stories, but the most compelling aspect to me was actually the emotional arc of the collection, ending in a really sweet utopian story co-written with the legendary Sheree Renee Thomas.
  
  I also enjoyed the narration of the audiobook, provided alternately by Monáe herself and Bahni Turpin.
  
  I won a print ARC of this book in a GR giveaway, although I first read it as an audiobook from my library.
• 
  lauraღ

  “I know I never met you before, but it’s like you already moved in. You’re already making room.”

  
  I don't know. Right book, wrong time? I love Janelle Monáe's music, I loved the Dirty Computer emotion picture when I first saw it years ago, and I loved it all the more when I rewatched it in preparation for listening to this. And this is some really creative scifi, with a lot of the expected tropes, but with the bonus of unexpected POVs and voices, and lots of loving focus on queerness and gender and rebellion and antifascism. All of this is my jam. But it was overall just okay for me. Maybe all of the things I loved didn't translate super well into writing. All of the stories were interesting in their own right, but the world building was loose and hazy in a way that just didn't stick with me. Conceptual stuff like this, you can get away with it in a music video. It's a lot more glaring in prose? Or, idk, maybe everything was explained super well and it just went over my head. This was one of those listening experiences where I was finding it super hard to concentrate, and idk if that was more me or the book. I restarted a few times, and kept rewinding to make sure I didn't miss anything, but by the time the end rolled around, I felt like I'd only internalised maybe 80% of it all. Just... very basic things, like the memory wipes and the rise of New Dawn, I feel like I'm still hazy on all of that. This introduced me to a lot of great characters, but they weren't the most memorable. The closet time story was sooooo interesting, but didn't quite go to the places I wanted. Or maybe I didn't quite get the intent behind it. Same with the time travel one.
  
  Listened to the audiobook as read by Janelle Monáe and Bahni Turpin, and it was pretty good. I'm like genuinely in love with Monáe's voice so the story she narrated, the titular one, is the story that sticks out to me the most. A lot of great romantic writing and quotes in there too. I like Turpin's voice as well, but I feel like all the stories after the first one are kind of a blur to me. For sure I need to reread this in the future; maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind for scifi. I honestly feel like this is a world I could love! But yeah, it unfortunately didn't resonate with me like I wanted.
  
  Content warnings: societal homophobia/transphobia
  
  

  The hard old way of forgetting, which is remembering with grief.
• 
  Denny Kus

  While the world, concepts, and characters are each intriguing on their own, the writing style left much to be desired. Many stories felt as though they dragged on forever or ended too soon. The characters lacked a three-dimensional feel and dialogue felt forced or overdramatized. Explanation of the world mechanics, hierarchy, character descriptions and backstories, and scenery/imagery all were severely lacking. I appreciate Monáe's imagination and gumption in taking on a new medium! And I did enjoy the overlaps between the Dirty Computer album and these short stories. In conclusion, I would definitely recommend the album as a must listen, but The Memory Librarian...not so much.
• 
  Raymond

  Review coming soon.
• 
  Kristenelle

  I loved this!
  
  Janelle Monáe co-authored all these stories with other speculative fiction authors and all the stories are set in the world she originally established in her Dirty Computer album and emotion picture. It is a dystopian future where difference isn't tolerated and offenders have their memories wiped.
  
  These stories center resistors, artists, and queer folks. Themes of resistance, cultivating hope and imagination, the value of time and memories, the power of art, and the challenges of living in community are threaded throughout the collection.
  
  These stories are long. The first story is basically a prologue and very short, but is followed by a couple stories I believe are novella length and then three more that are novelette length (based on my guestimation). I found the novellas to be a bit rambling. Full of cool ideas and world building, but not always super cohesive or easy to follow. I connected much better with the novelettes and loved all of them.
  
  My favorite thing about this collection is the way that it grapples with how to achieve or merely progress towards utopia. This is such a prescient question and one that I wish I encountered more in speculative fiction. We often tend to think of dystopian fiction as being a warning about a possible future. Not so in Memory Librarian. It felt like a thinly veiled satire of our current reality (let's face it - we already live in a dystopia) and it made the quest of progressing towards something better feel immediate and relevant.
  
  I listened to the audio version of this book and highly recommend it. Janelle Monáe and Bahni Turpin took turns reading the stories.
  
  Sexual violence? I don't remember any. Other content warnings? Mind control, imprisonment, poverty, loss of parent.
• 
  Fraser Simons

  In these short stories, many of which i think could be best called post-cyberpunk, a reaction to the sub-genre, predominantly queer Black folx navigate a fascist world that scrubs memories, co-opts artists physically, away from their families and loved ones. Within this bleak landscape are acts of resistance that follow from the identity of the characters. Rather than the typical bombastic and militant acts of violence cyberpunk is known for, here the struggle is situated in verisimilitude. I like this centering much better, since it takes tenets of punk and applies it to everyone who refuses to conform to the system. Navigating away from defaultism.
  
  I think the stories that bookend the collection are the strongest, and contrast one another tonally. But even the quietest story is a bit brilliant. A space is found to stop time and the framing for the characters is the ability to reclaim how much extra currency they now have to level the playing field in society. Not many people about marginalization and privilege in these terms, but identities intersecting with poverty know that time really is one of the most predominate things that is taken. For example: People unable to get a bank card must line up at lunch to cash their cheque at a place that takes a cut of it from them to do so, cutting into their lunch hour because the bank won’t be open outside of their shift, or they can’t get there in time regardless. In this story it is about academic competitions, where the character has to do so much more work, and put in so much more time, to compete with others. There is a thought experiment within the thought experiment introduced as well.
  
  Other stories are about the power of representation in stories fostering the core ability to dream, and therefor change the world; the system attempting to erase queer love and identity, and the damage of internalizing those notions. All of the stories are, perhaps, more quiet than I expected. But Dirty Computer was a loud story (literally), so it makes total sense for this collection to go to the places it does. Very enjoyable.
  
  I bought the audiobook for this one because I suspected it would have excellent narration and I was completely correct. I can recommend going that way wholeheartedly.
• 
  Anny Barros

  The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe & Alaya Dawn Johnson - 4.5/5
  Nevermind by Janelle Monáe & Danny Lore - 5/5
  Timebox by Janelle Monáe & Eve L. Ewing - 4/5
  Save Changes by Janelle Monáe & Yohanca Delgado - 5/5
  Timebox Altar(ed) by Janelle Monáe & Sheree Renée Thomas - 4/5
  
  
  Janelle Monáe releasing a book collection of short stories telling more of the IN-CRE-DI-BLE universe she created with one of THEE best visual albums of all time (Dirty Computer my dearly beloved 💖)
• 
  ♡*WithLove, Reesie*♡

  2.5⭐
  
  I wish I liked this more. 
  
  It has many aspects of science fiction, romance, mystery, and a plus is the inclusion and focus of the LGBTQI+ community. However, the storytelling and execution fell flat.
  
  I think if I read the book vs listening to the audiobook I may have a different response. So I recommend reading the book versus listening. I started wishing the audiobook was abridged.
  
  I think the first short story is read by Janelle Monáe The narration sounds stilted, disjointed, computer like. Maybe that is what they were aiming for, a technology aspect or feel. However, it was hard to follow as a narrative and I had to look up the book to read passages to see if it was written in verse or poems structure. It is not. I thought I would get used to it, but I didn't, and it made me want to stop the book completely. 
  
  I believe Bahni Turpin is the narrator for the remaining stories, and that narration was better. I've listened to their narration before and i'm use to their style.
  
  In the first story, I had to work too hard to figure out the workings of this world, it just wasn't fun. Again, this may be because of narration and I may have better time if I read vs listen.
  
  The stories have unique components that I like and it is a nice world that was built, however the storytelling seemed either all over the place, omitting information that the writers assumes the reader already knows, or it was aiming for suspenseful mystery but I'm just lost as to what is what or if it is really the end of a story.
  
  This book reminded me heavily of Far Sector by N. K. Jemisin. That dealt with emotions; suppressing them, drugs created because of that, an uprising, asylums, etc. And The Memory Librarian deals with the mind and memories; suppressing or removing them and the same consequences occur as in Far Sector. Both novels put the readers in the middle of the story, middle of this new world, and the reader has to play catch up and connect the dots of language, culture, and the rules of the world.
  
  I would not listen again. If you're a Janelle Monáe fan, then read it. If you're a scifi fan than maybe read it when you have nothing else to read. I recommend reading the book, and not listening to the audiobook.
• 
  jo ♡

  UM HELLO I DIDN'T KNOW JANELLE MONÁE WAS WRITING A BOOK????? OF QUEER SFF SHORT STORIES????? I NEED THIS IN MY POSSESSION IMMEDIATELY????????
• 
  Anna

  I was intrigued by
  The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer as I really like Janelle Monáe's music and the visual storytelling in her videos. It is a collection of stories co-written by Monáe and set in the future world(s) of her music. I'm familiar with only one of the co-writers,
  Sheree Renée Thomas, who edited the groundbreaking black sci-fi collection
  Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.
  
  Each story is pretty substantial, between 40 and 80 pages long. The characters and exact settings vary, although I think all are somewhere in a future USA. Recurring themes include queerness, anti-racism, community-building, memory, privilege, creativity, and utopian dreams. I liked the balance of dystopian and utopian elements. Each tale focuses on spaces of resistance to oppression and the joy and companionship that can be found within them. The emphasis, to my mind, was on world-building over plot, which is understandable given all are playing in the same sandbox (as it were). As good world-building is my favourite component of sci-fi, I found the whole collection involving and original.
  
  The first story, which the book is named after, is full of interesting details but a bit slow to get going. The second contains more picaresque incident and has an important message: don't trust TERFs. The third is the most existentially and psychologically unsettling, verging perhaps on horror. The fourth is my favourite as it is a great combination of weird magical technology, appealing characters, and tight plotting. The final story is a well-chosen, uplifting note to end on as it follows children having an adventure and reads like magical realism. I'm not sure how interconnected the stories would appear to a reader unfamiliar with Monáe's music. Nonetheless, I think any sci-fi reader would appreciate their vividness and sense of joy.
• 
  Margaret

  I loved this collection of short stories! Expanding on Monáe's setting in her album Dirty Computer, Monáe and a team of collaborators grapple with themes of police states, surveillance society, problematic utopians, and racism, all while presenting ways of maintaining hope and dreaming of a better future. It's a really stunning and thought-provoking collection!
• 
  Deepti

  [7.3/10]
  
  I truly always struggle with finding a rating that feels “right” for short story collections and anthology, but I’ll try my best. I found the world of Memory Librarian really fascinating and I would have liked to spend more time in that world and learning more about New Dawn and how it came to be. There was a really great level of world building that happened despite the short-story format which is an awesome accomplishment. But, like all short story anthologies, I wished some stories were longer and others I didn’t care for. The concept behind the stories and album by extension was really creative and I loved how wonderfully queer the book was.
• 
  Wil C. Fry

  In the future imagined by this book, an oppressive regime called New Dawn controls anyone it doesn’t like by erasing memories (or storing them; I was never sure exactly which). And the people it doesn’t like seem curiously similar to the marginalized communities of today: Black and brown people, LGTBQ, women, the victims of unfettered capitalism — almost like the book wasn’t imagining a future society at all but was rather a metaphor for today.

  The world-building was interestingly fluid (I was never quite sure exactly what New Dawn was, or how it came about), the characters realistic and tangible, and the various stories were varied anough that I felt differently in each place with each set of people. And I certainly empathized with many of the characters.

  I’m not sure what went wrong; I just was never swept up or swept away by the book as I had hoped to be. (On the other hand, the “emotion picture” and album that the book relates to — Dirty Computer — I enjoyed very much.)

  (I have published a
  longer review on my website.)
• 
  jess

  Janelle Monáe’s mind is so unbelievable. i would love for them to dabble in writing feature works and really taking their vision to another level because time and time again they have a proven capability for world-building. they’ve done that in so many different mediums (albums, visual short film albums, now literature) and have been successful consistently. i believe a logical next step would be full length films, but let’s see what they do next. one of the most interesting minds currently working
• 
  Gabriela

  Really awesome sci-fi, I like how each story was distinct but contributed to a wider world. Really interesting ideas were explored and I loved the queerness of it. My favourite one is probably the one with the pantry and least favourite one the one with the kids but they were all good! Would love to see more in this vain.
• 
  Oracle.Xy

  The first story is worlds better than the rest of them.
  
  And the second is bad. Bad. The first time we see Jane 57821 in print and I wish I could just erase it from my memory. Clunky YA-prose steaming garbage plot with characters that talk like cardboard cut-outs or (unironically) robots.
  
  Timebox was really really good but I wanted more.
  
  Save Changes was good.
  
  The second Timebox story, Altar(ed), was alright.
  
  Disappointing.
• 
  Lee (Books With Lee)

  3.5 rounded up
  2 stars for the audiobook. I recommended reading the physical book because the first narrator (I believe is the author) just about put me into a slump. The content is great, but I just couldn’t stand how monotone the narration was. I switch to the physical book too late, but when I did I enjoyed it a lot more. I’m a lover of all things sci-fi Afro-futuristic and this book delivered. I enjoyed some stories more than others, but overall I thought they were all pretty good. Definitely gave me Black mirror vibes which I love!
  
  The only thing that I don’t like was some stories went on too long and others felt incomplete. Otherwise, great book with some great queer representation. Will have to pick up the physical book again in the future to maybe have a different experience
  
  
• 
  Tara

  Review pending Harper Collins union getting a fair contract
• 
  Alex Sarll

  Janelle Monae's first book – and while the front cover and spine don't mention that each story has a different co-writer, there's enough of a unified sensibility here, and Monae has already established sufficient polymath credentials, that I suspect she was more hands-on than one might usually expect from such an arrangement. Although admittedly I don't know the prose of any of the collaborators enough to try to divine their fingerprint, even if I have read comics by two of them, Eve Ewing and Danny Lore. As the subtitle makes clear, it ties in to Monae's fabulous Dirty Computer album, though that does bring an unsettling realisation; I'm used to dystopias from 40 or even 15 years ago seeming unduly optimistic now. But this is a 2022 book derived from a 2018 album and film, and already the oppressive New Dawn regime's grudging acceptance of trans people, despite their crackdown on "antisocial deviance", seems more progressive than the situation in some American states today.
  
  Still: as musically-derived dystopias go, it feels a lot more plausibly evil than the ones Jim Steinman or Queen and Ben Elton gave us. Sure, there are hints of book musicals when you get reference to crazy, classic life, or Jane defending the Pynk – but even more so than a musical, the nature of a mosaic novel is to complicate what, in a song, can ride a single emotion. So the Pynk Hotel is still a queer haven from the New Dawn regime, but where in the song or the music video it can be a dream, a story inevitably grounds it, losing that pure joy in tense meetings and talk of shifts and community chores. But I suppose as much as anything the whole Dirty Computer concept is about the danger of purity as a concept, which has to cut both ways. Certainly the world feels like it fits together, a constructed setting rather than one merely gestured at; even something like numbers as names, which might have felt like dystopia 101, is given heft by being tied to a system similar to China's social credit scheme. It's a neat touch – though I suppose you could debate whether that's worldbuilding as such, or just a reminder of quite how dystopian the world already is.
  
  Which is part of the point, of course. A lot of what I've been reading lately has had prominent themes of memory – not necessarily the most cheering thing to recur at a time where it seems pretty certain all the best days are past – but at least this one flags that in the title. And somewhere between Total Recall, Buffy and Eternal Sunshine, the editing of memories has quietly become a fairly mainstream SF idea – but in the title story here, it wraps neatly around the double consciousness of a lead who's risen to the top of a system she tries her best to ameliorate in her own little fiefdom, but where she knows her gender, her orientation and the colour of her skin mean she'll never quite be an insider, never be able to relax and turn up informally retro like the white guys, will always need her robes to assert her right to be there. And dear heavens, the idea of 'memory hoarding' – which is to say, not allowing the contents of your own head to be taken and scrutinised – as perceived antisocial act is all too believable an extension of the rhetoric corporate and government surveillance already use.
  
  Having set up the New Dawn dystopia and the 'dirty' resistance in the first two stories, the third, Timebox, initially seems far less science-fictional, a few gadget upgrades to excuse the presence of a story which could be set last week, and is really, heartbreakingly, about how hard it is getting by in a world where even the actual bad stuff isn't as life-breaking as the pointless little indignities and extra hurdles around it, about a couple where one partner's grand ideals become cruelty when they're not accompanied by enough care or communication. And then it plays its hand, and the Macguffin makes all of that so much worse, and it's haunting – what the Jordan Peele Twilight Zone revival could have been. This shift into more outright fantastical territory continues in the last two tales, and leaves me with mixed feelings. Yes, the concluding Timebox Altar(ed) in particular is one of the most hopeful things I've read in ages which didn't feel false or forced, and the argument that you can't build a future you can't dream is solid. But what does it say that most of the technology the dictatorship uses is day after tomorrow stuff, while the elements which promise a way past that are either magical or Clarke's Law indistinguishable from same?
• 
  Lauren Stoolfire

  Janelle Monáe is so talented. Now I need to relisten to her Dirty Computer album and emotion picture asap.
• 
  Michael

  It is no secret that I absolutely love Janelle Monae but what the hell was this? I should have researched the purpose of this book instead of checking it out solely because of the author. Janelle has always been very sophiscated and very attractive to me physically and mentally. I love her as a muscian but this book did nothing to me. I was scratching my head in confusion and annoyance because this book was very dense and forgettable.
  
  Although I did check out her latest album Dirty Computer, this book was really boring. I did not even get pass the first few pages without tossing it aside. Is this suppose to be stories from the songs or something? It would be much better if they had song titles in the book then describe the meaning behind the songs.
  
  Otherwise this was a colossal mess...
  
  Ne.....NEXT!
• 
  Jordan

  I'm a fan of Monae and her whole vibe, and I've appreciated the work of hers that I've seen. That said, I'm not as intimately familiar with the "worldbuilding" that she's been doing with her music as some others seem to be so I started to get a little bit worried about how much of this I was going to grok or enjoy.
  
  Well, my worries were unfounded because this was a great scifi anthology. There's a VERY distinct and strong voice, which is sometimes hard for first-time authors to accomplish, but I suppose Monae has been writing in other mediums for a long time so she's got that under her belt. As with most anthologies, some pieces resonated more with me than others. But overall, I really admire the project of this and felt very emotionally connected to it, despite spending relatively little time with each of the characters that we meet. I do think that the writing and concepts were well-suited for an anthology like this, rather than something more long-form, so that was a well reasoned choice. I'm sure it will be even more poignant for those that are deeper into Monae's canon than I am, but even with my very basic knowledge, I still loved the storytelling and worldbuilding here.
  
  The one big thing I would change is that I would have loved to get an author's note or information about how the collaborators contributed to the volume. But the themes of identity and resistance and freedom and community building were right up my alley and I would strongly recommend this.
• 
  Geonn Cannon

  I love Janelle Monáe. I think she's a great musician and actor (I actually like her better as an actor, but she's definitely strong in both areas). I was ready to believe "hey, maybe she's a writer, too!" But this is another example of a celebrity putting their name on a cover and then all the stories within having a cowriter who I'm sure did ninety percent of the work (Janelle IS given sole credit for one very short installment, which *is* well written).
  
  None of that really has anything to do with the content of the book, which is good. I just get annoyed by the whole co-author thing. I don't think this is a James Patterson situation (where the person getting the credit just came up with the idea and let someone else do all the heavy lifting) but I do think Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, Eve L. Ewing, Yohanca Delgado, and Sheree Renée Thomas deserve more credit than Janelle is given.
  
  I also think I've mentioned disliking Bahni Turpin's narration before, and she hasn't gotten better. She tends to rush through things, keeping a steady tone with no regard for the situation or emotion that might be in dialogue. It's not bad, per se, but it does affect my overall enjoyment of the story.