The Not Yet by Moira Crone
The Not Yet by Moira Crone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Living through what resembles a pre-Apocalypse, I remember Moira Crone’s sprawling island city of New Orleans, a century or so from today, where a person can become immortal by kissing the right ass and toeing the line and earning enough capital for the change. Crone is a writer who tries for everything, writes everything, and takes on speculative work, science fiction, just as readily as she writes literary stories and novels. This book was nominated for the Philip K. Dick award when it first appeared. The drive forward of this book is so pleasing, through so many visions of the city and so many ideas about what it means for a world to crumble – there is an overlay of allegory matched with a grit that’s like a walk down Bourbon Street on almost any night. Well, maybe not now, during our pandemic. It’s a portrait of one face of inequality unchecked. A good read for right now, 2020, when we can see what a collapse might look like. Especially mind-blowing is the fact of New Orleans, because it just feels right to be there for the end of the world, really. Where else?