Lesser Known Monsters (and Cocktails) of the 21st Century
Image courtesy of Kim Fu's Website
Collection: Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, written by Kim Fu and published by Tin House, is a blunderbuss blast of modern, anxious, existential issues presented in twelve speculative fiction short stories that oscillate between genre, from sci-fi and fantasy into horror, even finding their way into a whodunit mystery and erotica. Every story in this collection is saturated with current issues like gun control, toxic masculinity, and climate change and at the core of every one beats a heart of human darkness like worry or guilt, depression or loneliness, or a general apathy best described in the story “Do You Remember Candy” as a “collective shrug”.
The day after the sea monster appeared on the other side of the world, four people were gunned down in a grocery store downtown. Three days later, a crane fell from a construction site during a windstorm and crushed two cars, and an embezzlement scandal involving three city council members came to light. This, of course, was only the local news.
"So let's get married on a beach at sunset," Arthur said.
"We can't."
"Why?"
Because they kept their windows closed all summer to keep out the wildfire smoke, the sun a defined red disk in the haze that gave everything a Martian glow. Because the waterfront homes in their city that used to be rented as wedding venues were being abandoned as uninsurable, prone to flooding, poised on eroding cliffsides. Because the ocean was now a noxious, primordial soup, spitting up monsters.
— ”Bridezilla”
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
p.187
On the surface, these stories appear to channel the fears and entrenched anxiousness of a generation’s modern life and from this familiar and unrelenting information is built a one-way window to a bleak, ruined future from which these stories seem to come.
In “Time Cubes”—set in a future world where people work and live in a mall-like construct with fencing along the top to keep people from leaping to their deaths—Alice is known as a Depressive Insider who sees a Depressive Specialist who tries to remind her of the positive things, like that “they were living in a paradise…in the sense that the recent past was worse, the future would almost certainly be worse, and the present was worse for most other people, living elsewhere.” Alice, in more clinical terms, is told to fuck the pain away as a way to lift her mood, and when she begins dating the creator of a kids toy known as a Time Cube (where the life of a frog can be fast forwarded or rewound from egg to rotting corpse inside the cube using a dial, forever) she figures a way towards happiness.
“Do You Remember Candy” sees a world where a pandemic not unlike COVID sweeps through and removes everyone’s ability to taste anything. And while there isn’t a life-threatening illness associated with it, the change is permanent. The world is thrown into chaos “but so much doesn’t change. It dominates the news, but only briefly,” echoing in a familiar but different way the world we actually live in. The couple in “Twenty Hours” own a cloning machine that, when one of them dies, automatically clones them completely in twenty hours, having downloaded their memories from a chip within them. The husband uses this as a moment to stretch his legs, so to speak: having unconsensually murdered his wife (for the umpteenth time), he sets out on a twenty-hour bachelor’s day where he eats what he wants, visits a cam girls site (“…our hostess red my words aloud: My wife died. Oh, eggmcmuffin2026, I’m so sorry…”) before greeting his freshly cloned wife at the kitchen table.
- The transcripts are anonymized, and they're not reviewed by a human being, just an AI. And it tends to be somewhat literal-minded. It's not very good at telling when people are lying or being sarcastic, and the transcripts obviously don't contain our expressions or gestures. Do you understand?
- I—
- So, no, I can't do that. I can't simulate a walk in the conservatory with your mother. Under the distant domed roof, triangles of blue sky, palm leaves overhanging your path. Your mother delighted when a butterfly lands on her shoulder. And you, patient and kind and present as you wish you had been, just once. I would get fired. Tell me something else you want.
- The only thing I—
- Just tell me something else.
- I want to ride a unicorn.
- Great. I'll start the input and mapping process. Please head next door, where you'll be fitted for the simulator cap. Usually, if I have any questions, I'll use the room-to-room communicator, but this time I expect I—won't have any.
— ”Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
p.12
The stories aren’t all the worst parts of awful. Like most terrible news or terrifying internet information, there’s something good just on the horizon. Change, maybe, or the next best thing: hope. In “Do You Remember Candy”, the main character changes her life’s path to create bespoke, abstract art meant to recall the memories of food for clients to experience once more, memories that embody a higher, more important idea of their favorite foods that feels better than everyone getting their taste back. And in “Twenty Hours”, the husband spends more time thinking about his life with his wife than he does enjoying the time he had originally wanted, reaffirming his love and connection to her without all the sappy dross of a 2000s Rom Com, albeit a little fucked up.
Perhaps my favorite story of all is the very first of the collection, “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”. With the story expressed only in dialogue it not only highlights Kim Fu’s skill at storytelling but it also heightens the characters’ needs to a constant, strained level of urgency: one an employee at a memory simulation company trying to uphold the rules to keep their job, and the other wanting to relive a memory of being with their mother before she died. The only catch is that interacting with the memory of a dead person isn’t allowed because of restrictions and regulations, certain precautions regarding addiction. The story walks that familiar tension of being an employee trying to tow the line for a company while also wrestling with when to blur the line—or overstep it—in order to be a good human. It’s such a wonderfully dystopic opener that unfurls into a warm, heart-warming story so surreptitiously that you could almost miss it. And, really, that’s what’s at the core of these stories, whether they’re bleak or lonely or if there’s a darkness (or a congealed, single-celled organism) just off the page threatening to swallow the story whole, there’s always hope and something good, too—a new angle or perspective that’s positive, given the circumstance, if you’re willing to embrace it.
Lesser Known Cocktails of the 21st Century
Princess on the Morning of the Revolution
In this fantasy, I am a princess on the morning of the revolution. Slightly dim-witted, bred and raised for acquiescence, contented and pampered like show cattle. I wake in my canopy-covered bed and only one of my three maids is there, the other two having fled in the night, along with half the staff. Our servants will be seen as longtime collaborators, stooges, bootlickers, enemies of the people. Some stay because they believe it is the safest choice, some out of a Stockholm syndrome-like loyalty, some because they've never known anything else.
...
I am aware that I’m about to die. I have been kept almost entirely away from pain and violence, from complex sensation, from ordinary people who I now imagine will tear me apart like dogs. I feel the relief of a debtor releasing coins from his fist—a weight lifted, no longer beholden. Just imagine it: no longer feeling guilty for everything you have and don’t deserve, for an unjust world bent in your favor, paying the piper at last.
— ”In This Fantasy”
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
p.125-6, 127
Princess on the Morning of the Revolution
1oz London Dry Gin (Empress Gin)
0.75oz Peach Vodka (Ketel One Botanical)
0.5oz Blanc Vermouth (Lillet)
0.75oz Lemon Juice
0.5oz Rich Mint Simple Syrup (2:1)
1tsp Caviar (optional)
1tsp Cherry Juice (optional)
Place a large ice cube into a coupe glass to let it temper. (This will prevent it from shattering when you pour the cocktail over it.)
Add all of the ingredients, except for the Caviar & Cherry Juice, into a shaker then add ice and shake for 10-15 seconds. Strain into coupe around the ice cube.
Optional: place a teaspoon of caviar atop the ice cube and drip a teaspoon of cherry juice (like from a jar of Luxardo cherries) over the caviar. The caviar will eventually fall into the drink, like the fall of a monarchy after revolution, and the briny-ness will complement the cocktail and provide a nice, luxurious texture. The cherry juice, sunk and savored at the end of the cocktail, is sweet and cleansing — a fine end for the Princess on the Morning of the Revolution.
Sleep Hygiene
The [Sandman’s] hood was angled over his shoulder, as though he were looking back at her, expecting her to call him back, to beg for his occasional, ecstatic visits between long seasons of wakefulness. To keep her secret knowledge of the workings of the universe, of every hour of the night, the changing shadows across the sleep-softened faces of friends and lovers. She said nothing. She craned her head back and rolled it side to side across the top of the throne's backrest, to carve out a cradle for her skull in the soft-packed sand. At the edges of her vision, the desert blew away, curling in the wind like ocean surf, dissipating into the air. She closed her eyes and slept the dreamless, nourishing, ungrateful sleep of the innocent.
— ”Sandman”
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
p.81
Sleep Hygiene
1oz Seedlip Grove 42 (or Orange Flavored Vodka, like Ketel One Oranje)
1oz Seedlip Spice 94 (or 0.5oz Spiced Rum)
1oz Chamomile Tea, Double Brewed
0.5oz Tart Cherry Juice
0.5oz Lemon Juice
0.75oz Sandman Syrup* (roughly 1/4th a 1mg Melatonin – always be mindful when using Melatonin!)
Add all ingredients to a shaker tin with ice and shake for 10 seconds (up to 15 if using alcohol) and strain into a coupe (or glass or mug) and enjoy right before laying down to sleep for at least 8 hours.
Note: To avoid meeting the Sandman, replace Sandman Syrup with a Rich Lavender Syrup instead.
*Sandman Syrup: Microwave 2oz of water (by weight) until boiling then combine with 4oz of white sugar (by weight) until incorporated.
While the syrup is still warm-hot add the following:
two 1mg Melatonin pills (crushed into powder)
1/2tsp L-Theanine Powder (about 800-1000mg)
1/2tsp of Lavender Buds.
Stir vigorously until all powders are incorporated; microwave syrup in 7 second intervals to reheat syrup and better incorporate powders. Let steep until cool (4-6 hours), then strain out Lavender. Bottle, label, and keep refrigerated for up to 3 months. Again, only use right before bed and only if you can allow 8 hours of rest!