Order XIII : Stories of Transformation here
There are no scents in Heaven.
No choking fetor of sweat or blood; no bodies that secrete, defecate, die, and rot. Nothing grows, nothing perishes. Nothing can be said to be truly alive.
But there is sound. (Eidolon, Christie Yant)
The human condition is inescapable : one will have to struggle all his life to feed and earn shelter for himself, and then die. It's how the story goes for everybody. We have yet as a species to transcend our epehemeral nature and the best way we found yet to enhance it is through fiction. It allows us to dream of selves we could never possibly be if someone fictional didn't show us the way first. Spectulative fiction publisher Resurrection House made a risky move by releasing a freakin' short story anthology about transformation because it is such a goddamn conceptual theme, but force is to admit XIII: Stories of Transformation is riveting for many strange reasons.
Short story anthologies are a hit-and-miss product by nature. The longer they are, the more voices they feature and not every one of them will be a success with readers. XIII: Stories of Transformation has a strange and fascinating sense of cohesion to it though, because the concept of transformation seems to have a similar meaning to most authors participating. The stories in the anthology do not feature all that many bodily transformations alone. XIII: Stories of Transformation is a lot about accessing another realm and in a couple precise case, about transcending death. It is not much an anthology about what transformation should be as it is about what transformation should achieve. People want to transcend their reality.
Now comes the difficult task of singling out some stories. It's always a headache, but there are some clear winners in XIII: Stories of Transformation: Jennifer Giesbrecht's You Can Go Anywhere and Darryl Gregory's Digital stood out by their humanity. George Cotronis' Black Bird Lullaby was a fresh spin off undead fiction and my fellow Canadian Claude Lalumière's story The Thirteenth Goddess had this sophisticated cosmic horror edge to it that make his work so unique and enjoyable. Other authors that managed to stand out to me were: A.C Wise, Grà Linnea, Cat Rambo, Christie Yant and Richard Thomas, who has become a usual suspect in that kind of project. These may or may not strike your fancy, but such is the way of short story anthologies. I would suggest paying them extra attention nonetheless.
XIII Stories of Transformation is an oddly human short story anthology about a theme that has nothing human at all. It is a fierce reminds that wherever we're going in the future, it will be strongly influenced by where we're coming from. While XIII: Stories of Transformation doesn't transcend its nature as a short story anthology per se, it offers a cohesive and moving vision of its theme and for that reason leaves a lasting impact on the reader. Only books right now can offer us the luxury of looking into enhanced, future versions of ourselves. Fiction is the only medium that ever did, really. Reading XIII: Stories of Transformation is a good antidote against the helplessness of the human condition. It's kind of a situational reading, but it's a solid and compelling anthology.