#embodied exegesis

[solreads]

Embodied Exegesis - Review

Title: Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures

Authors: Ryka Aoki, Elly Bangs, Lillian Boyd, Palimyra, Maya Deane, Coyote Dembicki, Anya Johanna DeNiro, J Jennifer Espinoza, Maxine Firehammer, Maghan Hyland, Catherine Kim, Jess Levine, TT Madden, Hailey Piper, Petra Skelton, Riley Tao, Izzy Wasserstein, A.G.A. Wilmot, Adeline Wong

Editor: Ann Leblanc

Genre: Science Fiction

Audience: Adult

Format: Short Story and Poetry Anthology

Representation: Trans women, nonbinary, and genderless POV characters

   Trans women and nonbinary supporting characters and love interests

Summary: A famous avant-garde bodymaker grapples with their inability to find or make a body comfortable for themself as they work with their strangest client yet. A woman tattoos people with escaped lab-grown flesh to sculpt their bodies to their liking, while others like her cross an unspoken line by tattooing it into people’s brains. When her project is shut down, a scientist saves her nanite ‘children’ by letting them live in her own body, altering her mind through contact with their inhuman intelligence.

Embodied Exegesis’ stories explore the boundaries of personhood and humanity through bizarre worlds and strange technology that change what it means to have a body or an individual mind.

​Reflections: All anthologies have their ups and downs, but this was mostly ups. I enjoyed how out there many of the concepts and worlds were. Some (but not all) of the highlights for me were: Carseed by Maxine Firehammer, one of the shortest stories, which nonetheless held pretty poignant body horror and left many equally horrifying questions as the protagonist chooses a disturbing and possibly fatal transformation. The Majestic Art of Flesh by Hailey Piper, a biopunk story that also leaned into horror, where the strange magenta flesh Jerseyites use to reshape their bodies is forced into their minds, revealing, perhaps, a mind of its own. And My Robot Body by Megan Hyland, in which the protagonist takes shifts piloting a mobile lab robot that they long to become permanently. All of which showed very different perspectives– ranging from sweet to unsettling– on the desire for bodies (and minds) that transcend humanity and how technology expands the human experience.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, dysphoria

Notes on Rep: Many of the protagonists identify on-page as transfem, others’ identities are ambiguous. 

[transbookoftheday]

Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures, edited by Ann Leblanc

Embodied Exegesis is an anthology of cyberpunk and posthuman stories written by transfem authors. The included stories explore the limits of the genre: gender-affirming cybernetics, the literary surveillance state, transcendent hive-minds, a transgender coffee machine, and weaponized shitposts. The future of cyberpunk is trans, so stay tuned for an anthology of wild and weird stories exploring the limits of technological transformations of our bodies and minds.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Living in a Cyberpunk Future: Ann LeBlanc And Tenacity Plys Discuss Embodied Exegesis - Reactor

Writer Tenacity Plys and editor Ann LeBlanc talk about anthology curation, queerness, and why the future of cyberpunk is trans.

Last year saw the arrival of Embodied Exegesis, an anthology of cyberpunk and posthuman stories written by transfem authors, that seems to have come at exactly the right moment in history. Writer Tenacity Plys recently sat down with the anthology’s editor, Ann LeBlanc, to talk about curation, queerness, the endangered craft of woodworking, and why the future of cyberpunk is trans.

4 February 2025

[smokefalls]

The future was both monstrous and holy.

Hailey Piper, "The Majestic Art of Flesh" from Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures

[wearethekat]

January Book Reviews: Embodied Exegesis, ed. Ann Leblanc

I picked this anthology up from the library new purchases based on the striking cover. Embodied Exegesis is a collection of short stories by transfem authors set in the science fiction future, exploring transhuman and cyberpunk themes.

Anthologies are always a bit tricky to review, especially ones with many contributing authors. As you might expect, it was a bit of mixed bag. I loved "Moonpool," a piece about a restaurant worker who's forced to become the gender of whichever set of pronouns were used to misgender them last, and the bizarre, hallucinatory, confident prose of "A Canyon of Blood For The Normalest Man Alive." I did not like a short story which rather painfully chose to eschew paragraph breaks entirely. But for me, the absolute standout was Maya Deane's "A Notorious Intergalactic Criminal." It's about killing God, and also there's a transgender female coffee machine, and I'm not sure I understood a word of it, but boy did I have fun. Here's an excerpt of the hypnotically compelling prose:

But I have made you different from the others. All the other coffee machines are cisgender, built to the same standardized female specifications as all traditional automata—but not you. In ancient times it was established that nothing is more offensive to God than the antique practice of transgenderism, so I have made you a transgender female coffee machine, a stench in His divine nostrils, the better to flush him out.

Competently but not dazzlingly executed overall, with a few standouts, but what a great subject for an anthology. I had previously passed over Deane's Wrath Goddess Sing because the premise didn't especially appeal to me, but after reading her short story, it immediately went on my tbr.

[smokefalls]

A true misanthrope would just say people are people. To say people are terrible requires a secret belief that people can be better than they are. Pessimists are the best optimists.

Elly Bangs, "Bespoke" from Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures

[smokefalls]

Title: Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures Editor: Ann LeBlanc Publication Year: 2024 Publisher: Neon Hemlock Genre: fiction, science fiction, short stories, queer lit

I really enjoyed the diversity of this anthology in voices, styles, and ideas to explore cyberpunk from a transfeminine perspective. Some contributions were wild, while others more subdued and serious, but what was especially wonderful was how so many of the authors were more than fine with making cyberpunk to be weird as hell and not just edgy. I also liked how most of the contributors pushed the boundaries of cyberpunk in ways that deeply reflect trans experiences, showing the inextricable link between these experiences with some of the many themes one might encounter in the subgenre (particularly the posthuman). More than anything, though, this collection really demonstrated that it will be trans people who can and will run wild with cyberpunk and make it uniquely their own in the most fascinating ways imaginable. Lastly, I really want to praise the editor, Ann LeBlanc, for uplifting cyberpunk stories that do not go into ableist tropes so often tied to body modifications and the subgenre’s fraught relationship with anti-Asian xenophobia (see: techno-orientalism).

Like any collection and anthology, I found some stories more compelling than others. Overall, though, I enjoyed what everyone had to offer and how each imagined a cyberpunk future.

Some of my favorites: “Bespoke” by Elly Bangs, “Each of Us Is All of Us” by T.T. Madden, “Ghost Is Better Than Being Human, Actually (via FizzRoll.net)” by Adeline Wong, “The Hundred Eyes” by Catherine Kim, and “Anima” by J. Jennifer Espinoza

Content Warning: dysphoria, transphobia, murder, violence, death, references to gun violence and suicide

[smokefalls]

They didn’t really mind being a cosmic mystery, even to themselves; they just wanted other people to share in that mystery, to care about it, to enjoy it with them.

Elly Bangs, "Bespoke" from Embodied Exegesis: Transfeminine Cyberpunk Futures