Hazardous Imaginings

by Barry N Malzberg

First published 2020

An English archeologist consumed by forbidden desire for a young Jewish refugee devises an impossible scheme. He will convince most of the world's population that the Holocaust never occurred, hoping to delete it not just from history books but from reality itself. Meanwhile, on the Martian colony Bradbury, an investigator tracks a gay Uyghur killer through a future Australian metropolis where ethnic groups remain invisible to outsiders. In small-town Texas, a born-again cafeteria worker befriends an insectoid alien who has come to rescue humanity from Earth's destruction. A therapeutic Florida government wraps its caring bureaucracy around citizens it considers unenlightened. These interconnected tales probe forbidden territories where personal obsessions collide with social taboos, exploring how individual desires can reshape entire realities.

Genres: fiction, science-fiction, dystopia, mystery, crime, alternate-history

Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, unreliable-narrator

Setting: Australia, Bradbury, Florida, Mars, Texas

Period: Future

426 pages · Paperback · Monstracity Press

Content warnings: racism

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