Contemporary Authors

Jun 7 2016, 9:46 am ET
Our ‘Super Extra Grande’ Talk with Cuban Science-Fiction Novelist Yoss

by Arturo Conde

Acclaimed science-fiction novelist Jose Miguel Sanchez Gomez, also known by his pen name, Yoss, author of the new novel "Super Extra Grande," published by Restless Books. Emily Maguire

Imagine a distant future where Latin Americans travel faster-than-light through space, Spanglish is an intergalactic language, and the fate of the universe depends on one veterinarian who treats giant alien animals, including massive cave-dwelling crustaceans and long sea worms that could swallow entire people whole.

Some readers will say that this story is pure fantasy. But for award-winning Cuban writer José Miguel Sánchez Gómez—also known by his pen name Yoss—science fiction is not just about telling fantastic stories set in the future. His new novel "Super Extra Grande," published by Restless Books on June 7, aims to help readers understand who they are today.

"Sometimes people say that science fiction tries to predict the future," Yoss said in a phone interview with NBC Latino. "The future cannot be predicted. Science fiction sets up a mirror in the future to better understand who we are today, to become more aware of the consequences that our actions could have tomorrow."

Yoss's previous book "A Planet for Rent," published in 2015, was a political critique about Cuba and Latin America set in the future after aliens have colonized Earth. And "Super Extra Grande" is another funny critique about Western politics, which follows veterinarian Jan Amos Sangan Dongo as he travels through space to save two ambassadors who were accidentally swallowed by a giant creature.

For readers in Cuba, Yoss's new novel about exploring the insides of leviathan beasts could remind them of their independence leader José Martí. The poet described living in America as the experience of a very small person living inside of a much bigger animal.

And for Latinos, "Super Extra Grande" could similarly be a story about immigrant families who have to dig in the bowels of a much larger United States to find their piece of the American dream.

Yoss explained how books challenge both writers and readers to explore themselves and create alter egos to better understand who they are. And for the Cuban author, science fiction is a powerful tool to connect with his heritage.

"When I was a boy I had the false idea that you had to write science fiction by imitating the greatest writers," Yoss told NBC Latino. "But over time, I realized that you can tell better stories when you write about what you know. And what I know best is Cuba."
Award-winning Cuban writer Jos? Miguel S?nchez G?mez--also known by his pen name Yoss --in Havana. Emily Maguire

When Yoss writes about Cuba—which for many Americans today seems like a galaxy far, far away—and describes the island-nation as a parallel world, a hyper-reality of what the future could be, he transforms Cuba into a familiar place for everyone.

In this sense, "Super Extra Grande" is an enormous mirror that unearths deep roots connecting Cuba with the United States and the universe. And reminds readers that everyone has an alter ego, a veterinarian who needs to wade through the intestines of large animals to find something meaningful.

"I think it's important to look towards the future," Yoss concluded. "But you have to do it with your feet firmly planted on the ground, rooted in the past."

INTERVIEW: Yoss
By Rachel CordascoMay 17, 2016interviewCuba, Yoss

yossAward-winning Cuban writer José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, known as “Yoss,” has two works of sci-fi out in English so far: A Planet for Rent and Super Extra Grande (both from Restless Books). In this interview, I asked him about his craft, his pseudonym, sci-fi, and what he thinks about the recent thaw in Cuban-American relations.

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translated by Daniel Gavidia

Rachel Cordasco: What first drew you to write sci-fi, and how do you get ideas for your stories?

Yoss: I think every author writes what he would like to read… or to have read. Although I suppose that some write for other authors, critics, or for that elusive “posterity.” I have loved science fiction since my childhood, when I discovered that, if Earth was almost completely explored and discovered, only space (I apologize to Star Trek, time and parallel universes too) could be the last frontier. What I like the most and I still like about the genre is its symbolic capacity, its quality for creating universal metaphors: telling a story of the many I see every day from my window in the Havana neighborhood of El Vedado is easy… but many outside of Cuba would not understand it. Then, to transform it into more general fable without any frontiers is a way to reach more readers. Of course, many ideas for sci-fi short short stories or novels come to me by reading and watching other novels, stories, films or cartoons of the genre: it is a feedback system that is never too prudent. Which, among other things, always helps one to not waste time doing something that another person already did a long time ago. Although sometimes, even though an author wasn’t aware of stealing, he could still do a better job… In any case, reading a lot is the best way of stimulating a writer’s imagination. Unlike digestion, in which the more one eats the more shit one produces, in literature, if there is to be a minimal level of quality, it tends to be the other way around. Luckily.

RC: What are your thoughts on the recent thaw in Cuban-American relations, and how do you think it will influence the literatures of both countries?

Y: After 55 years in which the United States was our worst enemy… at least officially, the opening of relations of December 17, 2014 was truly the event of the century. And the artists of the island can’t be—in fact, we aren’t!—divorced from these new circumstances. In little more than a year and a half, Cuban authors have written a lot about the consequences of this new happening and unexpected thawing. And I’m talking about the good and the bad. And more so for us who dedicate ourselves to sci-fi and fantasy: dystopias in which Cuba, taken by the British in 1762, is never given back to Spain and becomes independent alongside the other thirteen American colonies. Or stories in which our national hero of independence Antonio Maceo does not die in combat against the Spaniards, but becomes the first governor of the State of Cuba… it’s a base that makes the imagination fly, wouldn’t you agree?

Concretely, I think it will only get easier for Cuban authors to visit, give conferences and sell books in the U.S. Even though it is currently still quite complicated… And the Americans doing the same by coming to our island, something unthinkable just five years ago. Geographically and idiosyncratically our nations are very close to each other, so why maintain this separation like if we were in opposite corners of the world? Especially considering that, in this post-Soviet era, ideologies are no longer an obstacle to convergence: for example, China, which still proudly proclaims to be socialist, looks more and more like the U.S. and the rest of the West. Let’s hope Cuba can follow a similar path. To have their millionaires and their markets… while still being Cuba. Because, even though the leading gerontocracy of the Communist Party would like to incinerate me for speaking my mind, the truth is that I don’t see another future for this country, especially after the imminent collapse of Chávez’ social experiment in Venezuela, which used to be our main commercial partner and our source of cheap oil.

RC: How do you see Cuban sci-fi developing in the near future?

Y: I think this answer is a continuation to the last one, clearly. Cuban sci-fi authors always worry a lot about tomorrow: if during the time of the U.S.S.R. and CAME it looked like (and heaven help whoever wrote the opposite) that the future belonged entirely to socialism, and that capitalism only had a few months left to go, authors wrote many utopias more or less ridiculous in which Moscow was the capital of the world and Cuba the country of maternity, where pregnant women were sent to wait for labor, the years post-Berlin Wall unleashed a profound skepticism of socialism, in spite of the curious Chinese experiment of doing capitalism under the command of Mao’s Party.

Nowadays, Cuban authors oscillate between painting a dark future of misery for our little island, considering it a future U.S. state, next to Puerto Rico (and I apologize to all my stubbornly separatist Puerto Rican friends, but in their case this looks more and more inevitable to be the case, even if it hurts) and even more catastrophic visions. Of course, it is not that we believe in such a future… often the purpose of sci-fi is to warn so that these sinister visions never happen.

With a lot of cyber, bio and steampunk in these conceptions, with more writers centered in the Espacio Abierto Literary Workshop, with the doors of the collection Ambar de Gente Nueva open to their creations, and more awards, like the Hydra, the Juventud Ténica, the Calendario, and the revamped David and the biennial La Edad de Oro, Cuban sci-ci today enjoys exceptional health. We have already surpassed the quality and quantity of the eighties, the so called Silver Age, so I like to say that we are living in the Age of Platinum, the genre’s third spike since its apparition in 1959 almost alongside the Revolution. Now, besides myself, there are about two or three other Cuban authors publishing and winning awards in other countries, going to conventions, being included regularly in Spanish and English anthologies… and the best thing is that our native readers, those within Cuba, consume everything published in our country in this genre… and still ask for more. So when the law of the free market barges into the Cuban book industry, at least we will be guaranteed a public. Which is enough… and it is also quite a challenge to not disappoint our followers, right?

RC: I have thoroughly enjoyed A PLANET FOR RENT and SUPER EXTRA GRANDE, especially the sardonic humor. In what ways do you think that humor or irony enhance a work of speculative fiction?

Y: If someone were to ask me what is the formula of Cuban sci-fi, what makes it special, I would say that it is one third ethical inquiry, like the best Soviet sci-fi, like that of the Strugatsky brothers; another third goes to a love for gadgets, physical action and exotic and fascinating characters, like in the good cyberpunk thrillers and American space operas… but also another third goes to irony, absurdity and other types of humor, without leaving black humor aside. It’s only logical; it’s part of our idiosyncrasy to make fun of everything. And twice so, for being Latin Americans and islanders. It’s a logical and necessary mechanism of survival for a small country that always felt like a soccer ball in a match between the global superpowers of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.: laughing at everything, looking at everything with disbelief, the double morality of believing and pretending to not believe or vice-versa. An innocent cynicism, to give it a name.

And we need it too. Many of the great canvases of sci-fi lack humor, a sense of parody… I think that now and forever it will be important to laugh. Magnificence, operatic grandiosity, and overwhelming settings can be very majestic and draw whistles of admiration… but laughter is also an inescapable part of setting. Next to superheroes and super villains, there will always be common people that will find a way to mock them in other to reduce them, at least symbolically, to human heights. That’s why I think that humor brings so much to sci-fi. After all, great authors like Robert Sheckley, Douglas Adams, David Langford and even the justly celebrated George R. R. Martin (yes, with his “The voyages of Tuff,” a little jewel of humor in sci-fi) have set the foundation of their fame in the genre by using, totally or partially, humor.

RC: Favorite writers?

Y: This is one of the questions that can’t be missing from an interview that respects itself. So, because I have practiced answering it, now I tend to make three lists, each with ten authors: sci-fi and fantasy, worldwide mainstream, and Spanish-language. Here they go:

Sci-fi and fantasy: Alfred Bester, Robert Heinlein, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky (brothers who always wrote together), Brian Aldiss, Ursula K. LeGuin, David Gemmell, George R. R. Martin, John Scalzi, Andrewzj Sapkowski (the Pole that wrote the adventures of the wizard Geralt of Rivia).

Mainstream (of all time and of all tongues except Spanish): Joseph Conrad, Thomas Pynchon, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Henry Miller, Curzio Malaparte (Italian), Amos Tutuola (Nigerian), J. H. Rosny Ainé (French), Gunther Grass (German) and Fyodor Mikailovich Dostoyevsky (Russian).

Spanish: Alejo Carpentier (Cuban), Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian), Arturo Pérez Reverte (Spanish), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombian), Juan Miguel Aguilera (Spanish, writes sci-fi and fantasy, but…), Lucía Etxebarri (Spanish, Leonardo Padura (Cuban), Michel Encinosa Fú (Cuban and writes sci-fi and fantasy…) and Manuel Mujica Lainez (Argentinian).

But there are so many left! How to forget Ted Chiang, Dan Simmons, Dante Alighieri, Julio Cortázar and Jorge Luis Borges (Argentinians), Carlos Fuentes and Fernando del Paso (Mexicans), Herny Sinkiewicz (Polish) and Serguei Lukianenko (Russian)? Every list is, by force, an unforgivable omission… and being 47 years old I am always open to reshaping my priorities: I still read with passion, and more each day.

RC: If you’re willing, could you tell us what you’re currently working on?

Y: Recently (two weeks ago) I finished a novel, a military space opera, a project I had been caressing for sixteen years: it is called “The Fallen, Step Forth” and it is loosely inspired by a famous book on American submarine crews of the Second World War that I read as a kid in a condensed version in Reader’s Digest and which impressed me a lot: “Run Silent, Run Deep,” about the frigate captain Edward L. Beach. Many years later I read the original in English… and liked it more. Now, my version that takes place at the end of this century, at 165 pages, is still a novella; I will let it sit for a few months to then give it a final revision. I have already sent it to some friends and colleagues and they have given me comments… some good, and others not so much. I hope to keep what caused the former and changed what caused the latter in the final version.

Right now I’m writing an article about the ships and weapons of the seventeenth century Caribbean, for a new translation and critical edition and profusely annotated version of the five books of the Emilio Salgari’s saga on the Black Corsair which should appear next year in Venezuela… if Nicolás Maduro and the chavizmo allow it, of course.

After said article, I will write a children’s version of “The Gold of Rin,” the first part of the tetralogy “The Nibelung Ring” (I am a big Wagner fan), for the interesting collection Tesoro-ballet, of the Cuban editorial Gente Nueva, specializing in books for children and young adults; the idea is to take to the public the stories of famous ballets and operas, which they have trouble deciphering because they do not dominate the original languages, despite the music fascinating them, given that music is a lingua franca that talks directly to the soul. This year I already published another book in this series.

I am also working on a four-hand short story with Anglo-Latvian writer Tom Crosshill, with which I recently published in Locus a brief history of sci-fi in Cuba. I won’t give out any spoilers… but I will say that it has to do with Cuba and parallel universes.

But I’m guessing that the article and the two short stories won’t bring me much… so the true work that remains for this year is finishing my fantasy novel trilogy untitled “The City of Salt.” The first installment, “The Mercenary and the Desert,” finished years ago, should appear here in Cuba in 2018… but I still have to make some last-minute edits that have come to mind while I wrote the second in the series, “The City and the Tournament,” finished not long ago… and I hope that the third part, “The Warrior and the Wizard,” doesn’t stay out… because I still have 75 pages left to go to finish it, but I’m not waiting until 2017! It’s because I started the project back in 1993… and it has rained a lot and I have published a lot since then.

Of course, while I write this trilogy I will surely write another short story… for example, one about pawn shop owners in the American Midwest, which I will write four-hand with a young Cuban author, Malena Salazar Maciá.

RC: Why “Yoss”?

Y: My real name is José Miguel Sánchez Gómez… and I’m not ashamed that is sounds 200% Latino. But it turns out that it’s been decades that no one calls me anything but Yoss: only my mother, my father and some of the few friends that met me before 1980. Because that year I had a P.E. teacher (I won’t say her name here… she died already, unfortunately, but know that I thank her alias) that had a defect in her palate, and when she called my name, she transformed by name José into something that sounded like Ioss. So everyone, with that fondness for mockery that teenagers have and hopefully will have forever, started calling me that way, so I became Ioss or maybe Jhozz for more and more people. When I was 17 I started sending the texts that I had started writing since I was 15 to writing contests, and many asked for a pseudonym… so looking for one, I had to learn how to write that sound… and I chose Yoss. And not because it sounds more Anglo-Saxon, let it be known. From then on it has been my pen name, except for my first sci-fi short story book “Timshel” in 1989, in which the editor, José Rodríguez Feo—friend and patron of José Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera in their time, as well as a glory of Cuban letters by right—declined to admit “such a strange pseudonym with you having such a gorgeous name, beautiful boy” (sic) so he insisted in publishing it with my full name.

But since then I have also been Yoss in literature, and I also find it fair and comfortable. Even though every once in a while someone with that nickname will show up on YouTube or in some blog (I already know of two women, a Mexican and a Peruvian, but so far no men), I think it is brief, catchy, and pretty distinctive. And well, it prevents uncomfortable incidents, like the one that happened back in 1989 when “Timshel” was published: Diosdado, a friend from judo (I’m a black belt and still go to the tatami every now and then) that is 6’2 and weighs 220 lb, showed up at my house, put the book on the table and told to help him “beat up that scoundrel who has published your stories under his name.” It was a pretty embarrassing moment, imagine: he had read some of my stories, but only knew me as Yoss… it took a couple of minutes to convince him—my ID came in handy—that José Miguel Sánchez Gómez was also me. So, since that day, and in other things since I have followed his sound advice, my books only feature the name that everyone knows me by…

Many thanks to Yoss for taking the time to answer these questions! And thanks as well to Daniel Gavidia, Nathan Rostron, and Restless Books.

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto.

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez in Havana, Cuba, in 1969, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David in the science-fiction category for Timshel. Since then, he has gone on to become one of Cuba's most iconic literary figures—as the author of more than twenty acclaimed books, as a champion of science fiction through his workshops in Cuba and around the world, and as the lead singer of the heavy metal band Tenaz. His two novels translated into English are A Planet for Rent and Super Extra Grande.

July 08, 2016
Yoss

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Working name of José Miguel Sánchez Gómez (1969- ). Yoss, probably the most prolific and internationally known sf writer in Cuba, became known in sf circles in 1988, after winning the prestigious Cuban Premio David ["David Award"] for new, unpublished writers, in the sf category, with the collection Timshel ["Timshel"] (coll 1989). The collection, including such stories as "Historia de gladiadores" ["A Story of Gladiators"] and "Timshel", anticipated the Cyberpunk scene in Cuba during the Special Period. After his debut, Yoss continued publishing short stories in different Anthologies, such as "Trabajadora social" ["Social Worker"] in Polvo en el viento ["Dust in the Wind"] (anth 1999) edited by Bruno Henríquez and "El performance de la muerte" ["Death Performance"] in Horizontes probables ["Probable Horizons"] (anth 1999) edited by Vladimir Fernández. He himself edited the sf and fantasy anthology Reino Eterno ["Eternal Kingdom"] (anth 1999).

Yoss was an active member of the sf collective that made sf visible in Cuba with national and international conferences such as Ibeficción 94, Cubaficción 96, CuásarDragón 95 and Habana 99. He has been a member of the most important sf literary workshops, including the Oscar Hurtado, directed by Daína Chaviano, Julio Verne, and Espiral, a workshop he helped create in the 1990s. He has published novels for adult and Young Adults alike. In 2000 he wrote the YA novel Los pecios y los naufragos ["The Wrecks and the Shipwrecked"] (2000), winner of the Luis Rogelio Nogueras award 1998; and later he published two of his least known works, Al final de la senda ["At the End of the Trail"] (2003) and the collection Precio justo ["Just Price"] (coll 2005) – winner of the Cuban Calendario award for 2004. In 2007 he published the novel Pluma de León ["Lion Feather"] (2007) in Spain, reissued a year later by the prestigious Cuban publisher Letras Cubanas. Pluma de león is considered by Yoss himself an erotic novel, and it depicts a universe in which humans rather than Aliens are the tyrannical race of the Galaxy, an element quite atypical in Yoss's fiction.

His international breakthrough came with the fixup novel Se alquila un planeta ["A Planet for Rent"] (fixup 2001; trans David Frye as A Planet for Rent 2015), first published in Spain. The plot is an allegory of Cuban events during the 1990s, projecting an image of oppression and lack of moral values on the island through a Near Future tale in which Earth is oppressed by Aliens, who transmogrify the planet into a tourist destination. With Se alquila un planeta, Yoss created a personal universe with distinct extraterrestrial races that oppress Earth and make humans second- or third-class universal citizens. This universe was to recur in his sf; what started as a clear allegory of Cuba facing foreign tourism eventually became a fictional reality in which we are all Cubans, laymen facing the powerful.

Having been published in Argentina, France, Mexico, Italy and Spain, his participation in the prestigious Spanish UPC award has given Yoss a constant international presence. In 2003, his story Polvo rojo ["Red Dust"] (2004) was a UPC runner-up. Polvo rojo is a homage to both Raymond Chandler's (1888-1959) noir novels, and Isaac Asimov's Positronic Robots. The main character of the story is an Android called Raymond with a positronic brain, who tries to resolve an intergalactic crime, while pursuing an understanding of its own existence.

In 2004, Yoss edited and wrote the prologue to the anthology of Cuban short stories La guayaba mecánica ["The Mechanical Guava"] (anth 2004) in Italy, and won the Premio Domingo Santos of the Asociación Española de Fantasía y Ciencia Ficción y Terror ["Spanish Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Horror"] in 2005, with his short story "Morfeo Verdugo" ["Morpheus Executioner"]. But his most important anthology has been Crónicas del Mañana: 50 años de ciencia ficción cubana ["Chronicles of Tomorrow: 50 Years of Cuban Science Fiction Short Stories"] (anth 2008), put together to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. This collection marked another official recognition of the genre in Cuba. It is divided in three sections preceded by three introductions by Yoss himself, relating the history of Cuban sf.

Finally, after participating several times, Yoss was the winner of the UPC award in 2011 with Súper Extra Grande ["Super Extra Large"] (2012 ebook; trans David Frye as Super Extra Grande 2016), the story of Jan Sangan, a human veterinarian who – able to do so because Faster Than Light travel has been invented by Latin Americans – specializes in treating enormous animals across the galaxy (see Medicine). This novel is a Space Opera of parodic tone, slightly departing from the author's usual allegorical and critical approach. Also in 2012 he published the novel Condonautas ["Condonautas"] (2012), whose main plot again features Sex as a universal force among different galactic species. [JCTR]
José Miguel Sánchez Gómez

born Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba: 1969

died

works (selected)

Timshel ["Timshel"] (Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba: Ediciones Unión, 1989) [coll: pb/]
Los pecios y los náufragos ["The Wrecks and the Shipwrecked"] (Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba: Ediciones Extramuros, 2000) [pb/]
Se alquila un planeta ["A Planet for Rent"] (Madrid, Spain: Equipo Sirius, 2001) [fixup: pb/]
A Planet for Rent (New York: Restless Books, 2015) [trans by David Frye of the above: pb/Edel Rodriguez]
Al final de la senda ["At the End of the Trail"] (Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba: Letras cubanas, 2002) [pb/]
Polvo rojo ["Red Dust"], in Premio UPC 2003: novela corta de ciencia ficción (Barcelona, Spain: Ediciones B., 2004) [pb/]
Precio justo ["Just Price"] (Ciudad de la Habana, Cuba: Editora Abril, 2005) [coll: pb/]
Pluma de león ["Lion Feather"] (Madrid, Spain: Neverland Ediciones, 2007) [pb/]
Súper Extra Grande ["Super Extra Large"] (Barcelona, Spain: Edicions UPC Cultura, 2012) [ebook: na/]
Super Extra Grande (New York: Restless Books, 2016) [trans by David Frye of the above: pb/Edel Rodriguez]
Condonautas ["Condonautas"] (Havana, Cuba: Editorial Abril, 2012) [pb/]

works as editor

Reino Eterno ["Eternal Kingdom"] (Letras Cubanas, 1999) [anth: pb/]
La guayaba mecánica ["The Mechanical Guava"] (Milan, Italy: Universitá de Milano, 2004) [anth: pb/]
Crónicas del mañana: 50 años de cuentos cubanos de ciencia ficción ["Chronicles of Tomorrow: 50 Years of Cuban Science Fiction Short Stories"] (La Habana: Letras Cubanas, 2008) [anth: pb/]

September 15, 2016
Yoss
by Jacqueline Loss

"Look at me, I have an inner life, I think differently, I am different, and yet, I can also reflect back your own thoughts."

Photo by Juan Carlos Alom.

I first met Yoss, a biologist by training, around fifteen years ago through a friend who studied snails. This mutual friend also happened to be a rabid fan of heroic fantasy fiction and predicted, way back then, that Yoss would become something special in the Cuban literary scene and beyond. It wasn't until years later, though, that Yoss—now an acclaimed sci-fi author, among many other things—and I were able to exchange ideas about the differing ways that Cubans remember the Soviet era. More generally, it's indeed his ability to examine the human experience from different vantage points that really entraps readers of his work. Fortunately, Super Extra Grande, the 2010 winner of the prestigious UPC award in Spain, was published by Restless Books this past summer, giving English readers another taste of Yoss's generous fiction.

Jacqueline Loss Could you speak about this current interest in Cuban science fiction?

Yoss Well, Cuba is at a crossroads with regard to its future right now, and sometimes it's only by contemplating the future that we can understand what's happening in the present. Two years ago, nobody could have predicted this moment, when Cuba and the US are getting closer and there are so many possibilities. The unimaginable might happen: the first woman president of the United States might be elected, and right after the first African-American was. But it's important to hear what sci-fi authors think, because, in a way, they can be a nation's conscience, even though the work often transcends its own historical moment. They worry about the consequences of decisions being made today.

JL You also write realist fiction and heroic fantasy. What are the links between all these categories?

Y When I begin a story I don't really know what it is until I'm actually in the process of writing it. But these are marvelous times for Cuba's heroic fantasy. For a long time you couldn't publish it on the island because it was too mystical and had gods and goddesses, all of which is anti-Marxist and negates dialectical materialism. Then people started writing fantastical things, and they were able to speak about magic, which stopped being so obscure. The moment people can go to church and be babalaos [sages or high priests in Santería] magic stops being a political problem. A generation that grew up with Harry Potter and Japanese manga arrived. It's a generation that accepts science fiction, too, and this type of literature is one that demands a lot of feedback. It obliges you to have read a lot of sci-fi in order to understand it. But fantasy, the concept of magic, is easy to accept. How does this happen? Now there's a whole generation asking for heroic-fantasy stories, but not ones that take place in a distant school in England or on a strange planet—rather, stories set here in Cuba that could shed new light on daily life.

JL Junot Díaz has said that sci-fi lends itself to describing his world—that of a Dominican-American. For example, he talks about what it's like to sit down with family, with his grandmother who grew up in the Dominican Republic in a very distinct temporal and social framework, then his little brother who is a US-born Marine combat veteran. Junot suggests that sci-fi is a mode through which you can describe and empathize with such a reality. Do you think it serves a comparable function in Cuba?

Y Of course I'm in agreement with Junot. He's onto something I've often thought: today's world is straight out of science fiction. In fact, there are a lot of people living in what, for me, is the future, literally—people with full access to broadband Internet and credit cards, people who can reserve a seat on a plane to the other end of the world only a few minutes before boarding. We know this future exists, but it's very expensive. We live in our present, but have an idea of this future. But to get plane tickets we have to go somewhere by foot, stand in line, and pay in cash that we often don't have. And a sizable part of the planet is living in what, for us, is the past. They not only lack the Internet, they don't even know it exists. They use firewood, eat what they grow, go barefoot, and have a very direct relationship with the natural world, without thinking about whether the Yuan or NASDAQ goes up or down. Of course this real situation, which many find logical, is total sci-fi. Today in Cuba we see how different levels of access to money shape how people live. Nowadays, there are Cubans who can travel whenever they want. They go to Varadero three or four times a year. They're the ones living in the future. Most Cubans can't do that, though a huge majority knows it's possible for others. Cuba is so complicated. Sometimes very elemental things become so greatly complicated that they transcend sci-fi and fall under fantasy, even horror. If Kafka had been born in Cuba, he wouldn't be an author of fantasy or horror. On the island, his writing would have been merely costumbrismo, chronicles of everyday life. So what if a human being wakes up transformed into a cockroach one morning? In Cuba, cockroaches wake up to find themselves turned into hotel managers or even ministers.

JL I get tired of reading Cuban literature as allegorical because, if writers wanted to always speak about social reality, they could have chosen another path. But it's also difficult to read your work without thinking of certain realities. In Super Extra Grande, we have Jan Sangan, a biologist and veterinarian who specializes in the largest organisms in the galaxy. At some point, Sangan asks his assistant Narbuk to watch what he says, since they are about to carry out a secret operation. So he says to him, in code, "Wátcha tu tongue, largatija. This is an op oscuro." Narbuk answers indiscreetly, "Op oscurso, Boss Sangan." He doesn't understand his boss, but not because he doesn't have full use of his language. Rather, it's because there are "no nuances or shades of meaning for them." Does the need to speak in code correspond to a particular context? Is it a thing of the past or does it continue to be necessary?

Y The worst cop is the one they've placed inside people's hearts and minds. This is what I'm satirizing. For a lot of Cubans, this is normal behavior, everyday stuff. The questions I want to bring up with Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo and his assistant are: Is this normal? Does one have to think in code all the time? People look at a male sex organ and say it's a phallus instead of saying that it's just a penis. Why do we need to keep making metaphorical allusions? I think Cubans are contaminated by metaphors. We're too used to reading between the lines. Sometimes reality is only what it seems to be—reading between the lines destroys it. A lot of writers, from the '90s up until now, are trying to write the great novel of the Cuban Revolution, of the Cuban Situation. At the same time, they want it to be published in Cuba, so they hide everything between the lines. They fail to notice that if there's one thing the state security has learned, it's to read between the lines! All Cubans are experts at that. The best way to hide things is to place them right before everyone's eyes. Science fiction, historically, has been an extraordinary way to avoid censure. If they say anything to me, my response is, "Look, I'm speaking about a distant planet, in a distant future, with a non-human species. How can you say I'm criticizing reality? You guys saw it that way?" So this is how I can reach readers interested in finding metaphors, but not those who want to be hit over the head with a load of symbols.

JL In regard to codes, the narrator of Super Extra Grande notices that Narbuk is "as indelicate, undiplomatic and tactless as every other member of his species." Then in Se alquila un planeta (Planet for Rent) there is a character who everybody at the escuela al campo (schools in the countryside where middle and high school students were sent to study and work) makes fun of for having good manners. How do these categories work in your writing, and what do they have to do with Cuba?

Y The concept of integration is key to understanding Cuban sociology—the notions of difference and belonging. One of the better-known, if unspoken, mottos in Cuba was "Participate, but don't stand out." That is, anything that distinguished itself from the masses was suspect. If you knew how to use six pieces of silverware, then you became suspicious for having a bourgeois origin. Then things changed. If you were the descendent of a peasant who didn't know how to use a fork, you were, so to speak, not eligible for a high-ranking position within the Cuban hierarchy. You couldn't travel abroad. At some point, there were even finishing schools. But the concept of the "new man" was always tied to the idea of not straying from the median, though you couldn't be too squarely in the middle either. This is a social stressor that all Cubans have experienced for the last fifty years or so. I express this differently in my various stories—for example, when I say that Narbuk, being a nonhuman, lacks tact. He understands language and customs, but not what's behind them, or that the lilt in your voice can make them mean exactly the opposite of what they say. He doesn't understand irony or humor. He doesn't get what's implied and only understands things literally.

The protagonist of the story "La tarjeta de Platino" ("The Platinum Card"), which is the last in Planet for Rent, is an elegant person, with good manners, although everyone thinks she's strange because she is different. What a person like this does within a group is expose the group's lacks. As Sartre said, "Hell is other people." It's comforting for a group to have its hell. Hell can be the weakest person, or the one who makes all the other ones feel ridiculous. Majority rules.

Photo by Juan Carlos Alom.

JL You've always dressed as a heavy metal rocker. What's your relationship to this music and the genre's relevance to Cuban life?

Y It expresses a rich inner life. I try to shout this to the world, "Look at me, I have an inner life, I think differently, I am different, and yet, I can also reflect back your own thoughts." That's part of what's behind my appearance.

JL Speaking of which, what is the meaning of Jan Amos Sangan Dongo's full name? He claims not to use it professionally. And he says his mother is proud of her distant Italian forebears. Of course, that's rooted in Cuban society's concern with lineage. Can you tell us more about this?

Y Well, in Cuba sangandongo refers to big people, or to anything that's large. I was struck to discover that in Italy "Dongo" is a common last name. It even appears in Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma—the novel's protagonist is Fabrizio del Dongo. On the other hand, a common last name in Japan is Sangan, maybe as popular as Suzuki. The Japanese telephone book has thousands. So I thought, Coño, wouldn't it be amazing if my character's father were Japanese and his mother a descendent of Italians. He tries to hide behind the very sophisticated name of Jan Amos, taken from John Amos Comenius—the famous Czech pedagogue from the Renaissance. And sangandongo also defines the character's inability to deal with small things. I came up with this character when I was studying biology, where there'd be very delicate preparations, and there'd always be one or two rough guys who'd break things. "Oops, prof, I broke another!" One of them said to me, "My dream is to one day have an animal so big that I can separate its cells with a shovel, separate its organs with a crane." And so I began to imagine the possibility of such a situation.

JL Apropos of names, in the novel there is at least one character whose name sounds a bit Soviet or Russian: Junichiro Kurchatov. Writers like Juan Carlos Toledano, Raúl Aguiar, and even yourself have discussed the links between Cuban and Soviet science fiction, and about how in the Soviet Union the genre was a way to resist socialism, a topic that as you know I'm especially interested in. Do you think this link continues to be important to Cuban fiction writers?

Y During the 1970s, practically no science fiction was published on the island. But, conversely, publishing houses such as Mir, Raduga, and Progreso put out a lot of translations of Soviet sci-fi. Among its authors, the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatski were the best. They wrote adventure, but their prose also had a deep ethical sense and a critique of paralysis, not only under Stalin but also under Brezhnev. That's how we realized that, wow, science fiction allows one to criticize with a degree of impunity. That, of course, was our perception from afar. We didn't know the works of authors such as the Strugatski brothers had been heavily censored, or that Stalin promoted sci-fi that only spoke of better tractors and more productivity in the orbital factories of the future. We did learn about ethical concerns, just like those who started writing sci-fi in the 1960s who'd studied the Anglo sci-fi tradition, the North American style, which was seductive to readers. We learned that sci-fi doesn't deal with technology or scientific discoveries, but rather with the consequences of applying that technology.

So, in that sense, Soviet sci-fi was paradigmatic for us. We continue to make small gestures as homages, such as my naming of a character. "Junichiro" I took from the famous Japanese author Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, but "Kurchatov" is for a nuclear physicist—the father of the Soviet atomic bomb, Igor Kurchatov. Anyway, only later did we find out that the Soviet atomic bomb wasn't such, that they'd stolen it.

The island went through a period of turning its head against the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when Cuba decided to ignore their past. Now, with a certain degree of nostalgia, one can say: I actually did like the Soviet novels, and also its movies. There's a restaurant on the Malecón called Nazdarovie. Another one is called Tabarish. These days "Russians" are no longer considered tacky or in bad taste; they can even look like they're refined and sophisticated. Authors such as Erick Mota write about an alternate world in which the winners in the Cold War were the Soviets, who went into space, and in which Cuba becomes an abandoned Soviet remainder. Other writers present scenarios in which Cuba never broke with the Soviet Union because socialism never fell, the Berlin Wall never came down. And some of us are also trying to rescue the positive sides of socialism. A symptom of this is that we're still publishing post-Soviet Russian sci-fi writers like Sergey Lukianenko. We published his novels Espectro (Specter) and Borrador (Draft). In other words, our interest in this comes from the fact that we're still much closer to post-Soviet Russian sci-fi than to Anglo sci-fi—we understand it better.

JL William Gibson said something like, "The future has arrived, but is not available to everyone." What is the value of the future for a Cuban reader? How is the future woven into science fiction, and what is the place of the past in it?

Y Today, Cubans are realizing that not only is the future not what it used to be, but that Cuba is one of the few countries in the world whose past is uncertain, too. Every week we learn things about the past that contradict what they once told us. So Cuban sci-fi dares to question the past. A new, challenging, contradictory genre is emerging—that of uchronias. They refer to how things could have turned out differently. Two years ago, the first came out in Cuba, Los endemoniados de Yaguaramas (Yaguaramas' Possessed), which talks about how the 20th century would have turned out if Cuba had triumphed over Spain without the help of the United States. If it had become a republic on its own, if Antonio Maceo would have become president, and an alliance with the US had been established in a secession war that the US couldn't have won without the help of Cuba. So, I see science fiction as an extraordinary tool to analyze all kinds of possibilities.

JL I've noticed that misunderstanding is an important theme in Super Extra Grande. The "English" version is in a sort of Spanglish that is not easy to understand for those without a substantial knowledge of Spanish. It might even cause discomfort for non-Spanish readers. Here's a phrase: "The tsunami debió haber startled her when it yawned en su cara" (The tsunami must have startled her when it yawned in her face). David Frye did a marvelous translation, which comes with no glossary, a situation which must create deep and intentional confusion for the English-language reader. What are your thoughts on translation proper, and on translation as a theme throughout your work?

Y Yes, this is a constant theme in my work overall. As a reader of sci-fi, I've read the Russian or English-language classics in translation. So I have an interest in how much they might stray from the original, or how degraded… though, of course, often a translation can enrich. That's been the case with my writing here. David Frye's idea was terrific, but I asked him not to include any footnotes. I wanted the reader to have the disorienting feeling a non-native English speaker often has—to have that sensation that you're only getting about 10% of what someone's saying, then from there deduce the rest. This is what I'd experienced when I began reading in English. Take the idiom "it's raining cats and dogs." It makes no sense in Spanish. But the Spanish equivalent "está lloviendo a cántaros" (it's raining pitchers) doesn't make much sense in English either. Misunderstandings open up opportunities.

JL What about Spanglish attracts you?

Y Of course English is the world's lingua franca now, but what will happen in a few years if Spanish starts taking over? Maybe American Spanglish becomes the new lingua franca. You see series such as Star Trek or Star Wars in which people speak English in space, so it's logical to think that English would spread all over the world, but what if they don't speak correct English, but rather Spanglish? Ilan Stavans and David Frye imagined a future full of incomprehensible words. And remember, Spanglish is equally jarring to Spanish speakers. It's a hybrid tongue, a fantastic tongue, not unlike Klingon, or Tolkien's Quenya or Sindarin. It's a futuristic Spanglish.

JL How did you start writing science fiction in the first place?

Y I read a lot as a child. I loved Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari, the expeditions to exotic lands, jungles, and the underwater life. Gradually I became aware of the fact that we knew our country pretty well—almost everything was already explored. Space is the "final frontier" but also the imagination's frontier. My father would buy me book after book of sci-fi, but one day I'll never forget, he came home and said, "I've gone to all the bookstores and couldn't find a single sci-fi book you haven't read." I was dismayed to think that sci-fi was over, so I made a decision. If there aren't any more, then I will write the new ones. This is one of the reasons why I'm happy to have grown up in Cuba. Had I been elsewhere, such as in France or the US, where every day fifteen or twenty novels are published, I might have continued to be a passive consumer, a reader only.

Tonight, September 15th, Yoss and novelist Paul La Farge will discuss Havana's literary culture and metal scene at a special Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends event hosted by Issue Project Room. Yoss will also be joined by a full band to perform his favorite metal classics.

Jacqueline Loss is a critic and translator who teaches at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Dreaming in Russian. The Cuban Soviet Imaginary (2013) and Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place (2005) and has co-edited Caviar with Rum: Cuba-USSR and the Post-Soviet Experience (with José Manuel Prieto, 2012) and New Short Fiction from Cuba (with Esther Whitfield, 2007). She edits the translation section of Cuba Counterpoints and is currently working on a documentary with Juan Carlos Alom entitled FINOTYPE.

Special thanks to Milena Almira and Camino Detorrela. Their efforts brought this interview into English.

LC control no.: n 98070108

Descriptive conventions:
rda

LC classification: PQ7390.S256

Personal name heading:
Sánchez, José Miguel, 1969-

Variant(s): Sánchez Gómez, José Miguel, 1969-
Gómez, José Miguel Sánchez, 1969-

See also: Yoss, 1969-

Associated country:
Cuba

Birth date: 1969

Place of birth: Havana, Cuba

Found in: W, c1997: title page (José Miguel Sánchez) page 4 of
cover (José Miguel Sánchez Gómez; born 1969; Cuban
short story writer)
Al fin de la senda, c2002: title page (Yoss) verso title
page (José Miguel Sánchez (Yoss)) back cover (José
Miguel Sánchez Gómez (Yoss); born La Habana, Cuba,
1969; novelist and short story writer; anthologist of
Reino eterno)

Associated language:
spa

================================================================================

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540

Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov

Book Review: ‘A Planet for Rent,’ Cuban Sci-Fi by Yoss

Posted by: Bill Sherman July 3, 2015 in Book Reviews, Books, Sci-fi and Fantasy 0 Comments
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One of two novels initiating the English publication of Cuban s-f novels, Yoss’ A Planet for Rent (Restless Books) is a dark collection of interlocking stories set on an Earth that has been colonized by capitalistic aliens known as Xenoids. Already environmentally and economically bankrupt by its political and business leaders, the planet has devolved into a sort of interplanetary Third World vacationland, its with inhabitants scrambling to eke out a hard-scrabble existence.

Thus, in opening story “Social Worker,” we’re introduced to Buca, whose job title denotes a different type of free-lance occupation than we initially expect (the emphasis in the “social”). Other leads in later tales include an “artist” who relies on advanced technology for him to be able to perform physical atrocities on his body, gambling that he’ll be put back together safely after the show; a corrupt but honorable Planetary Security officer, teaching a newbie the ways of their job and not incidentally revealing the rot in the system; the desperate members of a sports team playing their last big game against a team of hulking aliens; an anti-social young scientist who is frustrated by the restrictions placed on Earth research, looking to sell his services to the best bidder.

Few of the characters in this book dream of staying on their bankrupt home world. In “Escape Tunnel,” for instance, we meet a threesome who attempt to flee the planet in a self-made space craft that can barely withstand the rigors of space. Any comparisons that the reader might make between this trio and Cuban raft refugees is purely intentional.

Yoss (born Jose Miguel Sanchez Gomez) clearly means his book to be taken as a metaphor for contemporary Cuba, but you don’t need to focus over much on the allegorical aspects to enjoy this dystopian work. At times, I was reminded of John Brunner’s classic cautionary s-f work Stand on Zanzibar, in the way it combines its socially sharp and inventive commentary with characters that we care about. His discussion of alien class distinctions prove particularly acute, as one might expect it to be, and he shows a surprisingly empathetic eye toward even the most grotesque creatures.

Not a book for the faint-hearted (it contains some calculatedly disturbing, very adult scenes, particularly in “Performing Death”), Yoss’ English language debut provides a challenging taste of contemporary Cuban literature.

A Planet for Rent
Yoss. Restless, $14.99 e-book (344p) ISBN 978-1-63206-008-2

This heavyhanded collection of interlinked stories written between 1993 and 1998 depicts a future Earth conquered by a confederation of alien races—collectively known as xenoids—and turned into a Galactic Protectorate: part museum, part resort, with an economy dependent on xenoid tourism. Humans are second-class citizens with little hope of advancement. Some try to escape by becoming sex workers, law enforcement, athletes, or artists. Some literally sell their bodies as "horses" for alien visitors. Others try to flee across the heavily-guarded planetary border, a desperate and often fatal move. Yoss's allegory of his native Cuba and the exploitation of its people is not subtle, and the prose tends toward textbook-like descriptions. The description of most female characters relies heavily on their sexuality, which is particularly disconcerting (though a sadly plausible portrayal of sex tourism) when committed by the prepubescent narrator of "The Platinum Card." But the human characters' palpable desperation and the impossibility of their circumstances become increasingly moving, and some stories, such as the blistering "Performing Death" and its protagonist's excruciating, literally suicidal performance art, provide a wrenching depiction of the corrosive effects of prejudice and colonialism. (Oct.)
Reviewed on: 06/15/2015

Book Review: A PLANET FOR RENT by Yoss, Translated by David Frye

Posted on December 23, 2014 by Rachel Cordasco in Book Review // 0 Comments

REVIEW SUMMARY: A compelling meditation on modern imperialism set in a future in which Earth is subjected to alien control.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Years after Earth has been stunted and turned into a tourist destination by a group of powerful aliens, humans continue to resist their overlords in any way they can.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Believable characters and settings, and a fascinating kaleidoscope of vignettes loosely bound to one another.
CONS: These tenuous connections made the book seem too diffuse at times.
BOTTOM LINE: Yoss’s story about a subjugated Earth is a brilliant exploration of our planet’s current social and economic inequities..

If you’ve been wondering what kind of science fiction is coming out of Cuba these days, wonder no longer. That’s because A Planet For Rent, the English-language debut of Cuban sci-fi writer Yoss (a.k.a. José Miguel Sánchez Gómez) is just the first in a series by Restless Books featuring exciting stories emerging from that island. And Yoss doesn’t disappoint, sling-shotting us around the world and the galaxy, and asking us to imagine what it would be like if several powerful alien species decided to colonize and degrade Planet Earth.

And even though A Planet for Rent is called a “novel,” it reads more like a series of striking, detailed vignettes, each focusing on a different aspect of post-Contact human society and its struggle against the alien overlords. For instance, we meet a “social worker” (prostitute) and learn that she’s attracted an alien client who has promised to take her away from Earth and give her a life of wealth and ease…that is, until it’s time for the alien to plant its eggs in her womb and…well… We meet Moy, a performance artist living on Tau Ceti, supported by his patron (a Colossaur nicknamed “Ettubrute”). With each performance, Moy literally dismembers himself (using vicious-sounding instruments) in front of a live audience, with special injections to keep him conscious so that he can lecture about Art and The Artist until his vocal chords are cut. Moy is then cloned and “reanimated” so that he can do the whole thing all over again.

We witness a grueling, desperate game of Voxl between Team Earth and an alien team, with the former counting on a win to help bring back a shred of dignity for their planet. Because it’s come down to that: Earth is now a tourist destination for the other alien species, a place where they can step into “Body Spares” and explore the exotic planet in human form but with their own consciousness; a place where any human who wants a better life does almost anything to escape. The number of homemade space ships that make a run for it is so high that Planetary Security has devised a complex strategy for eliminating almost every would-be escapee.

It isn’t hard to see the connections Yoss is making between a planet oppressed by alien overlords interested only in profit and power, and a country struggling against economic and environmental problems, with its people seeing flight as one of the only avenues for a better life. Near the end of the book, an unnamed narrator directly connects what the aliens are doing to Earth with what England did to India in the 19th and 20th centuries, illustrating the futility of humans simply wishing for a change instead of making the change themselves:

…Queen Elizabeth II only sent her last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, to give the subcontinent its independence when she could no longer control it. When neither the Englishmen nor their sepoys could continue to lord over millions of people. So long as the xenoid [alien] Englishmen and their Planetary Tourism Agency sepoys continue to control Earth, there will be no independence. Nobody gives away the goose that lays the golden eggs until he’s forced to.

And while this kaleidoscopic work introduces us to several interesting alien species and planets, the human point of view dominates its pages. Yoss drops us directly into the shoes of the drug-addicts, prostitutes, artists, criminals, and athletes, asking us to consider just how we would react if their fates were ours.

I did wish that the characters were more connected across these vignettes so that we could learn more about their relationships and pasts. That probably would have made this a longer book, though, and changed our impression of it as a series of fast-moving slides in a crash-course on neo-colonialism.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the question “What fate awaits a race that has lost faith in the future, idolizes the past, and puts up with the present?” Time and again in A Planet for Rent, characters strive to improve their lives, only to be beaten back at the threshold of victory. And yet, humanity’s resilience continues, and we as readers get the sense that something will change (it has to) when the oppressed rise up against the oppressors. Yoss has written a work of science fiction that speaks to fundamental problems humans deal with every day. This is not just a story about alien oppression; it’s the story of our own planet’s history and a call for change.

Welcome to Earth: Cuba’s ‘Special Period’ Gets the Sci-Fi Treatment
The funny, scathing, and heart-wrenching universe of A Planet for Rent.
By André Naffis-Sahely
August 27, 2015

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Yoss (Les éditions mnémos)

The best science-fiction writers are the peripheral prophets of literature—outsiders who persuade us to explore an often uncomfortable vision of the future that shows us not only what might be, but also what should never be allowed to happen, thereby freeing our imaginations from the shackles of our blind rush toward so-called progress.

One such prophet lives 90 miles off the coast of Florida, in Havana, and goes by the name of Yoss. In A Planet for Rent, translated from the Spanish by David Frye (Restless Books; paper $15.99), which is set, a little too closely for comfort, sometime in the 21st century, Earth is about to face total collapse, but luckily for humans, this hasn’t gone unnoticed: “The minds of the galaxy had been keeping an eye on humans for thousands of years. Without interfering. Waiting until they were mature enough to be adopted by the great galactic family. But when the total destruction of Earth seemed inevitable, they broke their own rules and jumped in to stop it.” Although humans initially put up a fight, they can’t defeat the extraterrestrials, who believe that because “terrestrials were incapable of intelligent self-government or of using their natural resources rationally, from that moment on they would cease to be an independent culture. And so they entered the status of a Galactic Protectorate.” Soon enough, a Planetary Tourism Agency is put in charge of global government, and slogans like “Welcome to Earth, the most picturesque planet in the galaxy. Hospitality is our middle name!” become ubiquitous. At first it seems that this arrangement might benefit humanity, but the truth is far more complicated. As Yoss explains, “Xenoid altruism wasn’t what had motivated Contact.… This was commercial warfare: for new technologies, for markets, for clients, for cheap labor. Mankind had been a loser in that conflict from the get-go. And as such, it was condemned to be a client, never a rival, not even potentially.” Earth is reduced to a holiday resort where “enormous polyps” from Aldebaran or humanoids from Tau Ceti and Proxima Centauri buy sex or cheap trinkets. It’s the sort of place where Michel Houellebecq’s miserable middle-class Frenchmen would go on vacation.

'A Planet for Rent' is complete sui generis: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, yet also heart-wrenchingly compassionate.

Written from 1993 to ’98, the 14 stories in A Planet for Rent are both a thinly veiled critique of Western imperialism and a study of Cuba during the “Special Period” in the 1990s, when the collapse of the Soviet Union sent the Castros’ island into an economic free fall marked by crippling shortages and the creation of a deeply unpopular dual economy—one for tourists based on the US dollar, another for locals based on the nonconvertible peso—causing a growing divide that persists to this day. Yet, as ever, there were also benign consequences: less fossil-fuel dependency, a decline in cardiovascular diseases, a thriving hip-hop culture, and some of the best sci-fi written anywhere since the 1970s—the present book being a prime example. Like its author, a bandanna-wearing, muscle-bound roquero, A Planet for Rent is completely sui generis: riotously funny, scathing, perceptive, and yet also heart-wrenchingly compassionate. Yoss’s interlinked portraits of our ill-starred descendants fighting for their lives against venal Xenoid colonialists are instantly appealing, from “The Rules of the Game,” in which a chatty sergeant in Planetary Security talks a young recruit’s ear off about how corruption really happens, to “Social Worker,” which tells the story of Buca, a prostitute who, after a lifetime of being assaulted by lecherous aliens, finally manages to buy herself a one-way ticket out by allowing an insectoid hermaphrodite named Selshaliman to use her as an incubator; once the eggs hatch, the larvae will “eat her guts without a care in the world.”

Other standout stories are “Escape Tunnel,” in which three misfits try to pilot a homemade spaceship out of the solar system—mirroring the tragic tales of the many Cuban balseros who tried to float to Florida on rafts in the mid-1990s—and “Aptitude Assessment,” in which Alex, a self-styled “idiot savant,” discovers “teletransportation” and uses it to blackmail the government of Tau Ceti into granting him citizenship. “The Earth is sick,” Alex says during his immigration interview. “The days when we thought the future belonged to us are over. Now we’re not even the masters of our present day, and the glories of the past aren’t enough to live on. Artists, athletes, scientists…every human who has some physical or intellectual talent dreams of using it as a ticket from Earth and toward making their way in the galaxy. Even if they have to swallow their pride and drink the bitter poison of exile and humiliation in lands of other races.”

A Planet for Rent is the inaugural title in Restless Books’ “Cuban Science Fiction” series, and readers can look forward to the publication of Yoss’s Super Extra Grande sometime next year. Writers like Yoss, here making his first appearance in English, successfully challenge our notion of what “serious” literature is, reminding us that the answers to the most pressing questions of our day may be found in the unlikeliest quarters—something that should be kept in mind considering that the planet as a whole could be headed for its own Special Period. In the meantime, to quote Yoss, it’s time to “step on up, ladies and gents…for rent, one planet that’s lost its way in the race for development, that showed up at the stadium after all the medals had been handed out, when all that was left was the consolation prize of survival.”

XXXXL: Cuban Science Fiction Now in English
Blogger:
Matt Goodwin

A Review of Yoss’s Super Extra Grande, Translated by David Frye (Restless Books, 2016).

If humanity ever makes contact with extraterrestrials, what language will we use to communicate? Musical tones, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? English, Hindi, Spanish, or Chinese? If you’ve read the novel Super Extra Grande by Cuban science fiction writer Yoss (the pen name of José Miguel Sánchez Gómez), then you’ll know that it’s none of these. The dominant language of the planet will be Spanglish of course! With apologies to English and Spanish purists, I find Yoss’s vision of a Lati-Anglo future both lovely and plausible. An English translation of Super Extra Grande will be available June 7, 2017 and many more readers can experience Yoss’s compelling vision.

Here’s the setup of the novel. Father Salvador González from the Catholic University of Guayaquil in Ecuador has invented a theorem that enables humanity to travel faster than the speed of light, and the Milky Way has been opened up to humanity. As it turns out, we were not alone, and so we began to form alliances with the six other intelligent species in the galaxy. Along with those intelligent species was a galaxy full of remarkable flora and fauna. Biology gained a host of enormous space animals to satisfy its need for new subjects to study. But what happens when these strange creatures get sick or hurt? Or, as in the case of the novel, when they have ingested something of value?

Enter Jan Amos Sangan Dongo, member of the human colonies in space, and “The Veterinarian to the Giants.” His two last names are a play on words as combining them makes “sangandongo,” meaning “huge” in colloquial Cuban Spanish. On account of spending too much time in low gravity, Sangan Dongo is physically massive. At 7’11”, 375lbs, and with size 50 shoes, the best image to have in your mind is Andre the Giant. Though the biology of novel is rooted in hard science, the story takes most of its inspiration from the grandiose plots of the philosophical picaresques of Swift, Rabelais, and Twain, all of whom are referenced in the novel. As to the personality of Sangan Dongo, whose ego is as big as his bodily frame, Indiana Jones comes to mind.

Super Extra Grande shows the role that Cuba can play in the future, not beaten down but standing ground. As the story of one person’s great skill, the book is a salute to the scientific and medical acumen of the island community. The novel is bookended by two very challenging jobs during which Sangan Dongo has to use all his skills as a scientific adventurer. The first is a very messy trip inside the intestines of a Tsunamis, a giant space worm, to retrieve the wedding bracelet of the wife of a colonial governor. The second is a more complicated job inside a giant amoeba, called a Laketon. If like me, you haven’t thought about micro-cellular organisms since your college Introduction to Biology class, you might want to reacquaint yourself. You remember what a pseudopod is right? Yet amidst all the science and politics, as is the case with all of Yoss’s work, the book is still dedicated to exploring the trials of the heart. Sangan Dongo, while accepting of humans from a variety of ethnic groups, still has his hang-ups about romantic relationships with space aliens. But can any one of us really say we wouldn’t feel the same?

Yoss’s first book translated into English was the brilliant novel A Planet for Rent, which also involved a post-contact world. However, the space aliens in that novel are way more advanced than humans. They are colonial invaders who redesign Earth as a tourist destination. Aliens come to Earth to be entertained by the “natives,” many going further and downloading their minds into human bodies, so that they can experience the world from the inside as it were. The novel is a dramatic and deep commentary on modern colonial tourism—and a proper corrective for anyone tempted by the bandwagon of immediately celebrating better ties between the United States and Cuba. Throughout the novel, the island of Cuba is correlated with Earth, our little island in the universe. And the novel is filled with migrants or would-be-migrants who are desperately trying to get off economically depressed Earth/Cuba. Yoss spreads the blame, and the Cuban government, the United Nations, and the United States, are all called out in their involvement with orchestrating injustice in Cuba. I suggest also reading this longer novel if you want to really get a sense of Yoss’s range.

The adept translator for both A Planet for Rent and for Super Extra Grande was David Frye. One interesting move made by Frye in Super Extra Grande was to include short sections of dialogue in Spanglish. In the original Spanish, the dialogue is described as being in Spanglish. Frye takes a further step and translates the Spanish dialogue not into English but into Spanglish. And a somewhat riskier move is that some of the dialogue is in the “broken” Spanglish of one of the space aliens. The result is quite fascinating and is certainly in line with a growing acceptance of Spanglish as a vibrant and autonomous language. FYI: non-Spanish readers shouldn’t have much problem getting through the short sections of Spanglish. Plus, we all need to start practicing for a future world in which Spanglish is the lingua franca!

I’ll close by noting that English translations of Latin American or Caribbean science fiction are regrettably scarce and so the appearance of Super Extra Grande is especially welcomed. If you’re interested in finding more Latin American science fiction, I recommend starting with Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilán’s Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain. From there you might want to pick up one of these novels: Adolfo Bioy Casares’s The Invention of Morel, Angelica Gorodischer’s Trafalgar, or the more popular Laura Esquivel’s The Law of Love. And never fear: Restless Books is on the job with their Cuban science fiction series, giving attention not only to Yoss but also to the excellent work of premier Cuban science fiction writer Agustín De Rojas.

I’d rather not think of this trend of translating Latin American science fiction as a New Boom. I would rather give it the name of one of the alien ships from Super Extra Grande: “The Imperturbable Eviscerator of Unredeemed Suns.” Catchier, right? Whatever we call it, it’s absolutely Sangandongo.

Matthew David Goodwin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Puerto Rico and is the editor of Latino/a Rising: An Anthology of Latino/a Science Fiction and Fantasy (Wings Press, 2017).

Super Extra Grande by Yoss
By: Gautam Bhatia
Issue: 28 November 2016

super-extra-grandeA teeming Galaxy with Spanglish as its lingua franca. Many varieties of interspecies sex between seven intelligent, space-faring races. An unexpected crisis threatening the foundations of a fragile political equilibrium, and which can only be resolved by an overgrown human veterinary surgeon whose specialty is treating the Galaxy’s largest species. You would think that it would take a Cuban punk rocker with a degree in biology to dare craft a space opera out of such defamiliarising material. And perhaps it’s because he’s a Cuban punk rocker with a degree in biology that Yoss’s latest novel, Super Extra Grande, is a roaring triumph.

Jan Amos Sangan Dongo is one of the first documented sufferers of the "Gonzalez Syndrome," a "term for the excessive growth experienced by some humans after spending long periods in weightlessness as children and teenagers” (p. 96). A misfit because of his inordinate size, he finally finds his home among other such misfits. Jan becomes the "Veterinarian to the Giants," the "only veterinarian biologist or animal doctor in the whole galaxy, human or alien, who specializes in extremely large organisms" (p. 42). Accompanied by his trusty assistant, Narbuk, a member of the Laggoru species who is congenitally incapable of telling a joke or keeping a secret, Jan traverses the Galaxy in human time through the "Gonzalez Drive," earning his pay by tackling problems involving very large species, such as swallowed jewels or medical issues. Living during the peak period of galactic exploration, work is never in short supply. Jan has treated constipation among the genetically cloned dinosaurs of the planet Jurassia and contaminated gills among the titan leeches of Swampia, and has successfully retrieved a bracelet from the innards of the eighteen-hundred-metre long Tsunami of Nerea. However, there is one gaping hole in Jan’s CV: he has never been called upon to deal with the Laketons of Brobdignag, the largest known species of the Galaxy.

But Jan’s chance finally comes in the form of an SOS from the Galactic Coordinating Committee, the fractious oversight body for interspecies disputes. A Laketon of Brobdignag has "swallowed" a spaceship that ventured too close to the surface of the planet, and Jan is the only person in the Galaxy who can—literally—plumb the depths of the Laketon to rescue the trapped human and Cetian inside. But as a tense debriefing unfolds, Jan realizes that this is far more than a search-and-rescue mission: he is called upon not merely to save two lives, but to save an unstable, inter-species Galactic equilibrium that risks exploding into a destructive war.

Super Extra Grande has all the elements of a classic space opera: interstellar travel, futuristic technology, (interspecies) political intrigue, and an intricate, complex crisis that can only be solved by an individual act of derring-do that cuts the Gordian knot. For all that, it also has a combination of features that makes it unique. To start with, all the characters talk in Spanglish, a hybrid of Spanish and English. This is an interesting authorial choice. The book was originally written in Spanish, and, therefore, its characters' demotic might have created potential problems for a monolingual Spanish audience. In translation, the problem is reversed: now it is the non-Spanish-speaking English audience that must contend with dialogue, large swathes of which are in Spanish.

This might seem a formidable obstacle. Oddly, it is not. The linguistic similarity between Spanish and English means that quite a few of the Spanish words are familiar—and what remains can be filled in by the thickness of the context, and the reader’s own imagination. Of course, there are places—long monologues, for instance—where the eye glazes over, but this does not happen too often. On the other hand, the informality of this slangy, hybrid Spanglish lends a naturalness to the dialogue that more than compensates for the odd moment of incomprehension. It is a testament to Yoss’s talent that in a book in which half the dialogue is in another language, the reading pleasure is scarcely affected. It is also a very bold move: had it come a cropper, Yoss’s constituency would have shrunk to bilingual English-and-Spanish speakers. As it is, the novel remains an enjoyable read in David Frye's English translation and—I suspect—an equally enjoyable one in Spanish.

The second way in which Super Extra Grande is a different kind of space opera: the heart of the novel is a celebration not of technology, but of biology. Admittedly, the Gonzalez Drive and the Space Elevator are integral aspects of Super Extra Grande, and there’s a passage about Jan’s descent onto the surface of Brobdignag that could well have been written by Larry Niven or Arthur C. Clarke. However, these are brief interludes. Super Extra Grande begins with Jan’s foray into the bowels of a "Tsunami," and ends with another foray into the bowels of a "Laketon," and the painstaking detail with which Yoss describes the physiology of these creatures is normally reserved for world-building. Given that the book’s protagonist is a veterinary biologist, and animals are his world, that should perhaps not come as too great a surprise. However, that is not all. We are also treated to lengthy—and utterly hilarious—digressions about the physiology of the seven intelligent species of the galaxy, and in particular how they have sex. These passages—that could so easily become tedious in the hands of a lesser writer—are Yoss at his best: dryly humourous, fiendishly creative, wickedly irreverent:

The substance they secrete isn’t remotely similar in origin, consistency, or flavor to the milk of any terrestrial mammal, of course. It couldn’t be; the “nipples” are actually highly modified male reproductive organs, through which the male Cetians secrete huge amounts of semen—which contains, in addition to gametes, incredibly large doses of hormones and nutrients.

Before you ask: Yes, I’ve tasted the stuff. I don’t have any weird homophobic prejudices about it. It really is delicious, with a slightly bittersweet taste. And I didn’t feel like I was violating any moral taboo when I tried it. Did women in the past feel like they were transgressing when they tasted caviar? Or a simple fried egg?

But, true—it doesn’t take an especially perverse mind to come to the lascivious conclusion that Cetians reach maturity through oral sex. And they sure do enjoy it. (p. 138)

There is a deeper point here. One of the longstanding criticisms of the Space Opera subgenre has been its distinctly colonial overtones. Whether it is glorifying "exploration," or treating alien species as incomprehensibly different at best—and irreconcilable enemies at worst—there is a not entirely coincidental overlap between the founding myths of Western colonialism and the more popular examples of Space Opera (whether it is H. Beam Piper’s Uller Uprising [1952], or James Cameron’s Avatar [2009]). Contemporary novels—for instance, China Mieville’s Embassytown—have tackled this by simply stripping away the veneer of the exploration narrative from a First-Contact story. In Super Extra Grande, Yoss does it another way: he makes the other six intelligent species of the Galaxy so familiar and so intimate to the reader, that in her imagination they come to occupy the same stage as humans, and not merely a blur of objects in the background. Yoss avoids the mistake of doing this in a moralizing way; he opts, instead, for a wry and self-deprecatory tone, that is extremely effective—especially when he is talking about the relationship between humans and the other species. We are told, for instance, that Spanglish is the lingua franca of the Galaxy only because out of all the seven intelligent species, humans are the very worst with languages; and, in an almost offhand manner, we are told about the Galactic Coordinating Committee’s struggles in dealing with interspecies racism and xenophobia, which is at its peak among humans, because they are the one species that entered space-faring with the most pronounced differences among themselves.

In a recent interview, Yoss named the Strugatski Brothers among his favourite science fiction writers. There are some obvious similarities: both have run into trouble with censors, and both deploy humour as an integral part of their literary arsenal—perhaps out of necessity. And there is another deeper affinity: perhaps because of their position in societies that have valourised rational planning as a method of directing the community on the path of progress and happiness, both Yoss and the Strugatskis exhibit a lingering unease with this narrative. In the Strugatskis’ Roadside Picnic (1972) and Noon Universe novels, human attempts to harness both space and social evolution repeatedly come up short; and likewise, in Super Extra Grande, in a Galaxy teeming with intelligent species with complex physiological and psychological interior landscapes of their own, and featuring huge creatures that regularly throw spanners in finely laid plans, the limits of human imagination and capacity are reached fairly quickly. This is why, despite its exuberance and its joyous celebration of the adventures of the bumbling Jan, Super Extra Grande is also a subtle reminder of our little, brief authority in a vast universe.

SUPER EXTRA GRANDE
by Yoss, translated by David Frye
Best of 2016
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KIRKUS REVIEW

A lighthearted space-opera adventure by Cuban author Yoss (A Planet for Rent, 2015, etc.).

At 7 feet and 11 inches tall, Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo is a very large man. He’s not handicapped by his size, though. In fact, he’s made it his livelihood, using it to become the “Veterinarian to the Giants.” Dr. Sangan treats enormous animals throughout the galaxy, whether he’s operating on 20-meter-wide cave-dwelling crustaceans called Grendels or walking around inside a 3-kilometer-long sea worm known as a Tsunami. So, when an amoeba that’s 200 kilometers wide swallows two ambassadors, he’s the only man who can save them. The ambassadors are the key to preserving a fragile peace in part of the galaxy—and they also both happen to be Dr. Sangan’s love interests. This novel’s madcap tone is very similar to Douglas Adams’—so much so that it’s almost impossible to avoid drawing such comparisons (although Adams didn’t joke about oral sex with aliens, as Yoss does here). As in Adams’ works, the galaxy’s species are terrifically alien, sporting six breasts and no teeth or breathing methane instead of oxygen. There are also lots of fun references and wordplay throughout the book: the giant amoebas, for example, live on planet Brobdingnag, which orbits a star called Swift-3, while Jan Amos Sangan Dongo is a riff on sangandongo, Cuban slang for “really big.” But possibly the most enjoyable aspect of this strange world is that it takes place in a future in which an Ecuadorean Jesuit priest discovers faster-than-light travel, and the first space flight proving his theory is announced by unfurling a banner on Mars that reads “Suck on this, dumb-ass gringos!” Also, the lingua franca of this future is Spanglish, and all the dialogue appealingly follows suit: “el amor—don't we know it bien!—goes beyond lo físico, even lo químico. Far beyond.”

An exceptionally enjoyable comic tale set in a fully realized, firmly science-fictional universe.
Pub Date: June 7th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-632-06056-3
Page count: 176pp
Publisher: Restless Books
Review Posted Online: May 17th, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1st, 2016

The Future Of Cuban Sci-Fi Is 'Super Extra Grande'

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June 11, 20167:00 AM ET

Juan Vidal
Super Extra Grande
Super Extra Grande

by Yoss

Paperback, 156 pages
purchase

The most compelling science fiction is the sort which holds weight beyond its sheer inventiveness or even its ingenuity. It takes more. The best in the genre have always functioned like corner prophets reporting from the fringe. They succeed in showing us, in a vision uniquely their own, what could potentially become of our planet should we continue down a particular path. Which is not to say one shouldn't devour the purely entertaining for its own sake. But surely the most evocative sci-fi is the stuff of warning shots.

"Science fiction," says the novelist José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, who goes by the pen name Yoss, "is the only literature today capable of capturing not only the decisions we're making in the present, but also the consequences these decisions can have on our future."

Over the last few years, Cuban sci-fi has received some overdue attention stateside — due in part to the historic changes slowly taking shape in the island nation. From the works of Augustín de Rojas, the late biologist long considered the father of Cuban sci-fi, to Yoss — who now carries the torch passed down from de Rojas — there is much to discover.

Yoss's latest novel Super Extra Grande is a work of welcome imagination, steeped in science and imbued with satire and philosophy. Translated by David Frye, it centers on the life and times of Dr. Jan Amos Sangan Dongo, the self-described "Veterinarian to the Giants."

After an Ecuadorian priest named Father Salvador González formulates a theorem that enables faster-than-light space travel — subsequently winning him the Nobel Prizes for physics and mathematics — humankind has an unexpected path to the stars.

I kept imagining the novel causing a stir during the peak of Fidel Castro's reign, the dictator pacing like mad and shouting "Que locura!" at the mention of multisex species and atomic fusion.

But Yoss's cosmos isn't just the human race's own private playground — "a handful of other intelligent races were already nosing around out there." Sangan Dongo's job is to study and operate on an array of intergalactic species of varying shapes, sizes, and temperaments — from the 20-meter-wide crustaceans known as Grendels to sea worms and massive eyeless and earless amoebas from the planet Brobdingnag. Luckily, the doctor, a human, is quite large himself at just under eight feet tall; what his parents once saw as a partial handicap ends up working in his favor.

But when a giant amoeba accidentally swallows two of his former assistants, the human Enti and the Cetian An-Mhaly ( who both happen to love him), Sangan Dongo must rise to the occasion. He knows he's the only one capable of safely making his way into the creature's nearly two hundred kilometer wide innards. His rescue mission is a necessary but risky one, as the slightest mistake or miscalculation could bring about the total annihilation of the two prized prisoners. What follows is a hilarious ride that carries captivating political undertones.

Where Yoss's 2015 book A Planet for Rent was a series of linked stories revolving around a dystopian and altogether bankrupt human civilization, Super Extra Grande differs greatly in both form and focus. One of the most endearing elements of the novel is the use of Spanglish that is peppered throughout. The give and take between Sangan Dongo and his lab assistant Narbuk, a member of a reptilian class called Laggoru, speaks to a highly probable future in which jumbled English and Spanish is an embraced universal dialect.

Not unlike his main character, it's evident that Yoss — as an artist and cultural anthropologist — is intent on doing the dirty work, on digging through the ugly insides of human identity in order to arrive at something pure and lasting. I kept imagining the novel causing a stir during the peak of Fidel Castro's reign, the dictator pacing like mad and shouting "Que locura!" at the mention of multisex species and atomic fusion. But Yoss seems more concerned with looking ahead. And in Super Extra Grande, he reconfirms that a future without a literature of the future is really no future at all.

Juan Vidal is a writer and critic for NPR Books. He's on Twitter: @itsjuanlove