Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

After reading the authors novel A River called time at the beginning of the year I was excited to be notified of Cosmogramma. The title is a reference to the music artist Flying Lotus and the work contains 15 stories, all fresh but with some, reworkings of genre tropes - sentient robots, mysterious seeds, alienation, colonization and time slips.
The writing is cinematic in quality, creating visuals you can almost smell, taste and touch. A pause between stories is in order to absorb what has been told - the themes can be dark but even in the darkest, grimy narrative of You meets You there is a thread of hope. If you are interested in seeing the author speak about this book, influences on his work then please check out this youtube link from book launch day on 28 October 2021 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcXx__nVZr0
I loved the range of stories and the storytelling - can't wait for the next works from Courttia Newland. My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for access to the ARC, all comments are my own..

This short story collection follows hard on the heels of Newland’s A River Called Time. Whereas that was baggy, epic and about character and texture as much as plot, this first short story collection is very different. Each story is wonderfully controlled, with a lean prose style that in almost every case matches the content and builds suspense.

A River Called Time appeared at times to be the work of a writer keen to make A Big Statement. The writing in this collection is much more relaxed, and there’s great fun to be had seeing Newman put a unique spin on a host of sci-fi tropes. There’s an invasion of the bodysnatchers, an experimental warp drive that hurls the spaceship back in time rather than across space, and even a hidden kingdom of humanoids deep under the sea. In each case Newman takes the set-up seriously and bends it to his own themes and interests (the legacy of colonialism, Brexit and gender politics to name but three).

Several of the stories revisit a near-future or alt-history London and these are very fine as well. But they don’t quite pack the punch of the purer ‘sci-fi’ stories that see a really talented writer taking the genre conventions head on, and wringing from them fresh meaning and power. A tenth of a star for having the title as a Flying Lotus hommage.

Review copy provided by Netgalley.

Cosmogramma contains fifteen short stories that reside within the speculative spectrum. Some stories are set in a far or near future, others in the present of an alternative Earth. Of some of the stories, it never became clear to me which of both applied as both were possible. But what they almost all have in common is that the pictured society is dystopian and that the outcome of events is determined by choices humans make.

I was not familiar with the writing of Courttia Newland, but two things persuaded me that this might be a book for me (apart from me being a fan of speculative short fiction, that is). The first one was the cover. The mysterious shapes in attractive colours are hard to ignore. The second one was another review in which Cosmogramma got compared to the writing of Ted Chiang. I’ve really enjoyed his Exhalation and hoped Newland’s book would be something similar.

Yes, there are similarities and the comparison to Chiang is understandable. But after fifteen stories I cannot say Newland reaches the same level of quality as Chiang does. The positives: Newland’s fiction is original and imaginative, and he touches a broad range of topics in which humans are often put in a difficult situation. Next, they face a tough decision while dealing with this situation. Many of the stories are speculative variants of subjects that are very relevant in our current society. They make you think. Newland’s writing style is also very enjoyable and descriptions of the surroundings of the main character(s) are detailed, which I happen to like.

What disturbed me (a.k.a. the negatives) was that almost none of the stories evolved towards a clear ending. The initial idea was in most cases intriguing enough and well explained (although even then some plots are quite difficult to follow), but as a story continued, it became fuzzy and stopped going anywhere. Several had an open ending which didn’t satisfy me (to be clear: not because of the ending being open, but because of how it was done). Many seemed to have no ending at all. They just stopped, while nothing was decided. Out of fifteen stories, only three ticked all or most of the boxes for me (Scarecrow, Control, and Nommo). Five others didn’t work for me at all (Buck, You Meets You, Dark Matters, Nocturne and Utoma). The remaining seven were okay-ish but there was always something that left me being not sufficiently convinced. When reading short story collections I can live with a few lesser stories, but in this case, too many of them didn’t satisfy me.

Every book that you read over the next decade will be about the COVID19 pandemic - in one way or another. We all now live in the shadow of fear and death - and this is reflected in the fiction that people write.

Cosmogramma is an excellent collection of short stories. Frustratingly, each feels like the synopsis of the first half of a decent sci-fi book. Perhaps it's because we're only halfway through this global plague? It's slightly frustrating that we never reach the conclusion of the stories - especially as they're so robustly realised.

They're a good mix of stories. Past, present, future, off-world, aliens, mutants, robots, and mer-folk. It could almost be a full series of Doctor Who! As with any compendium, there's a couple of duff stories - but they're over quickly.

It's made me eager to read more of Newland's work.

A fantastic collection of short stories, expertly written with gripping plots and memorable characters.

I used to devour short story compilations as a kid, partially because they were a bite-sized way of getting the sci-fi thrills I was looking for, partially because my local library had a lot of them. In the 80’s a lot of the bigger SF authors had graduated by writing for the pulps, and then the more serious SF magazines. And quite a few of them let the stories be jumping off points for later novels and so on. And mixed author collections often set out a flag for people I would latterly enjoy more (hello Robert Sheckley).Perhaps I drifted from short stories because they weren’t things I bought, or because I liked the push of a long narrative. I have certainly enjoyed the recent resurgence in novellas, when I haven’t actually been buying them (the cost / word count ration shouldn’t be an issue to me but….is).

All of which is to say that Courttia Newland’s collection Cosmogramma, flexed reading muscles I hadn’t used for a while. Described as an Afro-Futurist writer in the blurb, whilst there is a strong black theme through many of these stories, it equally ticked a strong London voice with me, much of this taking place in and around various versions. I think of short story construction being a triangle – idea – voice – place, and on the most part Newland makes sure that at least one of these three are familiar whilst tweaking the others. So whilst there are a few idea heavy stories here, they tend to lean more on the individual story that threads through impact of the idea (Seed - a take on the seed pod version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers which works well just because the viewpoint character convinces, as the familiar unfolds around him). On the other side the first story here, Percipi, is broadly a narrated info dump of a future history of androids which become slaves which have their own uprising and succeeds with anything resembling a central character. Newland has range.

Short stories are an art in themselves and the hit to miss ratio here is very much on the hit side, though I am now interested in reading some of his longer form work (which appears to bounce around genre as much as my reading does). The stand out for me here was an accidental time travel story, The Sankofa Principle, which again is told from a distant third person narrator but getting to the heart of the difficulty of the moral imperative that underpins more austere, privileged sci-fi. Well worth dipping into, and has single-handedly got me requesting a few more short stories for my reading diet.

Prolific author Courttia Newland’s Cosmogramma is a mixed bag of speculative fiction short stories. Like his contemporaries (China Mieville’s Three Moments of an Explosion or Ted Chiang’s Exhalation) Newland’s stories range across a host of science fiction and fantasy tropes and ideas. In fashioning these tales he delivers short, pointed dives into well known science fiction and fantasy sub-genres.
The first two stories in the collection demonstrate this range. Percipi is a robopocalypse story. Science-fiction immersed readers know from the outset that the global release of intelligent servant robots is going to end in tears. The interesting aspect to Newland’s approach is what precipitates the robot revolt and the reaction of the humans from whose point of view the story is told. This story then segues to Cirrostratus – a new weird tale of a travelling troupe of augmented circus performers. And so it goes on to interstellar colonies (Cosmogramma), strange apparitions (Dark Matters), dystopian post-Brexit governments (The Difference Between Me and You), some type of alien invasion (Seed), time travel (The Sankofa Principle) and decidedly weird designer drugs (You Meets You).
As with any collection of short stories by a single author, it is possible to identify emergent and common themes and ideas. Newland is clearly interested in the view of the outsider, of people outside the norm who are either downtrodden or find some kind of inner strength as a result. He uses his stories to explore the moral choices of his characters and those around them – in The Sanofka Principle the question is if you went back in time would you take the opportunity to stop or frustrate slavery no matter what the cost to your own future. The Difference Between Me and You considers the immigration haves and have nots and how people view those who are to be deported for the crime of not fitting in with the norm.
Cosmogramma is a thought provoking series of diverse speculative fiction short stories. Some stories feel like just the prelude for something bigger and potentially more interesting. But that will give readers something to think about, and if not then at least leave readers with an image or idea that changes their view of their world. Which is what short stories do best.

"Cosmogramma" is an absolutely fantastic collection of stories by the incredibly talented and skilled Courttia Newland. The writing is smooth as silk, the characters are incredibly vivid (especially considering we don't have much time to get to know them, since these are shorts), and the plots are perfectly formed and thoroughly enjoyable. In fact, if I could ask one person "What do you think of...?" it would be Courttia Newland - that imagination is priceless.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

In the style of Ted Chiang, these are wonderful speculative short stories that paint chilling pictures of the (near) future. Most of them start out relatively mild and interesting, but unravel quickly and left me with a disturbed feeling, which is exactly what you want from these kinds of stories.

Cosmogramma is a collection of speculative short stories that imagine alternative futures, exploring robots, space travel, new species, and achieving the seemingly impossible. Some stories consider what happens in near futures where strange seeds appear or transformations of humans occur, whereas others look into more distant moments on other planets and intergalactic travel.

Having read Newland's A River Called Time, I was intrigued to read this collection, which sometimes covers similar themes, but looks particular at transformation, both human and otherwise. The story that made me want more was 'Seed', about what happens when strange seeds appear that grow plants looking like replicas of humans: I almost wanted a whole novel of that one, exploring it further. 'Scarecrow', depicting a world in which the dead return as good or bad, and 'Nommo', about a race of mer creatures who need a connection with humans, were other stories that drew me in, exploring how humans might treat others. As someone who doesn't read much sci-fi, short stories or longer, I enjoyed the tales that were on a possibly recognisable, but changed, version of Earth the most, as I find it harder to get into and understand stories set on different planets or worlds, but other people might enjoy some of the more space-related ones more.