Mechanical Animals edited by Selena Chambers

 

In this anthology, all the stories are about mechanical animals and how such entities fit into our everyday world.  Although one might think this is a recent idea with the advent of robots and AI, it is a surprising mix of the modern and older stories as the idea has fascinated the imagination of scientists and authors for decades.

Authors in this anthology include Jess Nevins, Tessa Kum, Delia Sherman, Maurice Broaddus and Sarah Hans, Lauren Beukes, Jesse Bullington, An Owomoyela, Stephen Graham Jones, Hans Christian Andersen, Molly Tanzer, Aliette de Bodard, Nick Mamatas, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Kat Howard, Michael Cisco, Adrian Van Young, Robert Toombs, Joseph S. Pulver, Jr, Alistair Rennie, Jules Verne, Caroline Yoachim and Carrie Vaughn.

My favorite story was Closer To The Sky by Carrie Vaughn.  It is about a family on the frontier.  The young daughter of the family has been gifted a mechanical horse by her uncle who is an inventor and this horse is her original living horse who has been retrofitted by the uncle after an accident that should have taken its life.  The horse allows the girl to outwit a gang of outlaws and one of lawmen who all want to find her uncle's workshop and control his inventions going forward.  The horse saves her life out of love and the girl ends the story by vowing to learn her uncle's knowledge in order to keep her beloved companion in good stead going forward.  This book is recommended for science fiction readers.