The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria

“Hernandez shows off his facility with a variety of concepts and genres, and each scene is realized to its full potential.”

—
Publishers Weekly
(Starred Review)

“It’s not every writer who can manage to be funny, terrifying, philosophical, metaphysical, and scientific at the same time, but narrative genre-blending is Carlos Hernandez’s stock in trade. I start reading each story wondering what he’s going to come up with next, and finish it having learned something about humanity and faith and also giant pandas or ghost jellyfish. A remarkable collection.”

—Delia Sherman, author of
Young Woman in a Garden

“Hernandez’s
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
is fantastic and sincere, seamlessly blending science, magic and love. Whether rescuing trickster jellyfish frozen on Mount Everest, or reattaching legs to a lover’s husband via superportation, Hernandez cuts to the human heart of each story and wraps an ebo around his readers.”

—Eden Robinson, author of
Monkey Beach

“In his debut collection, Carlos Hernandez explores the ways in which we conform our identities to fit into worlds that would otherwise break us. But all of his characters strive to reclaim the parts of themselves that could easily be thought of as lost. Funny, smart, and fierce, these stories are a breath of fresh air in a tightly constricted world.”

—Christopher Barzak, author of
Wonders of the Invisible World

“Irreverent, ebullient, dark, hopeful, sharply funny, and achingly sensitive, Hernandez brings us a rich tapestry of Latino experience. Absolutely not to be missed.”

—Julia Rios

“The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
by Carlos Hernandez is an exceptional collection of imaginative stories that are as captivating as they are entertaining.”

—Erin Underwood, editor
The Grimm Future

“These delightful stories from Carlos Hernandez dance with a light step and a knowing wink, and yet that effervescent surface wraps jaw-dropping twists and mind-bending concepts within its boundaries. Science fiction and magical realism freely fraternize, quantum fluctuation and ritual incantations just two aspects of the same great mystery. In these intimate stories of families rent apart and repaired, that mystery is just as likely to be encountered in a humble kitchen or a lover’s bed as it is in outer space or the deepest trenches of the ocean. Each story is a shimmering pond that once dived in proves bottomless.
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
is a remarkable debut, an intoxicating breath of fresh air.”

—Mike Allen, editor of
Clockwork Phoenix,
author of
Unseaming
, Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award finalist

“
The Assimilated Guide to Quantum Santeria
is fiercely smart and entertaining; a polished collection of stories by one of speculative fiction’s most distinctive and original voices.

“Hernandez’s science fantasy transfixes as it explores technological paradoxes and inhuman intelligences in compellingly human (and humane) ways. And the Latino urban (and suburban) fantasy pieces sprinkled into the collection are like the best dark añejo rum: warm,
smoky, exquisitely sharp and sweet. Hernandez’s stories go down smooth and easy, and finish with a kick.”

—Sabrina Vourvoulias, author of
Ink

“Carlos Hernandez swindles you with a mixture of levity, authenticity, and sorrow that’s too true to be unreal.”

—Charles Tan

“Carlos Hernandez treats science, culture, and genre with a bracing irreverence.
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
is a zany, kaleidoscopic whirl of a book that delivers both tantalizing ‘what ifs’ and moments of true pathos.”

—Sofia Samatar, author of
A Stranger in Olondria

Earlier versions of stories from
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
appeared in the following publications:

“The Aphotic Ghost” in Bewere the
Night, Prime
, 2011; “Homeostasis” in Futurismic, 2009; “The International Studbook of the Giant Panda,” in
Interzone
, 2013; “The Macrobe Conservation Project” in
Interzone
, January 2006; “Los Simpáticos” in
Hit List: The Latino Mystery Reader
. Arte Público Press, 2009; “More Than Pigs and Rosaries Can Give” in
Exotic Gothic V,
Volume 2, PS Publishing, 2013; “Bone of My Bone” in
Cosmopsis Quarterly
, Fall 2007; “American Moat” in
A Robot, A Cyborg & a Martian Walk into a Space Bar
, Nomadic Delirium, 2015; “Fantaisie Impromptu No. 4 in C#min, Op. 66” in
Crossed Genres Magazine
, Crossed Genres Press, 2014; “The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria” in
Interfictions II
, November 2009.

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

Copyright © 2016 Carlos Hernandez. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Rosarium Publishing

P.O. Box 544

Greenbelt, MD 20768-0544

ISBN: 978-1-4956-0739-4

LCCN: 2015937847

Cover Art by Bizhan Khodabandeh

Claire,

You’re the most perfectly named person I’ve ever known.

Introduction by Jeffrey Ford

The Aphotic Ghost

Homeostasis

Entanglements

The International Studbook of the Giant Panda

The Macrobe Conservation Project

Los Simpáticos

More Than Pigs and Rosaries Can Give

Bone of My Bone

The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory

American Moat

Fantaisie Impromptu No. 4 in C#min, Op. 66

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria

Acknowledgements

The title of this collection,
The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
, seemed wonderfully outlandish to me when I first encountered it. To the contrary, though, the book perfectly delivers on that title as if only that title could do it justice. Everything it suggests is here–Science, Faith, Assimilation, Particle Physics, Cuba, contemporary Latino culture in the U.S., and a sensibility that recognizes a vast world beyond. Not only do each of these elements appear within the book, but they appear, very often all at once, in each of the book’s dozen stories. What with all these themes weaving together throughout, Hernandez’s collection gives the effect of seeming greater than the sum of its parts. None of this becomes obtrusive in the reading. The stories are too strong–the narrative drive, the voice, the concision in writing, the smart dialogue, the slyly judicious application of research. They gracefully balance the book’s thematic concerns. As a writer of short stories, I found much to admire in
The Guide
and as a reader, even more. Following are a few observations that struck my fancy and sparked my imagination.

There are “real” science fiction stories in this collection. What I mean by “real” is that the nature of the technology or the aspect of the physical universe that is central to the plot resonates metaphorically
with the plight of the character or characters. This is a type of storytelling you don’t encounter much in SF but which makes for the finest stories. Finding that metaphor to bridge the character and technology is often very difficult, so writers don’t bother with it and what you wind up with is an adventure tale. I like a good adventure tale, but I’d rather find a “real” work of science fiction–the kind written by authors like Ted Chiang. Hernandez includes a number of such stories in
The Guide
, and the beauty of them is that they don’t traffic in the technologies of past generations–rockets, ray guns, witty robots. The technologies at the core of these stories are extrapolated from cutting edge discoveries in a whole host of fields from neuroscience to the Aphotic Zone. As well, the characters’ issues are contemporary ones we might witness or experience ourselves.

I mentioned earlier that there was a lot I admired about this book. The technique that makes these science fiction stories believable within the context of their fictional worlds is the author’s research. Hernandez has obviously done his homework in that his explanations as to the nature of certain technologies or physical phenomena have a confident clarity to them. They are firmly based in science and so convincingly explained that it’s difficult to tell where the science leaves off and the fiction begins. As a story writer, I love that sleight of hand. It takes a graceful touch to parse out research to the reader–not too much, not too little–so that the result is effective and yet not generally noticed. This goes for the stories in the collection that are also not science fiction. Aspects of history, culture, politics that appear
throughout all seem right on, offering no reason to doubt their validity. This serves to draw the reader more fully into the story.

Although Latino characters appear in the early science fiction stories of the collection, you’ll notice that Latino culture, and specifically Cuban and Cuban-American culture become more prevalently the focus of the fiction as you continue through the book. It’s not that this is definitive, because some of the later stories deal with Science as well. These pieces range from the weird to the absurd to the fantastic. What’s wonderful about all of the stories is that Hernandez very economically creates interesting characters, who, even though they don’t always do the right thing for themselves or others, we root for them, we care about them. There’s an emotional core to all of the stories here. Even in the midst of humor or horror, there’s a human connection at play. There’s something for the reader beyond the dazzling science and the enigmatic, beyond the clarity of the writing. These stories always return us to ourselves where we find the connection with a character’s foibles, triumphs, mistakes, loneliness, fear, joy.

It’s clear to see, through the writing, that this connection is at the core of the author’s intent. There are very few instances of structural pyrotechnics. What you get is pretty much all story, all the time. Beginnings, middles, ends. The masterful economy of writing and the undeniable narrative drive pull the reader in and don’t let go. With each of these pieces, it took no more than a paragraph, and often less, to hook me and make me want to find out what happens next. Nothing compares to a classic story structure with clear, descriptive
writing. All of these stories, for whatever else is happening in them, no matter amazing scientific concepts or the mysteries of Santeria, concentrate their energy primarily on the character/characters and how they deal with their dilemma(s), their desire to connect, to understand themselves and where they belong. This is where the real power comes from in Hernandez’s fiction.

Going back to the title of the book, which I mention in my opening paragraph, you might wonder where the “Quantum” aspect can be found. I counted a half dozen instances of the mention of or allusion to some concept from quantum physics (I’m betting there are more)– Schrodinger’s Cat, the multiple universes theory, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, etc. They lurk in the background of the stories and sometimes move forward to affect the outcome of the plot. It’s fitting they should permeate the book in that they hint at probability instead of certainty. All of the stories here continue to give that sense of uncertainty, that impetus to make you read on, until at the very end when the wave collapses and the reader experiences the outcome of the drama. In other words, nothing is predictable to a certainty. How many times do you find fiction that you can say that about?