(SFF Bingo): The Neurodiversiverse, edited by Anthony Francis and Liza Olmsted

Disclaimer: I have a friend who contributed to this anthology, I won't be reviewing their piece!

This is an anthology built around a specific theme: what if neurodiverse people (ie, autistic, ADHD, OCD, etc.) were at an advantage when it came to making contact with aliens? After all, we already have a lot of experience dealing with minds that aren't like ours here on Earth!

Before I get to criticisms, I should say that the fact this book exists is not something to take for granted! A generation ago, the concept of neurodiversity and its upsides was not recognized and understood as broadly as it is today. We've come a long way since I was diagnosed with what was then Asperger's Syndrome as a first-grader in the 1990s. So that sense of perspective is important.

However, the flip side of this is that many of the stories run the risk of being Unintentional Period Pieces that might not age well. Depending on how you feel about pronoun rituals, the frequency of those may be either a feature or a bug. There's also a couple stories that include things like using TikTok to interview aliens, or Discord-like "servers" that have certain sections age-restricted.

More broadly, once you've read several of these stories, they can sometimes blend together in tone--which makes sense given the specificity of the theme, but it might mean that it's not a great volume to read cover-to-cover. Again, turns of phrase that might be empowering for one person ("they didn’t think they’d ever felt so seen") can become cliche to others, especially in close succession.

A few thoughts I had on individual stories:

-"The Grand New York Welcome Tour" (Kay Hanifen) is set not at the moment of first contact itself, but some time later, when aliens traveling to Earth for tourism has become more common. I think this choice worked well, since covering the entire range of "wow, it's aliens, what do I do now?" can be a lot to get through in a short story, whether or not the human protagonists are genre savvy.

-There are several examples of "not only do human minds come in different types, but so do extraterrestrial minds." Overall, I think this worked well, and provided the opportunity for fun alien POV. In "Impact" (Jasmine Starr), this is combined with "aliens don't have individual names, they're just all representatives of the species." That combination of tropes stretched credulity for me; are aliens going to consistently be like "oh, it's you, the one whose processing doesn't work like the rest of us, whatsername"?

-"Shadows of Titanium Rain" (Anthony Francis) had a cool scene of trying to communicate across language boundaries that reminded me of xkcd's "Time."

-"The Interview" (Brian Starr) goes back and forth between human and alien POV for dramatic irony that reveals more than either could alone.

It took a few beats for Tsah to realize that Ben was not planning to add anything further. She didn't actually have anything she wanted to write down, but somehow felt that scribbling a note onto his resume would suffice as a transition to ask the next question. 
Ben, though, was certain that what she had written was Schklonian for "Earthlings are all useless and Ben Denton is the worst of them all."

-"Scary Monsters, Super Creeps" (Cat Rambo) is set in a world with superpowered individuals. "Seattle tempted me, but the supers out there got pretty weird sometimes." Shades of "Steelheart"! Like "Hench," it leans heavily into "even the self-proclaimed superheroes are usually no better than the villains," and again, I feel like books tend to deconstruct this trope that's played straight more in comic books and films. So as a primarily book person, I'm only seeing the deconstruction side!

-The Space Between Stitches (Minerva Cerridwen) has a poignantly genre-savvy character, and again, displays how far we've come in a generation or so:
 

“It’s funny, I dreamed pretty much my whole childhood that this moment would come. Someone asking me to get away to a world where I’d be fully accepted—still the alien, but spectacular because of it, you get the idea. Or maybe you don’t, but I kind of have a feeling you might.”

...

“Anyway,” Lutra continued, “I’m good where I am. Ibb, do you know how amazing life has become? I’ve got friends now, and most of them are also neurodiverse. We all love each other’s quirks. There are people in my life who can teach me, with my absolute lack of spatial awareness, something as complicated as crochet.”

-"A Hint of Color" (Jody Lynn Nye) had a sweet moment where aliens whose anatomy is very different from humans can nevertheless recognize and appreciate a team of humans taking care of their injured comrade; reminded me of "The Lost Steersman" :) "The bare minimum we can do is prove to them that we're at least as smart as they are."

-Sometimes it's funny when different stories independently hit on similar imagery for communicating ideas. Three different stories that play with the idea of Platonic solids:

Tangible Things (Jillian Starr):

People smell the anxiety on my breath, and they laugh because my smile isn’t right. Honestly, most of me isn’t right. Dodecahedron in a round hole and all that.

Meeting of the Branes (Kiya Nicoll):

“Yes,” he thought at it, and thought: tetrahedron. Cube. Octahedron. Dodecahedron. Icosahedron. Sphere.

It was the only way he could imagine to explain three-dimensionality, and the Angel recoiled again before returning. <<!!>>

Meaning Green, Unclear (Clara Ward)

Ari shaped a cluster of one thousand magnetic balls into Platonic solids: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and finally a twenty-sided icosahedron. Geode formed the same shapes using a rainbow chain-link fidget.

-There were also several poems and pieces of artwork included. Overall I enjoyed the art--it's hard to tell a story or illustrate "neurodiversity" in a single image, but it does a good job at portraying "communication with aliens" and other engrossing images. With regards to the poetry, most of the free verse didn't really click for me, but "Close Encounter in the Public Bathroom" (Keiko O'Leary) uses the pantoum form effectively to portray being stuck in place (due to OCD and/or alien technology not working). Also, "Meaning Green, Unclear" incorporated haiku into the story as a means of communication!

-The editors had fun with the legalese, so don't skip the copyright/acknowledgements stuff:
 

No express or implied guarantees or warranties are provided for any links, facts, ideas, concepts, recipes, formulas, memes, runes, platitudes, or paradoxes expressed herein.

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This book is made of bits and presented using atoms: bits are fundamental units of information capable of distinguishing yes/no conditions, and atoms are small but nonfundamental particles in constant motion that stick together when close but repel each other when compressed.

Bingo: great fit for Character with a Disability; also Indie Press, Published 2024, 5+ Short Stories!