The speculative stories collected in Meet Me in the Future are brutal, touching and truly fantastical. Like Ursula K. Le Guin, Hurley has an unlimited imagination and the ability to understand the full implications of her creations. The opening tale, "Elephants and Corpses," for instance, follows a body mercenary with the ability to move their consciousness to fresh cadavers once their own body expires. Hurley uses her conceit to grapple with difficult questions: What does it mean never truly to die? How much of the original person is left after lifetimes of hopping between bodies? Does knowing death's inevitability make life more meaningful? This is the work of a writer who knows to place extreme beauty and horror within the same spectrum of experience.
Elements of plague, corpses and perpetual war occur over and over in the collection, as if the darker aspects of this world are moving into other ones. In all worlds, Hurley's characters must carry out ruthless, even horrific actions because of their circumstances. The old witch of "The Plague Hunters" is forced into bloody confrontation with the woman she loved, to stop her from unleashing destruction. In "The Light Brigade," a soldier faces the bitter truth of the privatized war they've been fighting with a supposed enemy.
The stories of Meet Me in the Future never look away from the darkness of their settings. Yet there is room always for love and joy, and the sheer triumph of surviving another day, of doing what needs to be done. Hurley's collection is one of the best of 2019. --C.M. Crockford, freelance reviewer.