The Trans Space Octopus Congregation: Stories by Bogi Takács

Bogi Takács is writer whose work I’ve been following for many years. E also runs an excellent twitter account highlights marginalized writers and recommends lots of short SFF. So I was very excited to read The Trans Space Octopus Congregation eir first collection of short stories, which I received as an ARC.

This collection allowed me to revisit some of my favorite of Takács stories and to read many wonderful stories I hadn’t read before. Reading a bunch of stories by an author really lets you see the larger themes in their work. In this case I was aware of Takács ecological themes but I hadn’t realised how important a theme memory is in eir work before. Bodily transformation is another theme that comes up again and again. I also enjoyed how many characters in these stories are non-binary and/or Jewish.

The beginning of this collection contains content notes for each story, something I really appreciated and hope to see more often in collections and anthologies generally.

This collection contains some stories I have read and recommended many times: “Forestspirt, Forestspirt” which I adore for its descriptions of forest among other things, and “Three Partitions” which has cool ecological worldbuild and observant Jews living on a new planet. “This Secular Technology” was my favorite new to me story, I enjoyed how it dealt with themes of memory -- but they were all worth reading!

This collection is a great way to experience the breath of Takács’ work. E touches on so many themes such as systems, transformation, and memory that I enjoy and having it all in one place really made me apreache eir writing. This would be a great way for a new reader to discover Takács’ work, and was a great way for me to appreciate eir stories even more.