The Cyborg Anthology takes place in a future where there was a thriving world of Robots and Cyborgs living peacefully beside Humans, but a disaster destroyed all Robot and most Cyborg life.
The book is organized like a typical anthology of literature, split into sections that include a biography of each poet and a sample of their poetry. It covers early Cyborg poetry, political, celebrity, and pop culture poets, and ends with the next generation of Cyborg poets.
The narrative takes place in the time after a cataclysmic event, and the collection wrestles with this loss. Through the lives of the poets, the book chronicles the history of personhood for technological beings, their struggle for liberation, and demonstrates different ways a person can beCyborg. The poems and biographies together tell the story of a complex and enthralling world-to-come, exploring topics that are important in the future, and also urgent right now.
Praise for The Cyborg Anthology:
“Lindsay B-e’s book The Cyborg Anthology is vast in its ambitions, a polyvocal text that speculates into existence a whole population of poets, and writes their verse as it evolves through the world the author has created.” — Judge Wayde Compton, 2021 VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award
“With mordant wit and a playful satiric touch, these Cyborg poems showcase a dazzling range of poetic forms and ideas: imaginative and charmingly subversive. Move over Norton Anthology of Poetry, there’s a new force in town, and they are a delight.” — Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of Listening to the Bees and Children of Air India
“The premise of this collection alone is fabulous. The poems are potent and powerful. With echoes of Le Guin, Brunner and Monáe, Lindsay B-e’s debut is layered and smart, provocative, and deeply satisfying. I was moved and fascinated. Speculative poetry at its best.” — Hiromi Goto, author of Chorus of Mushrooms and Darkest Light