Social Fiction

An anonymous official chides a man under surveillance for stepping out of view of a security camera; visitors to an underground mall are forced to form a new society when a nuclear strike may (or may not) have left them as the sole survivors on Earth; newlyweds living in an authoritarian New York City attempt to navigate the insidious hurdles of being permitted to have a child; and a Puerto Rican boxer discovers that segregation continues in America long after death. These are the visions of Chantal Montellier, a contributor to the legendary Metal Hurlant, and the creator of some of the most striking and stirring science fiction comics of the 1970s and 1980s. In this collection of three novellas, Wonder City, Shelter, and 1996, published together in English for the first time, Montellier's blend of dark humour, gripping storytelling, and consistent focus on the perils of totalitarianism, shows her to be a master of both comics and science fiction.