From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a novella about the price of dreams in a ravaged near-future.
"A subtle and powerful tale of Mars, movies, and Mexico City which stands amongst the best novellas of the past few years." -Jonathan Strahan, Locus
Amelia dreams of Mars. The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she's trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story. And yet there's Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life.
It awaits her.
"Really, this is one of the best novellas I've seen in 2017." - Locus
"Amelia is an engaging character. The specifics of her economic trap are shaped by Mexican society of the 21st century, but it's a trap to which many readers should be able to relate." - James Nicoll Reviews
"Silvia echoes, not the majority of SF writers with their shiny futures and ragged heroes, but that most unlikely of novelists, the late Philip K. Dick, for whom the future was only ever inhabited by the little people, by people like us, and for whom Mars represented the same sort of escape." - Lavie Tidhar, author of Central Station