The Core of the Sun

The Finlandia Award-winning Sinisalo (Troll: A Love Story) pays homage to H.G. Wells's The Time Machine with this tale of a Finland populated with allusive elois and morlocks. Where Wells's story suggested these races evolved into being, though, Sinisalo invents primary sources detailing the fascistic breeding of two types of women, reproduction-worthy elois and sterilized morlocks, and their free-to-be-boys male counterparts, mascos and minus men. Finland's resulting "eusistocratic" society also severs ties to "decadent democracies" and bans controlled substances all in the name of a healthy society. Unsurprisingly, this cultivates rampant patriarchy, misogyny, and to the delight/vexation of the heroine Vanna/Vera, a unique drug culture fixated on acquiring ever-hotter capsaicin from chilis, including the titular Core of the Sun, suspected to be the key to mind-blowing transcendence. Sf, fantasy, and New Weird readers will revel in the elegantly blurred lines of science and mysticism. Readers seeking a reliable, strong, female narrator won't be disappointed.