Book Review: Turing’s Graveyard by Terence Hawkins

This review was first published by Booklist on May 1, 2020.

These 13 powerful, well-crafted stories by Hawkins (American Neolithic, 2019) have been aptly compared to The Twilight Zone: they offer a similar sense of dread and moral disquiet. These are tales of how things go wrong. Though it is marketed as a speculative fiction title, fewer than half are explicitly sf. “Turing’s Graveyard” examines identity and online dating gone haywire. “The Darkness at the Center of Everything” considers the mystery of time from ancient and modern perspectives. “The Thing That Matters” is an alternate history that imagines Ernest Hemingway and characters from the movie Casablanca all in Cuba in 1956. “Changeling” is straight-up creepy. “An Event in Judea . . . ,” about the crucifixion of Jesus, and “Acts of Contrition,” a murder noir exploring greed, spiritual mystery, and forgiveness, both flirt with sf tropes. The remaining stories are literary fiction, focused on the mistakes characters make in personal relationships. In the end, though, genre is irrelevant. Hawkins tells tales that fascinate him, and they provide a beautiful reading experience.