Mutants and Hybrids

A collection of experimental fiction by Rachel Rodman

Some say the art of storytelling lies in the making of something out of nothing, but for Rachel Rodman, the art of story lies in the remaking—in taking stories apart, mixing the pieces together, and gluing them back together. 

Her debut collection, Mutants and Hybrids, is filled with experimental forays into story that are both cozily familiar and wildly strange. In “Experimental Breeds,” she compresses cautionary fairy tales, and mixes these syrupy extracts into new parables. “His Name-0” transforms a simple barnyard rhyme into a star-spanning cosmology. And in “Snow White and the Seven Biblical Floods,” the whole world is judged, clensed, and made new again, all by the hand of the fairest of them all. 

Woven throughout these remade fairy tales are lists—line item ruminations on how dreams work, ways to cure hiccups, or the complicated pairing of men and fish. Rodman eschews traditional narrative structures for flashes of insight, slife-of-life snapshots, and percussive effect of a long string of sharp-witted firecrackers. 

Make. Unmake. Remake.