Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (2022) is a collection of twelve speculative short stories that blend the familiar with the uncanny, exploring how technology, desire, and fear shape human identity in the modern world. Each story presents an ordinary reality slowly infiltrated by strangeness—where surreal or science-fictional elements expose the emotional and moral complexities of contemporary life. Fu’s writing moves effortlessly between the intimate and the bizarre, revealing that the real “monsters” of the 21st century are often not supernatural creatures, but human impulses, loneliness, and the evolving relationship between people and technology.
The collection opens with “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”, where a person preparing for a simulated death experience confronts the unsettling blend of technology and mortality. It sets the tone for the entire book: rational systems used to explore deeply irrational human emotions. In “Liddy, First to Fly”, a girl literally grows wings, a fantastical metaphor for the awkward transformation of adolescence and the painful isolation that accompanies difference. The story highlights Fu’s gift for merging magical realism with emotional realism, turning a physical mutation into a study of alienation and identity.
In “Sandman”, insomnia takes on a sinister dimension as a woman’s nightly disturbances blur the line between dream and reality, echoing themes of psychological unease and subconscious fear. “Time Cubes” explores nostalgia and the desire to manipulate time through the lens of a peculiar invention that lets people relive moments of their past, revealing how memory and regret can become forms of obsession. “In This Fantasy” examines the consequences of objectifying desire in a near-future world, where personal relationships are mediated by virtual technology and fantasy can override empathy.
Throughout the collection, Fu often uses speculative premises to comment on the anxieties of the digital age—surveillance, simulation, identity, and disconnection. Her characters live in worlds that resemble our own but are distorted just enough to expose the fragility of human behavior. Even in the most unreal situations, her focus remains intensely psychological: what it means to be lonely, to crave transformation, or to escape the self. The monsters, whether literal or metaphorical, represent the hidden fears and desires that haunt modern consciousness.
Stylistically, Fu’s prose is spare, poetic, and often unsettling. She writes with precision and restraint, allowing emotion to surface gradually through vivid imagery and understated dialogue. Each story functions as a self-contained experiment, yet together they form a cohesive portrait of 21st-century life—fragmented, technology-saturated, and haunted by moral ambiguity. The book does not offer resolution or comfort; instead, it invites readers to reflect on how progress and alienation coexist, and how the human need for meaning persists even in a world governed by artificial systems.
Ultimately, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is not just a collection of speculative tales, but a meditation on what it means to be human in an age of transformation. Kim Fu exposes the ordinary horrors and quiet wonders of modern existence, suggesting that the true monsters are not futuristic inventions, but the emotional contradictions that define us—our hunger for connection, our capacity for cruelty, and our endless desire to transcend the limits of the self.
