A Planet for Rent

by Yoss, David Frye (Translator)

“ Planet for Rent is the English-language debut of Yoss, one of Cuba's most lauded writers of science fiction. Translated by David Frye, these linked stories craft a picture of a dystopian future: Aliens called xenoids have invaded planet Earth, and people are looking to flee the economically and socially bankrupt remains of human civilization. Yoss' smart and entertaining novel tackles themes like prostitution, immigration and political corruption. Ultimately, it serves as an empathetic yet impassioned metaphor for modern-day Cuba, where the struggle for power has complicated every facet of society.” —NPR, Best Books of 2015

Out of the modern-day dystopia of Cuba comes an instant classic from the island’s most celebrated science fiction author: a raucous tale of a future in which a failing Earth is at the mercy of powerful capitalist alien colonizers.

In A Planet for Rent, Yoss critiques life under Castro in the ‘90s by drawing parallels with a possible Earth of the not-so-distant future. Wracked by economic and environmental problems, the desperate planet is rescued, for better or worse, by alien colonizers, who remake the planet as a tourist destination. Ruled over by a brutal interstellar bureaucracy, dispossessed humans seek better lives via the few routes available—working for the colonial police; eking out a living as black marketeers, drug dealers, or artists; prostituting themselves to exploitative extraterrestrial visitors—or they face the cold void of space in rickety illegal ships.

This inventive book marks the English-language debut of an astonishingly brave and imaginative Latin American voice.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Dystopia, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Aliens

273 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2011

About the author

Born José Miguel Sánchez Gómez, Yoss assumed his pen name in 1988, when he won the Premio David Award in the science fiction category for Timshel. Together with his peculiar pseudonym, the author's aesthetic of an impentinent rocker has allowed him to stand out amongst his fellow Cuban writers. Earning a degree in Biology in 1991, he went on to graduate from the first ever course on Narrative Techniques at the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Center of Literary Training, in the year 1999. Today, Yoss writes both realistic and science fiction works. Alongside these novels, the author produces essays, reviews, and compilations, and actively promotes the Cuban science fiction literary workshops, Espiral and Espacio Abierto.

Reviews

[Nadine in California · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first Cuban sci fi, and definitely not my last with this author. I saw the Cuban element in the depiction of Earth as a third world planet whose economy is based on tourism from other worlds and galaxies, and all the social, political and economic corruptions and distortions it brings. We learn all about these worlds through a series of loosely interlinked stories of characters from all ends of this huge spectrum, including a 'social worker' (the official term for prostitutes), a human artist working off-world, an athlete in an intergalactic competition, and a slum child, among others. Although the stories are separate, this book felt very much like novel to me, not a book of short stories. The author has a kind of satiric, breezy voice that keeps the novel from feeling heavy, even when it is serious. Since I read it in English, my admiration goes out to the translator. I hope he translates all Yoss' books into English.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earth is a third-rate planet, and we humans just have to get over it. Civilizations from across the universe have contacted us, taken a look around, and failed to be impressed. The reaction is common to the beautiful, evolved felines of Tau Ceti; the twelve-foot tall, red-scaled, reptilian Collosaurs; the aquatic polyps of Alderbaran; and, the other members of the Intergalactic League. Earth has not been invited to join. Our planet is good for nothing more than raw materials and tourism – especially sex tourism. One of the principal duties of the Planetary Tourism Agency is the licensing of Social Workers – an easily decoded euphemism. The PTA deals in Social Workers and Body Spares, those convicted criminals whose bodies are made available to aliens who find functioning in earth’s environment difficult. Body Spares are often returned worse for wear if not dead, and there is naturally no recourse. The Xenoids are in charge. Early on they had to sink Africa to make a point, but after a generation or more on the planet things run for the most part smoothly, with the oversight of the PTA and PSF, the latter the Planetary Security Force. Humans are even allowed their peculiar proclivity of democratic government.

Yoss, the pen name of José Sánchez Gómez, is both a lead singer in a heavy metal band and an iconic Cuban literary figure who has written over 20 science fiction novels. Planet for Rent (2001) is a series of loosely linked short stories interspersed with brief sections addressing aspects of interplanetary colonialism. One story involves a group who attempts to leave the planet in their own, makeshift space vehicle. This intergalactic version of the rafts refugees launched from Cuba for decades is the most direct reference to the Castro era. Most of what Yoss describes applies to the West’s treatment of the Third World from a time before the term existed to today. Along with our intriguing genitals, our galactic betters enjoy our music, art, and sports. But there are limits to their tolerance, whether they are dealing with a kid throwing a rock at a Collosuar, a sports figure who seriously challenges a visiting team, or a Security Force member who thinks he has anything resembling real authority.

Yoss’s novel is funny and disturbing, with every episode tweaking a nerve. Both his aliens and his humans emerge as fully imagined characters, and the novel ends with a story of how the system ensconced in this future world poisons everything and everyone it touches.

Yoss’s novel is the first of two books that kicks off a series of Cuban science fiction from Restless Books. Two more titles are due in 2016.

[Lucy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting premise and some powerful scenes, but the violent misogyny really put me off.

[TraceyL · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a collection of interconnected short stories based in the same universe. It's also a commentary on colonialism. It didn't grab me the same way the author's other book Super Extra Grande did. Some chapters were great but I thought most were too dry. I'm still glad I read it.

[Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of interconnected stories of earth ruled by aliens and their human proxies, by Cuban science fiction author Yoss. Easy to assume that it's a commentary in part on Cuban society. There are things ,like Moy's performance art that I don't clearly understand what is being referred to.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

For rent, one planet that’s lost its way in the race for development, that showed up at the stadium after all the medals had been handed out, when all that was left was the consolation prize of survival.

For rent, one planet that learned to play the economics game according to one set of rules but discovered once it started playing that the rules had been changed.

The opening pages of A Planet for Rent read like a carnival barker beckoning curious thrill-seekers into a tent to gawk at the freakish survivors of a disfiguring accident. And in a way it is exactly that, only the freaks are humanity, the tent is the Earth, and the spectators are among a pantheon of alien species touring the wreckage and exploiting the survivors.

This is a post-invasion Earth, but with a twist that resonates with classic first contact stories: a confederation of highly advanced alien societies, which the novel collectively refers to as Xenoids, had been watching Earth closely. When humanity reached the right level of maturity, they would have welcomed Earth into the great galactic family. Humanity’s self-destructive instincts won out, however, and the Xenoids intervened before it was too late:

But when the total destruction of the Earth seemed inevitable, they broke their own rules and jumped in to stop it. Their huge ships landed in Paris, in Rome, in Tokyo, in New York. Their desire to help and their resources seemed endless…

Humanity, specifically the leaders of terrestrial nations, were uninterested in Xenoid assistance and instead became “jealously protective of their power in the presence of vastly superior minds.” After a failed attempt to expel the Xenoids with nuclear weapons, the Xenoids deemed humanity incapable of self-government, imposing an economically ruinous and exploitative police state on the human population, and turning the bulk of Earth’s land mass into a nature preserve for Xenoid tourists.

The historical context behind A Planet for Rent is worth noting. Yoss is the pen name for José Miguel Sánchez, a Havana-based writer and front-man for the Cuban heavy metal group, Tenaz. At the beginning of Yoss’s writing career Cuba was entering an especially traumatizing period of its history, one that has more than passing resemblance to Earth’s predicament in A Planet for Rent.

The collapse of the Soviet Union that began in the late 1980’s had devastating effects for Cuba. Soviet shipments of fuel, food, and pharmaceuticals suddenly ceased, commencing a particularly desperate period of famine and thrift that has come to be called the “Special Period”, which lasted through the turn of the century. During that decade, Cuba was forced to endure and even court various exploitative economic activities from wealthier nations for the sake of survival.

On one level, A Planet for Rent is a science-fictional allegorization of this prolonged period of national destitution. On another level, however, it is just straight-up good science fiction that stands on its own without reference to the historical allegory.

Yoss published the stories that form the backbone of A Planet for Rent throughout the 1990’s. They were collected and released in novel form in 2001 by Madrid-based publisher Equipo Sirius, and quickly established Yoss’s reputation in the world of Spanish letters as the pre-eminent Cuban writer of science fiction. A French edition followed in 2010, and finally, in 2014, Brooklyn-based indy publisher Restless Books released an English language version in ebook, in a clear and elegant translation by David Frye. (Restless released a hard copy version in June, 2015.)

A Planet for Rent follows the interconnected stories of six humans, each told in stand-alone vignettes, and each, in their way, about escape. The first person we meet is Buca, a “social worker” (ie. prostitute) serving the Xenoid tourists of Earth. The entirety of Buca’s chapter takes place at the astroport, where her Xenoid client is ushering her, luggage-like, through security checks and customs inspections, to a ship that will bring her back to his home planet for good. Buca’s client is a “Grodo”, a species of Xenoid with an insectoid carapace, and his desire for Buca is distinctly non-sexual.

The bulk of the story consists of flashbacks sketching the arc of the arc of the desperate events that brought Buca to this moment in the astroport with her Grodo client, where she will finally escape Earth. We soon learn, however, that Buca’s fate on the Grodo’s home planet is a horrifying one. But the tragedy lies in Buca’s continued happiness at leaving Earth, and the fact that even the fate she will suffer with the Grodo on an alien world is a marked improvement to her life on Earth.

Buca’s story dramatizes an actual phenomenon. Among other measures the Cuban government took during the Special Period, was courting tourists from Europe and the Americas. One of the explicit selling points for these tourists was the purported availability of Afro-Cuban women. As scholar Elisa Facio has described it, the influx of these tourists gave rise to the phenomenon of jineterismo, a type of government-sanctioned sex tourism where predominantly white tourists came to Cuba seeking sexual encounters specifically with a “sexy mulatta.”

There are other distinctly allegorical elements in A Planet For Rent, such as the crew of outlaws in Escape Tunnel, who escape from Earth on in a rickety pirated spacecraft with very little hope and very low chance of successfully reaching a safe destination in a friendly Xenoid enclave. The circumstances of these interplanetary boat people would be familiar to the tens of thousands of Caribbean, Central American, and African migrants who cross treacherous bodies of water in dodgy boats to flee terrible conditions at home.

In The Champions, we see yet another kind of escape, the kind available only to talented sports stars. The sport, in this case, is Voxl, wildly popular throughout the galaxy. A super team made up of the best human Voxl players on Earth will go head-to-head with a team from the League, which has the best players in the galaxy. It is as if a Major League Baseball team faced off against an all-star team from a poor backwater, country. For the non-league team, it is both a competition and an audition: if they win, or at least stand out, there’s a chance they, too, will get to join the League, with all the fame and wealth that accompanies a League contract.

This is a suitably ambivalent portrayal of the economic power that professional sports has exercised in poor nations in recent history. The abuses of Major League Baseball and the perverse incentives offered by its Caribbean recruitment networks throughout the 1990’s, as chronicles by Rob Ruck, among others, are reflected in small details in Yoss’s writing: the manic training each human Voxl player has received, the fanatic obsession with the sport in even the youngest players. About two young players, the narrator writes

Sometimes I feel sorry for them. They never talk about women or holofilms or even drugs. Maybe it was their father’s fault: he’s nearly turned them into robots, superspecialized Voxl playing machines.

Reading A Planet For Rent purely as straight up allegory, however, would be to massively shortchange it. In dressing the sociocultural epiphenomena of national collapse and economic colonization in science fiction threads, Yoss employs a rich and wide-ranging palette of science fictional invention that would not be out of place among the classics of the golden age.

The sport of Voxl, for instance, does not use a ball but, instead, “a spherical concentration of force fields” that have barely any mass. This spherical concentration ricochets off the walls of the court and

...gains speed instead of losing momentum every time it bounces. As if the walls had an elasticity coefficient greater than one. It takes just five or six rebounds for the voxl to move at such high velocity that not even our hypertrained reflexes can really follow it.

In Performing Death, a human performance artist on a Xenoid planet makes his living by slowly and gruesomely killing himself in front of a paying audience, relying on analgesic implants and nanotechnology to forestall pain and to piece him back together afterwards. The combination of technological info dump and pathos at the moment of his death is characteristic of Yoss’s ability to compress head and heart into the space of a brief paragraph:

The nanos that had penetrated his brain suddenly cut the supply of blood and glucose to its neurons, while hitting his major synapses with well-calculated electrical shocks. Moy sweetly lost consciousness.

For all the technological invention, the science fictional props that fill A Planet For Rent have a distinct vintage feeling, much like the iconic automobiles that prowl the Havana streets. Between the holofilms and telecrack, the galactic union and the insectoid alien creatures, it is hard to shake the feeling that Yoss’s work is informed more by Lem and his contemporaries than anything more recent. The vision that A Planet For Rent puts forward, however, is one that is immediately and terrifyingly recognizable on our present day planet.

[Dejo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good quality sci-fi. Suffers from "show, don't tell" issues, but makes up for them with originality and vividness.

[Bbrown · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the back cover blurb you might think that A Planet for Rent is just a depiction of Cuba with a coat of science fiction paint, and if so you'd be half-right. It certainly is a depiction of Cuba with a coat of science fiction paint, with social workers catering to aliens clearly representing Cuban sex workers catering to foreign tourists, with corrupt Planetary Security officers clearly representing corrupt National Revolutionary Police officers, with humans attempting to escape Earth in homemade, cobbled-together spaceships clearly representing Cubans attempting to reach the United States in makeshift rafts. But it isn't just that. The science fiction elements in A Planet for Rent aren't mere window-dressing; Yoss has included them for a purpose. Add to that the strength of the stories contained here, which are varied in terms of both content and structure, as well as strong overall world building, and A Planet for Rent is the best work of science fiction I've read in some time.

First off, this is not a novel, but a collection of short stories and vignette interludes that share the same setting and that feature an interconnected cast of characters. It’s the setting that is the key to this work, as Yoss gives us an Earth that has been taken over by aliens (Xenoids), that supposedly intervened to prevent humanity from wiping itself out through war, but that appear to have really taken control of our world to exploit it and profit from it. Earth is now a tourist trap for the more advanced alien species, and humans are less than dogs to our new overlords, second-class citizens on our own planet and prohibited from traveling off Earth to anywhere else. An alien gets murdered while on vacation? The city where that happened is burned to ashes, with however many million humans were unlucky enough to live there. An alien kills a human? Who cares, it happens every day. There are a lot of science fiction novels out there with humanity coming into contact with aliens, but few where we are in as inferior a position as we occupy in A Planet for Rent. In this universe we aren’t the richest, the strongest, the smartest, the most beautiful, or even the most populous. Earth’s advantage as an alien tourist destination is that it’s cheap, with our alien visitors able to rent human bodies and work them to death for the fun of it, have sex with a human escort (who may or may not survive the process) for the equivalent of spare change, and generally do whatever they wish without the authorities doing anything to stop them, since the aliens have the cash. Needless to say, being a human in this world is terrible.

And this is where Yoss accomplishes something with this book’s science fiction elements. The story of aliens recruiting human sports stars, who will accept any amount of money so that they can leave, could I have read it the same way if it was about some greedy scout from the United States snatching up a Cuban baseball player? Maybe, though, being from the United States myself, probably not, since it would inevitably have made me think about capitalism versus communism, and various other historical issues that would distract from the story more than add to it. But through the science fiction elements, it's a non-issue, as Yoss uses those elements to expand the feeling of disenfranchisement to the whole human race. Whoever reads this book, regardless of nationality or wealth, will be reading of a future where they’re under someone else’s boot, and considered garbage. I’m not saying that Yoss is the first to use science fiction to accomplish this feat, but he does so here effectively.

Beyond this, the stories themselves are strong. While reading A Planet for Rent I kept contrasting it with The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach, which is also essentially a series of interconnected short stories, but the ones in The Carpet Makers were 10 to 20 pages, more about setting a scene and describing some new element of the universe than delving too deeply. In contrast, the stories in A Planet for Rent are all about 30 to 40 pages, so they are substantive, and depict characters with some degree of depth. The Carpet Makers depicts people on a space station playing a game and the game itself is never really explained, since it’s the depiction of the space station and the scene of one character winning the tournament that’s important. In contrast, A Planet for Rent explains the rules, since you’re going to be experiencing that game with the players, and you’re going to care about the outcome of that game, and care about what it represents to the cheering fans watching it, and care about the players as well. In short, the stories of A Planet for Rent are stronger than those in The Carpet Makers. Additionally, Yoss shows that he has range when it comes to story structure, with a variety of styles on display in this relatively short work (though some structures are more successful than others).

Some may find the lack of an overarching plot to be a flaw of A Planet for Rent, and, while it’s certainly true that there isn’t some central plot that is unraveled over the course of this work (as occurs in The Carpet Makers), there’s a through-line here based on the mood of the book. This is a world where humans largely have to sell their bodies to survive (in more ways than one), where survival is a struggle. So no, you don’t learn the secrets of the mysterious Auyars, or get to read a story of the rebels throwing the Xenoid yoke off of Earth, because that’s not humanity’s place in this universe, we’re backwater garbage barely getting by, aren’t you paying attention? As stated in one of the vignettes, “[w]hat fate awaits a race that has lost faith in the future, idolizes the past, and puts up with the present?” This question is in the background of all of these stories, and it’s the tone this question sets that makes this work a cohesive whole. And of course the interconnected cast of characters helps too. The ending story is unfortunately one of the weakest, but ties some of the loose threads together, so that by the end you know the fates of most of the major characters in this book, meaning it doesn’t end feeling incomplete.

I’m not claiming that Yoss is the first to use science fiction in this way, nor am I claiming he’s a great prose writer, but A Planet for Rent has a strong setting, strong stories, a variety of storytelling styles, and best of all it makes you empathize with the plight of the Cuban poor without even making it explicit (though it isn’t trying to hide it from you either). It’s the best piece of science fiction I’ve read in a while, and I recommend it. 4.5 out of 5, and I'm rounding up.

[Avdotja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weird, annoying, lovely, infuriating and strangely creepy.

[Tonya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was quite skeptical at first. I don't read sci-fi very often, if ever. The author, a Cuban man with the unlikely name of Yoss who is in a heavy metal band and who LOOKS like he's in a heavy metal band circa 1988 (think bandanna head band, leather, studded wristbands and big hair), is not really someone I'd normally seek out to read.

However, I heard about the book, thought it was in intriguing premise, and bought it.

I'm not sorry I did. It's wonderfully done. It's masterful. The plot-- that Earth was taken over by xenoids (all the other creatures of the galaxy) because humans did a poor job taking care of their planet doesn't sound so original, I suppose, but where Yoss really excels is in the construction of the book. I don't want to say too much, I honestly think this is ebook that should be read and experienced without the reader getting a lot of front loaded ideas about the book.

Just read it. I don't think you'll be sorry.

The worst part of it is that I'm finished and there's only one more book of his translated into English! (He's written over twenty in Spanish!)

[Jeimy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gratuitous graphic gore, homophobic, and misogynistic treatment of female characters. Struggled through this one and hated it.

[Akuji1993 · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A planet for Rent" is a space opera structured in a couple of short stories following the lives of the people trying to survive and escape the life and death on Earth, after Contact.

With Contact, the alien community of the galaxies around us have decided that the human race is not capable of caring for themselves. So instead of keeping their distance, watching us destroy our planet, they contacted us. They healed the planet, provided health care to people and saved the human race from extinction. But for what price?

Since the human race is obviously not as intelligent as all of the leading races of the universe, their planet becomes a Tourist Attraction while humans don't earn the full membership of an advanced galaxy race. We become slaves to our superior masters, our planet a tourist attraction that aliens visit to have some fun.

The world this has created is very very depressing. Humans sell their bodies to aliens looking for exotic experiences, calling themselves "social workers". Instead of prison, humans are used as "horses" meaning their bodies are used by aliens to experience a truer experience on earth. And everybody tries to escape the hellhole that Earth has become for us.

In this chaos, Yoss' short stories are pretty confusing and sometimes disgusting to read in the beginning ("Performing Death" is heart wrenching and leaves you disgusted with what artists have become to make some money). But the more you read, the more the invisible threads between these people appear, binding their fates together. And you start to develop feelings towards all of them as you learn more about their motivation, their struggle to stay alive, their envy, pain, love.

This book is full of emotion. A human race that doesn't deserve their fate, but somehow tries to keep going. Fighting for their rights and their lives. Trying to survive in a world that is capable to destroy them at any moment in time and doesn't do so just out of pity and sexual desire.

It's also not hard to see the parallels that Yoss has created regarding his Cuban heritage. Earthlings fleeing their homeland, black markets, a government trying to control the clusterfuck of things happening all over. An alien invasion trying to destroy what humans have built. And humans, unwilling to surrender their way of living and their soul to their overlords.

This is a powerful book with a powerful message. A story full of despair, but also hope. One of the greatest I've read in the SciFi genre, which I usually don't even like that much.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I'm hoping Yoss returns to this world and tells more of these stories.

[Eric Mesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book I'm rounding up on with the score because I'm not sure I would say it's amazing (GR's definition of 5 stars) but I more than just "really liked it". With that out out of the way...

I've mentioned in previous reviews that I listen to Escape Pod and listen to/read Clarkesworld Magazine. Both publications have introduced me to international science fiction. What I've found to be fascinating is seeing what different cultures do with science fiction. Some of the Asian fiction I've read has been indistinguishable from American/British SF. Other stories have been so strangely different in what they project about the future or how they view utopia or dystopia. The same has, of course, happened with continental African SF.

This book is my first Cuban science fiction story. Yoss makes such brilliant use of the form. For those of you who read my reviews often you'll know that I always say that the point of SF is not predicting the future, but using an alien world (sometimes literally) to explore our present. With A Planet for Rent, Yoss essentially turns all of Earth into Cuba and gets the world to understand the situation by being able to see themselves as a citizen of Earth instead of Team First World vs Team Third World. (Which can get disgusting as described in Trevor Noah's most recent comedy special in which they take a tour of someone's home in a third world country) After opening with an ad for a rich alien race to buy Earth, the book alternates between a textbook-like description of various aspects of Earth under the alien regime and short stories. The textbook entries allow Yoss to do a lot of world building without interrupting stories with background information. The short stories allow Yoss to tell a series of self-contained stories that each showcase how the situation affects an individual. However, the reader quickly realizes there is a connecting thread running throughout the short stories, giving them way more punch than they would have on their own. The stories tell of corruption, of a government willing to do anything to keep tourists happy, of a resourcefulness because the citizens are denied technology and medicine that are common on the alien worlds.

It is biting commentary, but it is also great science fiction. I highly recommend it.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited to read A Planet For Rent by Yoss, enticed partly by the intriguing premise and (even though this is a silly reason) partly because of how much I’ve loved other Cuban sci-fi titles by Agustín de Rojas also published by Restless Books 😅😂 Happily, my high expectations were EXCEEDED by this smart, immersive text and I can’t wait to read the rest of Yoss’s oeuvre.⁣
⁣
A Planet For Rent is not as much a novel as a series of connected stories, tied together by the same impressive worldbuilding and overlapping characters. Yoss envisions Earth post-Contact, rescued from environmental disaster and sold to the highest xenoid bidder. With their planet converted into a tourist destination for wealthy, technologically advanced xenoids, Yoss’s human characters scrape together lives in the margins on Earth and across the galaxy. A Planet For Rent is not some heavily veiled allegory though; in the acknowledgements, Yoss thanks the real people whose lives served as “inspirations and raw material” for the book’s stories. The connections to Cuba’s history, and to dynamics of power and privilege that play out throughout human history, felt strikingly present throughout the book, even for myself without knowing a ton about Cuba.⁣
⁣
The stories in this book are so varied and imaginative, from a performance artist that literally disassembles his body on stage culminating in his death (and the regrowth of his body through cloning and consciousness preserving technology) to the MOST captivating sports story. I have never been gripped or moved by a sports narrative like I was by the story of Team Earth playing the fascinating fictional sport of Voxl in a match against a xenoid League team. I found the final story to be uncomfortable and jarring, it centers on a nine year old girl traveling the world with a xenoid who sort of kidnaps/adopts her. She becomes increasingly fixated on his sexual liaisons and demands that he see her as sexually attractive. I felt the narrative depicts her sexual focus and the way she instigates sex with adults as something to be pitied rather than romanticized, however it’s a difficult line to walk and made for a gut-wrenching read.⁣

Cw for violence and death, police corruption, suicide, pedophilia, graphic body horror, xenophobia, drug addiction, weaponized sexually transmitted illness

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A 4 - just shy of a 5. This won't be for everyone though, as it is darkly dystopian. And I think to be enjoyed most, the reader should be mildly aware of the issues being experienced in Cuba in 1990s (Special Period), or at least generally about the tourism industry in Caribbean countries. From what I can tell, this book may still be banned/not released in Cuba itself given that it is really a thinly veiled critique. Without understanding some of that back drop, the reader may not find this book nearly as evocative, or may take issue with the topics and portrayals of socio-political hot button issues due to failure to understand the context.

This book is great for those who read short stories in science fiction and are always left wanting to know more about the universe. Yoss writes the story divided into several vignettes, each told centering on a different character. While there are fine threads that connect characters, the tales are separate - but told within the same universe. The reader gets exposed to the human experience in this dark novel where humanity is objectified and monetized by an outside universe. And while being critical of the government and sociopolitical context, the reader gets to ask themselves: what would I sacrifice? What would I be willing to do? What would and could I tolerate?

[Edgar Nieves · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are many parallels between Cuba and the relationship Earth holds with xenoids species in the universe Yoss creates in this book. The stories are interconnected by characters that appear multiple times or that are mentioned throughout the stories, but mainly because each story explores a different aspect of Yoss’ futuristic universe.

What I did not like is his description of female characters, who are most of the time sexualize by male narrators and given roles of sexual workers. While this could be an attempt to translate/present/critique Cuba’s heteropatrical/machismo culture and the social reality that many women are forced to live on the island (especially women who are sexually exploited by tourists who visit the island with the intention of enjoying the “local delicacies”) it gets to a point where it is a little tiresome that the author is not able to represent women out of this limited and contrived role.

[Nikola Novaković · Rating 2 out of 5]

Could not finish this.

It's one of those books that can be called "perfectly boring": every single sentence is distilled to pure boredom, every one of its stories so bland and uninspired that nothing could be done to improve its boredom - it's absolutely perfect.

[Whisper19 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodreads needs to offer half stars!
3.5
not sure about this one, there is potential here, but the format sort of ruins it for me. If we had followed one story, instead of seeing glimpses of 10, I think it would have made for a more enjoyable reading.
Who knows

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of vignettes tied together by similar themes and characters, Yoss' "A Planet for Rent" is one of the most intriguing science fiction books I've read recently.

Earth, in the near future, has been contacted by alien species, collectively known to humans as "xenoids", who were compelled to make themselves known as the world was on the brink of self-destruction. The world is now clandestinely ruled by the xenoid species, preventing humanity from taking a role in the greater galactic community.

Being a Cuban writer, Yoss' use of recent Cuban history as an influence on the conditions of the world in "A Planet for Rent" is hardly passive, showing the oppression of the Cuban people and the corruption of the ruling class through thinly veiled allegories that fit very well in the vision of the future he's skillfully crafted. This book continues a trend I've noticed in my science fiction reading as of late of authors deeply engraining sex into numerous aspects of their works, a trend that has greatly confused me: is it that sex is such a deeply animalistic thing that's programmed into every being, it has to be touched on? Is it that science fiction authors tend to be giant nerds that simply don't get any? A minor part of the work as a greater whole, the inclusion of sexual situations stood out to me.

Minor nitpicking aside, this book make me think, and that's all I really ask for when reading novels. I eagerly await Restless Books's next translation of a Yoss novel, coming summer 2016.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is more a collection of interconnected short stories, which is frequently done poorly and feels disjointed, but in this case has just enough to thread it together with still maintaining the diversity of the book.

This is my favorite type of sci fi, it has a rich and well thought out world - but it's not about that. It's about humanity, and humanity in the face of the bleakest circumstances. Each story asks the question, what would you do to survive, and more importantly, gain some measure of freedom in a world where you have no freedom at all? What would you sacrifice and what would you accept for a chance?

This book is a dark read, particularly the first two, but it's powerful and it's stories and ideas will stick with you.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. This book works so well on multiple levels - as a story in its own right, as a cultural commentary, as an inventive thought experiment about the future, as a metaphor for Cuba's place within the wider world. Can be a disturbing read, but highly recommended.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliantly acerbic gonzo science fiction that manages in the end to be surprisingly moving. Wiping a tear at the gym this morning.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science fiction is often a commentary on society, so I like reading science fiction from other countries to understand other societies better. In A Planet for Rent, Earth is a stand-in for Cuba—it has been colonized by aliens (referred to as "xenoids"), stripped of its resources, and turned into a tourist trap. At first, the book appears to be a collection of short stories about the various-but-limited ways humans manage to escape Earth: one follows a "social worker" (i.e. prostitute) who is taken off-world by an asexual alien for reasons I won't spoil, one is about an artist whose work is to dramatically kill himself in a very graphic, gruesome way—but it's okay! He gets a new, cloned body after each performance! (I suggest that people who are squeamish about body horror read this one with caution)—one follows an exceptional athlete, an one is a conversation with a rookie cop...and here's where things shift to reveal even darker sides to Earth's occupation.

The book is structured as an alternation of short chapters—providing information about how the society works and how it came to be—with longer chapters mostly from the first-person perspective of people who have escaped or are trying to escape. As the table of contents indicates, each short chapter is paired with the narrative chapter that follows it. The structure works, especially as it appears at first that the short stories are unrelated other than taking place in the same universe, but by the end the reader finds out how the characters are related. There are so many surprises—I don't even consider them "twists"—that I don't want to say more for fear of spoiling them!

Overall, I can see why Yoss is regarded as the best author of Cuban science fiction. The xenoids are truly alien, not just "people in rubber masks." There are multiple species with varying physiologies, customs, sexualities, and social statuses. Although the story is depressing, the book is satisfying and intellectually challenging.

[Benny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuba is usually not one of the countries that are associated with sci-fi novels. Looking past the stereotypes though, beyond the doctors, the boxers and the cigar rollers, one could actually find many authors from this island country.

The premise of the novel is quite easy to understand. Our planet Earth is a metaphor for Cuba and the extraterrestrial visitors are equivalent to the wealthy tourists paying a visit to this inauspicious country. In the events after the Contact from planets that are more advanced than ours, Earth has been rendered as a low-intelligence, low-resource planet, whose sole economic value is servicing extraterrestrial travellers who ventured to visit "primitive" places. Through the lens of these newly defined earthlings, one can better understand the plight of the people when quotidian, local predicaments in Cuba are skilfully depicted as planetary crisis. To that end, choosing sci-fi as a vehicle to write about social problems showcases the mastery of satire and the inventive cleverness of the author.

[Luke · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5/5

This may very well be the first Cuban work not written in English, if not the first Cuban work period, that I've ever read. I"m sure that's what I was thinking when I first added it, and the fact that it took this long to track down feels like more of a cop out than I would like. Still, I've had better luck with sci-fi lit in the past six months than I've had in the past six years, and when this popped up on the shelves of a local-ish library I've finally started exploring, it seemed like the final culmination of multiple good efforts. Alas, intentions are as intentions do, and this read more like a series of sociological treatises with a thin veneer of 'transgressive' fictioneering and same-voiced narrators who wouldn't stop telling lubricating their way into the genre category. Add in a whole heap of stereotypes I would expect from '80's entries rather than the mid 2010's and you have stories whose miserable familiarity would be justified if they weren't so monotonously predictable to boot. In any case, I'm glad a local library carries this. It just wasn't for me.

[Kanlep · Rating 2 out of 5]

Si no me avisan de que el autor es cubano, quizás no me habría enterado de que toda la novela se reduce a una fuerte crítica anticastrista. Llena de faltas de ortografía, erratas y agujeros de guion, lo único que la salva para mí es la descripción de una Tierra exhausta y vencida, la vida de las hormiguitas humanas después del contacto. Como ya han señalado, está narrada a lo largo de unos episodios más o menos autoconclusivos (por momentos me ha parecido una imitación de las crónicas marcianas) y mejor así: cuando el autor intenta atar cabos y pasar a la acción no termina de acertar ni siquiera en las escenas de cama. Quiere ser polifónica y fracasa estrepitosamente en el monólogo femenino.

[Lucie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in Spanish by Yoss, a Cuban author, but very readably translated by David Frye, this is still a fairly difficult book to read, not for language but for concepts. This is not the optimistic future view of so much of science fiction, but an almost depressing look at earth after alien contact. This is not a book to zip through in 2 days, but one to be slowly read and digested, but well worth the reading. The structure of the book is a series of stories with overlapping characters such that they form a unified whole. I heartily recommend this book to any hard core science fiction buff. Take a look from a different point of view!

[Avarla · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was getting better and better the more I read on. I loved the different writing styles in the different chapters and the short story collection-esque combination of stories, slowly unravelling and giving more depth to each individual chapter. The parallels between post-Contact earth and real life Cuba are thinly veiled, but that takes nothing away from the stories, even made them more intense and slightly uncomfortable. You can still read it as simple SF, which makes it all the more fascinating.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't expect this to be a series of short stories, I was looking for a longer Scifi. This was very beautiful and sad in its own way. Would definitely recommend to anyone who thinks the idea of earth being made a tourism venue for aliens and all of us just having to deal with that because of how insignificant we are sounds good.

[Rhoddi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprisingly inventive and readable, the real big problem with this book is that the stories can drag on to the the point of boredom. I still found it quite entertaining especially for the different point of view and honesty.