Review: The Awkward Black Man by Walter Mosely

I normally review only horror, but Netgalley and Atlantic Grove were kind enough to send me a digital copy of Walter Mosely's short story collection, The Awkward Black Man. I hadn't read Mosely before and I am greatly impressed by his sensitive, unique, and soul-searching stories.

But, since I do review horror, I'll stick to three interesting stories where Mosley strides into the speculative.  In one, Cut Cut Cut, a little, wizened Black man, who happens to be a mad scientist with an underground lab, attempts to create a demi-god race. Unfortunately, the bodies stack up in his attempts.

In Haunted, a man who wrote 1000 short stories without ever having one published, grows to hate the editor who rejected hundreds of his stories, that after he dies his hate stays on as a ghost.

Another story involves the transmigration of souls. In The Sin of Dreams, a huckster rap promoter becomes the unlikely head of a bio-firm that can transfer the souls of dying billionaires into younger bodies.

All of the stories are worth a read. They are fresh, original, and Mosley comes up with thoughts and questions that I haven't seen in other writing.