“We always knew this day would come. We tried to warn the others. It was obvious either the sharp rate of our technological advancement would lead to the robot singularity claiming lordship over all, or that the fairies would finally grow tired of our reckless destruction of the natural world and take it back from us. And so, we have prepared a guide to assist our fellow humans in embracing their inevitable overlords.”

This anthology collects 18 stories with each author picking either the robots or the fairies as humanity's eventual overlord. Some of the stories incorporate both creatures but many pick one or the other and tell a story based on that creature's interactions with people. The result is an intriguing balance between fantasy and science fiction that overall left me feeling rather pleased. Like with any anthology, there are some standouts and some stinkers. To my mind, the best three were:

- "All the Time We've Left to Spend" by Alyssa Wong
- "The Blue Fairy's Manifesto" by Annalee Newitz
- "A Fall Counts Anywhere" by Catherynne M. Valente

Overall, I'd say Robots vs Fairies is well worth picking up if you're a fan of robots and/or fairies as there's some clever ideas in there and a better balance of good stories vs bad than in previous anthologies that I've read.

Build Me a Wonderland by Seanan McGuire - 4/5
A group of maintenance engineers, led by a woman named Clover, keeps a magic, Disneyland-style Park from breaking down until their boss hires an efficiency expert who threatens everything they’ve built.
McGuire does an excellent job of transporting magic to the real world without it seeming out of place. As a self-described lover of Disneyland, she makes the Park come to magical life and yet still be an amusing twist on the usual.

Quality Time by Ken Liu - 2/5
A liberal arts major is hired by a major tech company and tries to figure out the line between helpful and hindrance as he leads a team of techs.
I’m clearly just not a Liu fan. The story tries to walk the line between technology that works and technology that fixes things that were never a problem but mostly just succeeds at feeling contrived and trite.

Murmured Under the Moon by Tim Pratt - 4/5
Recently hired as a librarian to the fairies, Emily Yuan faces her greatest challenge when the library is ransacked by her own boss.
Even for a short story, this has a slow burn. The cleverness of the living books, traveling of alternate dimensions and myths coming to life make up for it. Particularly given the author’s accurate assessment of the fairies vs robots idea: “Passing the Turing test, developing true AI - robots are only cool when they grow more familiar. Fairies, on the other hand, become more interesting the less they resemble us.”

The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto by Annalee Newitz - 5/5
In a factory closed down for the weekend, a robot named the RealBoy (who is used to building parts for other robotic toys) is “freed” from his programming by a radical anti-human drone called the Blue Fairy and finds that freedom comes with as much responsibility as it does choice.
I was excited to read this because I’ve been meaning to read Newitz’s book Autonomous for awhile now and haven’t gotten around to it yet. The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto is a clever examination of psychological choices when it comes to propaganda and what freedom really means beyond the nice ring of it.

Bread and Milk and Salt by Sarah Gailey - 4/5
A young boy and an inquisitive fairy interact over the course of his life, with devastating consequences.
This is not one of those light and sparkly tales about fairies. It’s blood and bone and salt, with all the creepiness that that entails.

Ironheart by Jonathan Maberry - 4/5
A young man with a failing mechanical heart tries to keep the robots who run his parents farm from falling apart before he does.
I absolutely loved the way that Duke’s illness affected FarmBoy. What a cool way to combine the ideas of two different farmers, one of flesh and one of metal.

Just Another Love Song by Kat Howard - 4/5
A banshee and her brownie roommate get to the bottom of a mystery involving the disappearance of other fae.
This is probably the shortest story in the collection (just 10 pages) but it’s a surprisingly enthralling. I loved the inclusion of various types of fae and the way the banshee uses her voice at the end.

Sound and Fury by Mary Robinette Kowal - 3/5
A ship’s engineer and her crew must personally escort a Diplomatic Personal Surrogate (giant robot) down to a planet for a diplomatic meeting.
I liked Jela and some of the other characters but the story felt bland. The humor and interesting characters are all that save it from being just okay.

The Bookcase Expedition by Jeffrey Ford - 3/5
While ill in bed, an older man sees an expedition of little people up head up his bookcase on a mission from their queen.
This felt more like a story about the Littles than about faeries but it was interesting to see their expedition play out. Definitely more on the light-hearted, mischievous side than some of the other fairy stories.

Work Shadow/Shadow Work by Madeline Ashby - 4/5
The robotic assistant to a well known spiritualist in Iceland attempts to help his client navigate the challenges of growing older, even as he’s not completely sure whether she has delusional episodes or really does talk to fairies.
As the author mentions in the afterword following the story, this is really a question of “believing in the essential dignity of an organic human and believing in the essential dignity of a synthetic human.” The conversations between the spiritualist and the robot were compelling.

Second to the Left, and Straight On by Jim C. Hines - 3/5
A woman in search of her daughter Lillian hunts for Tinker Bell and the other Found Girls that the fairy has stolen in the years since she took Lillian.
As someone with only a vague remembrance of Peter Pan, this was still an interesting and compelling story. The way it handled the mother’s panic and grief felt heartbreaking and real.

The Buried Giant by Lavie Tidhar - 3/5
Two children in an age in which machines are long gone hear the story of one of a human boy raised among machines and his journey to meet others like himself.
This one reminded me a bit of the videogame Horizon: Zero Dawn in terms of kind of the primitive set-up of the humans and the long-gone machines. It was interesting to have this story that was sort of like a reverse Pinocchio.

Three Robots Experience Objects Left Behind From the Era of Humans for the First Time by John Scalzi - 3/5
As the title suggests, three robots have a brief conversation about a ball, a cat, an Xbox and a nuclear missile and try to understand the humans who are now long gone.
Scalzi has an amusing sense of humor that I appreciate, despite the script/dialogue format not being my favorite format to get into a story.

Ostentation of Peacocks by Delilah Dawson writing as Lila Bowen - 2/5
A shapeshifter goes head to head with four faeries to decide the fate of another in a distinctly weird Western setting.
I’m coming to the conclusion that I just don’t like Dawson’s writing. Not a terrible story but not one that appealed to me much.

All the Time We’ve Left to Spend by Alyssa Wong - 5/5
A former pop star visits a seedy hotel full of mechanical representations of dead celebrities to see those lost to her years before.
Bar none, the absolute best story in the collection. Part Ghost in the Shell, part Japanese pop band, it’s absolute perfection.

Adriftica by Maria Dahvana Headley - 1/5
In a modern re-telling of Midsummer Night’s Dream, an aging music journalist (along with the rest of humanity) is caught in a custody battle between two faeries.
I was so bored by this one. If you really love rock and roll history and aging punks, this might be the one for you, otherwise it’s well worth skipping this story. I skimmed most of it.

To a Cloven Pine by Max Gladstone - 1/5
A re-telling of The Tempest with ships and robots feeling a Witch creature even as they fight among themselves.
I’m quite sure that I understood about a tenth of this story. It wasn’t awful but I never felt like I had a grasp on what Gladstone was going for so it’s definitely one of the lowest on the list for me in this collection.

A Fall Counts Anywhere by Catherynne M. Valente - 4/5
In the most literal definition of the title in the entire collection, robots and fairies have a WWF-style brawl for the entertainment of the human masses.
This was both amusing and clever and I appreciate that Valente took full advantage of the idea implied by a brawl between these two and what it would mean for the human audience. Perfect way to end the collection.