A Planet for Rent
SynopsisPlot
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.
Story
About this book
A Planet for Rent is a science fiction novel by Yoss, Cuba's most celebrated writer in the genre. It imagines a future Earth overwhelmed by economic collapse and environmental decay, where alien species arrive as supposed rescuers. These powers reshape the planet into a tourist destination under their control, imposing a rigid interstellar bureaucracy on the human population left behind.
Humans in this future occupy narrow and often degrading roles. Some join the colonial police that serve the new rulers. Others survive through black markets, drug dealing, or art. Some sell sex to visiting extraterrestrials. Those who refuse every available path may try to leave the planet aboard makeshift ships with little chance of safe arrival. Each route carries its own cost.
The novel draws direct parallels between its invented interstellar hierarchy and Cuba in the 1990s, when economic crisis narrowed daily choices. Yoss looks at colonialism from the position of the colonized, along with tourism, dependency, and the bureaucratic machinery that decides who may travel and who must stay. A Planet for Rent was his first book to appear in English translation.
