Think you want to live forever? Think again. You may wake up as a zombie tourist, doomed to shamble the sights of Los Angeles. Or you could be a clone, body and memories intact but lacking something you can’t quite name. Your frozen head might linger for centuries in a museum while other souls gallivant about the universe. You might be reincarnated as a plastic lawn flamingo or seated Buddha or garden gnome. Or into an unbreakable cycle of servitude. Or you may just outlive the people and things that gave life its flavor. Emily C. Skaftun’s debut collection brings you flippant wish-granting fish, flying tigers, foul-mouthed fairies, rogue robots, vengeful trees, medical dreams, interstellar squirrels, murderous teddy bears, magic-helmet-wearing rollergirls, rampaging aliens, a dash of eldritch horror, and a sprinkle of ghosts. These 18 stories, spanning a decade, balance on the knife-edge between whimsical and poignant, exploring fates far weirder than death.
Author
Emily C. Skaftun’s tales of flying tigers, space squids, and evil garden gnomes have appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and more. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2009. Emily lives just north of Seattle with a mad scientist and their Cat, Astrophe. She is the former editor of a Norwegian newspaper and practices norsk bokmål by translating comic strips. Emily has cuddled a crocodile in Cuba, attended Elf School in Reykjavík, swam in a Yucatán cenote, and flown over an active volcano.
