An intimate first flight of short fiction from award-winning novelist Jo Walton (Among Others, The King’s Peace).
An strange Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity and survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats.
With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic — rising from the everyday into the universe itself.
Contents:
Introduction by Jo Walton
Fiction
At the Bottom of the Garden
Relentlessly Mundane
Unreliable Witness
On the Wall
What Would Sam Spade Do
What Joseph Felt
What Piece of Work
Three Twilight Tales
Parable Lost
Remember the Allosaur
Tradition
Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction
The Panda Coin
Joyful and Triumphant
Turnover
Sleeper
The Need to Stay the Same
A Burden Shared
Jane Austin to Cassandra
Out of it
Poetry
Dragon’s Song
Not in this Town
Hades and Persephone
The Death of Petrach
Advice to Loki
Ask to Embla
Three Bears Norse
Machiavelli and Prospero
Cardenio
Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem
Pax in Forma Columba
Translated from the Original
Sleepless in New Orleans
The Godzilla Sonnets
Not a Bio for Wiscon: Jo Walton
Script
Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)
Biography
