From the Publisher
The most profound terror is rooted in love—the terror of losing love, of love betrayed, of love in peril. Justin C. Key’s work is a cold knife through a hot heart, a surgical blade unleashing gouts of searing fear.” — Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues, Little Brother, and Radicalized
“Key’s stories exemplify [a] tight focus on interior experiences, zooming in on the intimate horrors wrought by fantastical technologies and events. The standout 'Spider King' features an unwitting participant in a twisted carceral experiment involving telekinetic arachnids. . . .‘Afiya’s Song,’ about an enslaved Black woman who inspires an uprising, cleverly complicates the magical Negro trope, . . . The intrusive public health system of ‘Wellness Check,’ the nightmarish interactive art of ‘Now You See Me’ and the alien apartheid of the title story showcase an active imagination and a commitment to socially-minded speculative fiction.” — New York Times Book Review
“An electrifying collection of stories that would make Octavia E. Butler smile.” — Ebony
“Deep thinking and feeling went into these stories; each one is a brilliant reservoir. Now, more than ever, we need stories like these; we need Justin C. Key.” — Andy Duncan, three-time World Fantasy Award winner
"A gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection. . . . Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.” — Tor.com
“This masterful collection interweaves technology and magic while exploring race relations, family bonds, and social oppression. Key’s stories alternate between dread and hope, their beats delivered with confident, unwavering prose. He shows us again and again that horror doesn’t need the supernatural when monsters walk among us.” — S. B. Divya, Hugo and Nebula-nominated author of Meru
“[An] equally unsettling and thought-provoking debut collection . . . . Key has a talent for crafting memorable characters . . . . Readers will welcome this formidable new voice in Black speculative fiction.” — Publishers Weekly
“From the first sentence of the first story, I knew I was in the hands of a gifted storyteller. Each tale in this tightly woven collection has its own voice, which pairs with the narrative. The stories are by turns heartbreaking and terrifying.” — Mary Robinette Kowal
“One of many distinctive new Black American voices in the fantasy genre, Key shows throughout these eight stories the range and ingenuity of such grandmasters as Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and Theodore Sturgeon, with whom he also shares acute empathy for human vulnerability. . . . Key resolutely carries on the tradition of the modern SF writers who always found new and rueful ways of reminding readers that no matter how much technology changes, humanity, in its loneliness, folly, and constricted vision, somehow never does.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Key deftly moves the SF, fantasy, and horror genres forward with works of short fiction that explore the Black experience, racism, power, prejudice, and fear . . . . Key has brought Jordan Peele and Black Mirror to the world of literary fiction.” — Booklist (starred review)
"Key creates worlds of speculative fiction inhabited by Black people trying their best to live, love, and survive.” — The Observer
“There's a new out-of-the box thinker on the block—and on bookshelves . . . . mind-bending, thought-provoking short stories . . . generating significant buzz in the fantasy world.” — People
“Really, what is more incredible, more surreal than the widespread everyday injustices of gaslighting spouses and the racist carceral state; not to mention the unexpected joys of love in the time of cholera? (Yes, children; that last one is a reference to an older literary masterwork.) Key remixes speculative fiction and common fact to great effect, adding his own artistic vision to the insistent upwelling of African diasporic voices in this genre.” — Nalo Hopkinson author of Brown Girl in the Ring
“Justin Key electrifies us with reality-bending stories that reach deep into the abscesses of our past and current world, stories layered with stark commentary that spin startling tomorrows, all the while playing us with taut prose that reaches deep into the gut.” — Tobias S. Buckell, author of A Stranger in the Citadel
“This genre-blending collection . . . hones in on the current shortcomings of the status quo.” — BookRiot
“Each story in this collection is a heady mix of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy mixed together to create a rich, literary stew. Key has a way of looking at our tomorrows and our yesterdays to create deeply spiritual and starkly relevant stories. This collection was what my soul needed.” — Maurice Broaddus, author of Sweep of Stars and Unfadeable
“A gifted storyteller . . . . An impactful collection of stories about race, class, and prejudice in our world.” — Escapist
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-07-26
Short stories using the tropes of horror and science fiction with intelligence, compassion, and wry abandon to analyze and analogize racial misunderstanding.
One of many distinctive new Black American voices in the fantasy genre, Key shows throughout these eight stories the range and ingenuity of such grandmasters as Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and Theodore Sturgeon, with whom he also shares acute empathy for human vulnerability—even when, as in the poignant title story, an extraterrestrial race is involved. That story examines the life of Jordan, a “Keplan” who, along with his human father, is compelled to engage with earthbound bigotry and injustice in their grandest and pettiest manifestations. In “Spider King,” an inmate is released from custody after receiving an injection that transforms his body into a breeding nest for spiders. It may sound like high-concept gore, but as in other Key stories, “Spider King” is elevated above such fare by its up-to-the-minute social detail about the struggles of ex-convicts to avoid both recidivism and stigmatization. As in the best SF, the topical and the universal blend seamlessly here. “Wellness Check,” for instance, convincingly presents an alternate version of our world whose social norms have been battered and restructured by a series of pandemics. (Never leave home without your Viral Detection Reality glasses!) Another “what-if” tale, “Afiya’s Song,” imagines a different pre-Civil War South where a young girl’s resistance to her master lights the fuse for what becomes a widespread, successful slave insurgence. About 200 years later, in “Customer Service,” an unhappy client of something called Two Places at Once finds his A.I. doppelgänger going way too far in his prescribed duties as a substitute. Perhaps the most haunting and heartbreaking is “The Perfection of Theresa Watkins,” in which a grieving husband downloads the consciousness of his dead Black wife into the body of a white woman with distressing psychic baggage of her own. Key resolutely carries on the tradition of the modern SF writers who always found new and rueful ways of reminding readers that no matter how much technology changes, humanity, in its loneliness, folly, and constricted vision, somehow never does.
Key acknowledges all kinds of terrifying possibilities for dreaming the future—and inhabiting the present.
