With the help of fine folks over at GOODREADS, we’re giving away one advanced review copy (ARC) of the acclaimed Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

For full details, visit GOODREADS.

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. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Introduction by Jo Walton

Fiction

• Three Twilight Tales
• Jane Austen to Cassandra
• Unreliable Witness
• On the Wall
• The Panda Coin
• Remember the Allosaur
• Sleeper
• Relentlessly Mundane
• Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction
• Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens
• Turnover
• At the Bottom of the Garden
• Out of It
• What a Piece of Work
• Parable Lost
• What Would Sam Spade Do?
• Tradition
• What Joseph Felt
• The Need to Stay the Same
• A Burden Shared

Script

• Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)

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

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story