An award-winning visionary and accurate master of worlds and wonders, the person whom writer David Brin phone calls “one of the best prophetic authors of our moments,” once more demonstrates the breathtaking range and startling power of his creativity, transporting listeners across space and time, into the center of darkness as well as the spirit of madness.

In the spine-tingling account of an intergalactic poacher’s rite of passage to an erotic and ultimately uplifting modern fable of inner scars and otherworldly transformation, listed below are fifteen remarkable tales, including the classic novella The Hemingway Hoax. These are stories that sing with a distinctive and haunting voice-stories of war’s monsters, of brutal art and lost celebrities, and a brief, miraculous moment known as childhood, whenever a youthful girl can in fact fly.