In “Unapocalyptic,” I talk about becoming more resilient to change. When I started the newsletter, I said you’d get extras if you became a paying subscriber. Some of those extras appear as extra or extended posts on Substack—but I always intended to use your support to publish a book or two. Well, here goes!
Your subscriptions have enabled me to put out a collection of previously-published, highly acclaimed stories. They’re interconnected but have never been collected under one cover. If you’re a paying subscriber between now and August 1, 2026, upon request I will mail you a free hardcover copy of Laika’s Ghost. For everybody else, here’s how you can buy it now:
Gennady Malianov is a painfully shy Ukrainian arms inspector who feels more at home camping in the woods around Chornobyl than walking the streets of Kyiv. In these six novelettes, Gennady keeps finding his serenity interrupted by people who’ve come to the same remote places for unsavoury reasons.
I think of Gennady as the Cold War’s janitor: he’s the guy left holding the bag, tasked with cleaning up after the nuclear and biological messes left by the last round of superpower brinksmanship.
These tales were all published between 2000 and 2014, and while each was popular at the time, I had wondered whether they’d lost their relevance, given today’s situation with the war and all. Ultimately I decided that they deserve to be out there because they’re some of my most fun work—and maybe also because they describe a liminal moment of possibility, the era after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the invasion. Maybe they still have lessons for us; but damnit, I wrote them because I loved being in Gennady’s head. I think you will too, and your patronage has made that possible. So here we are!
Some reviews and responses:
Scott D. Danielson at SFFAudio called the story “To Hie From Far Cilenia” ‘a wonderful story of cities of a different type. Idea-rich, action-packed – it’s got it all.’
As part of the audiobook anthology Metatropolis, “To Hie From Far Cilenia” was nominated for the 2009 Hugo Award in the Best Dramatic Long Form category.
The title story, "Laika's Ghost" was nominated for a Locus Award.
In his Reactor SF review, John Joseph Adams compared “To Hie from Far Cilenia” to the rest of the stories in the Metatropolis anthology and called it ‘The most inventive and full of gosh-wow sensawunda.’
"The Dragon of Pripyat" was reprinted in Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Edition.
Along with the other great stories in Metatropolis: Cascadia, “Deodand,” won the the 2012 Audie Award for Best Original Production.
Maybe you’re not quite ready to buy the book or subscribe, but you still want to support me. There’s an easy way:
Or subscribe now, and get a signed copy of the hardcover edition. (Postage within North America is free.)
If you’re a paid subscriber between now and August 1, here’s how to get the book:
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