Are You There — Jack Skillingstead

Unconventional and deep, this dynamic collection of 26 stories offers a wealth of fantastical and horrifying settings. Several perspectives on life after death are explored-reincarnated swarms of nanobots with digital personalities and a spirit wandering a bleak and violent city in search of lost love-as well as dynamic themes of alien invasion and Lovecraftian horror. In "Life on the Preservation," the Earth has been devastated, but Seattle has been preserved in a time loop taking place one day before world destruction, and a young girl who has never known such opulence is sent to destroy the city. A man injured by a terrorist's bomb discovers that he can relive the event, but if he chooses to save the woman at the table next to him, there will be dire consequences to himself in "Rewind." In the title story, a parapolice detective in hot pursuit of a serial killer receives help from a responsive memory module of the killer's mother, but soon discovers that he might be falling in love with the module. Edgy and surreal, each tale reflects on familiar, emotional issues and complex relationships from new and imaginative angles.