The Unraveling

In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system. Young Fift is an only child of the Staid gender, struggling to maintain zir position in the system while developing a friendship with the acclaimed bioengineer Shria--a controversial and intriguing friendship, since Shria is Vail-gendered. Soon Fift and Shria unintentionally wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle which turns into a multilayered Unraveling of society. Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . when zir personal crises suddenly take on global&nbsp; significance. What's a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching?

Literature & Fiction

Rosenbaum, Benjamin

Literary

Erewhon

"A wildly inventive, funny, and ultimately quite heartfelt novel, The Unraveling is a chaotic romp of gender deconstruction packaged up in a groovy science-fictional coming-of-age tale." —Chicago Review of Books\nIn the far-off future, Fift is a Staid-gendered youth–working towards logic and thoughtfulness–just trying to figure out zir life in the bustling, but rigid social system of Fullbelly. And as if mastering zir three bodies and making zir twelve parents proud weren’t enough to handle, Fift’s growing relationship with Shria, an at-times emotional and passionate Vail-gendered bioengineer, is a controversy waiting to happen.\nWhen Fift and Shria wind up at the center of a scandalous art spectacle that sparks off a multilayered Unraveling of society, Fift is torn between zir attraction to Shria and the safety of zir family, between staying true to zir feelings and social compliance . . . all while zir personal crises suddenly take on global significance. What’s a young Staid to do when the whole world is watching?\nIn his intricate and thoughtful debut novel, Benjamin Rosenbaum brings warmth, heart, and humor to this story of growing up in the distant future, interrogates exactly who a utopia is for, and how social structures only change when everyone has a voice. Like Chana Porter’s The Seep and Monica Byrne’s The Actual Star, Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Unraveling is the latest in a line of science fiction that challenges gender, society, and culture, while showcasing an inclusive, expansive, and creative vision of what the future can be.

Erewhon Books

Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People

Historian Thomas Cahill argued that it was the Jewish people who invented the very concept of history as we know it. They were the first to perceive time not as an endless circle of life, death and rebirth, but as the flight of an arrow, on a linear path to somewhere from somewhere. But what if time is not one arrow, but a volley of arrows? What if there are other timelines, other histories, other Jews? Would they still have a covenant with the one God, or would they know strange gods? Would they have survived banishment, pogrom and Holocaust? What if the Holocaust had not occurred? Or what if it had succeeded beyond Hitler's darkest dreams? Some of the world's greatest speculative fiction authors explore these roads not taken, and many others, in Other Covenants: Alternate Histories of the Jewish People, the first-ever anthology of Jewish alternate history fiction. Contributors include Jack Dann, Robert Silverberg, Harry Turtledove, Jane Yolen, Lavie Tidhar and Benjamin Rosenbaum, among many others!

Dann, Jack

TURTLEDOVE, HARRY

Reisman, Jessica

Shvartsman, Alex

Choi, Eric

Tidhar, Lavie

Kressel, Matthew

Weiss, Allan

Goldberg, James

Polack, Gillian

Takács, Bogi

Rafael, Rivqa

GOMEL, ELANA

LALUMIÈRE, CLAUDE

Silverberg,Robert

Garfinkle, Gwynne

Nurenberg, David

MAYNE, SEYMOUR

YOLEN, JANE

Latta, D.K.

Alter, Seth

Beaulier, Patrick

Dyen-Shapiro, Allan

Eden, Hunter C.

Grozny, Isak

McDaniel, C. L.

Nicholls, Jack

Sparber, Max

Verskin, Milton

World Literature

ChiZine Publications

"Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout—a woman in love with an elephant, an orange that ruled the world—this collection is a surrealistic wonderland." —Publishers Weekly “Urbane without being arch, sweet without being maudlin, mysterious without being cryptic.”—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron’s zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children’s collective goes house hunting. Benjamin Rosenbaum’s stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and McSweeney’s, been translated into fourteen languages, and listed in The Best American Short Stories 2006. Shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards, Rosenbaum’s work has been reprinted in Harper’s and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He lives in Switzerland with his family.

The Ant King: and Other Stories

United States

Small Beer Press

"Rosenbaum's The Ant King and Other Stories contains invisible cities and playful deconstructions of the form. In "Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, With Air-Planes,' by Benjamin Rosenbaum"—yes, his name is part of the title—the author imagines a world whose technologies and philosophies differ wildly from ours. The result is a commentary on the state of the art that is itself the state of the art." —Los Angeles Times Favorite Books of 2008
* "Give him some prizes, like, perhaps, "best first collection" for this book." —Booklist (Starred review, Top 10 SF Books of the Year)
"Featuring outlandish and striking imagery throughout—a woman in love with an elephant, an orange that ruled the world—this collection is a surrealistic wonderland." —Publishers Weekly
"Rosenbaum proves he’s capable of sustained fantasy with "Biographical Notes," a steampunkish alternate history of aerial piracy, and "A Siege of Cranes," a fantasy about a battle between a human insurgent and the White Witch that carries decidedly modern undercurrents.... Perhaps none of the tales is odder than "Orphans," in which girl-meets-elephant, girl-loses-elephant." —Kirkus Reviews
"Urbane without being arch, sweet without being maudlin, mysterious without being cryptic."—Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing
"Lively, bizarre, and funny as well as dark, sinister, and sensual." —Boston Phoenix 
A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron’s zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children’s collective goes house hunting.
Benjamin Rosenbaum’s stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction and McSweeney’s, been translated into fourteen languages, and listed in The Best American Short Stories 2006. Shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards, Rosenbaum’s work has been reprinted in Harper’s and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. He lives in Switzerland with his family.

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