And that brings us to the end of the beginning. The stories await. These are interesting times in the world and in science fiction, and you can see the field urgently rising to the many challenges it faces. I’m already reading work that will appear in next year’s book and can’t wait to share it with you. For now, though, I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I have and that I’ll see you back here next year.
Perth, Western Australia
January 2020
The Bookstore at the End of America
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Charlie Jane Anders’s (charliejane.net) most recent novel is The City in the Middle of the Night. She’s also the author of All the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Crawford, and Locus Awards; Choir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award; the novella Rock Manning Goes for Broke; and the short story collection Six Months, Three Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Boston Review, Tin House, Conjunctions, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Wired, Slate, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Lightspeed, and many anthologies. Her story “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo Award, and her story “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” won a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Coming up is a new collection, Even Greater Mistakes. Charlie Jane also organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series, and cohosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct with Annalee Newitz.
A bookshop on a hilclass="underline" two front doors, two walkways lined with blank slates and grass, two identical signs welcoming customers to the First and Last Page, and a great blue building in the middle, shaped like an old-fashioned barn with a slanted tiled roof and generous rain gutters. Nobody knew how many books were inside that building, not even Molly, the owner. But if you couldn’t find it there, they probably hadn’t written it down yet.