Alias Space and Other Stories is the first fiction collection from Nebula Award-winning writer Kelly Robson, who vaulted onto the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stage in 2015, earning spots in multiple Year’s Best anthologies. This volume collects Robson’s best stories to date, along with exciting new work, and notes to accompany each piece.

Robson’s stories are noted for their compassion, humanity, humor, rigor, and joy. This volume includes the chilling gothic horror “A Human Stain,” winner of the 2018 Nebula Award; the madcap historical fantasy “Waters of Versailles,” which was a finalist for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards; and science fiction stories such as the touching “Intervention,” chilling “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill,” obscene “What Gentle Women Dare,” heartbreaking “Two-Year Man,” and many others.

These fourteen stories showcase Robson’s whip-smart richness of invention, brilliant storytelling, deep worldbuilding, and devilish sense of humor.

Kelly Robson grew up in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, and as a teenager was crowned princess of the Hinton Big Horn Rodeo. From 2008 to 2012, she wrote the wine and spirits column for Chatelaine, Canada’s largest women’s magazine. Kelly consults as a creative futurist for organizations such as UNICEF and the Suncor Energy Foundation. She and her wife, writer A.M. Dellamonica, live in downtown Toronto.

Limited: 1000 signed numbered hardcover copies

From Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):

“Across 14 short pieces, Robson (Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach) demonstrates a dizzying versatility, dipping into both science fiction and fantasy—and sometimes blurring the line between the two… Some of these stories are uncomfortable, even disturbing, in their raw emotion and uncompromising vision, and even the more reassuring tales still challenge preconceptions and the status quo. This is a superb showcase of Robson’s talents.”

From Locus:

“[E]ach of Robson’s tales are hand-carved from different materials, and while we can see links and themes emerging, none of the stories are easy appendages to other stories, or to a would-be franchise…That impressive tonal and thematic range may be the simplest thing we can take away from this impressive first collection, except possibly for this: as eclectic as her settings and narrative modes might be, Robson consistently writes about characters who, within their limitations, simply want to do better.”

From Michael Bishop:

“I admire both the short fiction of Kelly Robson and the author herself, inordinately. She never takes the easy way to tell a story and yet never makes any story seem the result of grueling struggle, even if she must sweat in solitude (or with keen editorial help) to get each story dead-on-the-dollar right. 

“Further, these stories span wide ranges of space, time, history, social culture, and technological advance, as if Kelly has not only visited but lived in all the eras and milieus serving as her settings, past, present, or future. And because every tale radiates authenticity, Alias Space shines as a collection: a truly singular achievement.”

From Jonathan Strahan:

“Kelly Robson is one of the best, most exciting and most complete new storytellers working today.”

From Gary K. Wolfe:

“If there had been any doubt that Robson is one of the most accomplished and versatile new writers (her SF career only dates back to 2015), Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach should dispel it.”

From Neil Clarke:

“The range and quality of her work tell me that this is an author to watch.”

Table of Contents:

• Introduction

• Two-Year Man

• A Study in Oils

• Intervention

• So You Want to be a Honeypot

• Two Watersheds

• The Desperate Flesh

• Alias Space

• Skin City

• Waters of Versailles

• What Gentle Women Dare

• The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill

• We Who Live in The Heart

• A Human Stain

• Acknowledgements