“Starlings isn’t really a short-story collection. It’s something better: a written showreel, illustrating yet again that [Walton’s] imagination stretches to the stars (or the starlings), and that she’s endlessly inventive in finding new methods to express it.”—NPR Books
An ancient coin cyber-spies on lovers and thieves. The magic mirror sees all but can do nothing. A cloned savior solves a fanatically-inspired murder. Three Irish siblings thieve treasures with bad poetry and the aid of the Queen of Cats.
With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic—rising from the every day into the universe itself.
Jo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian author of science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. She has published thirteen novels, most recently Necessity. A fourteenth, Lent is due out in Fall 2017. Walton has also published three poetry collections and an essay collection. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award for Tooth and Claw in 2004, the Hugo and Nebula awards for Among Others in 2012, and in 2014, both the Tiptree Award for My Real Children and the Locus Award for What Makes This Book So Great. Walton comes from Wales, has lived in England, and now lives in Montreal, where the food and books are much better.
Table of Contents
Fiction At the Bottom of the Garden Relentlessly Mundane Unreliable Witness On the Wall What Would Sam Spade Do What Joseph Felt What Piece of Work Three Twilight Tales Parable Lost Remember the Allosaur Tradition Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction The Panda Coin Joyful and Triumphant Turnover Sleeper The Need to Stay the Same A Burden Shared Jane Austin to Cassandra Out of It
Poems Dragon’s Song Not in this Town Hades and Persephone The Death of Petrach Advice to Loki Ask to Embla Three Bears Norse Machiavelli and Prospero Cardenio Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem Pax in Forma Columba Translated from the Original Sleepless in New Orleans The Godzilla Sonnets Not a Bio for WisCon: Jo Walton
As the real world grows each day stranger by leaps and bounds, the skewed secondary worlds, fantastical lands, and alternate histories that are the realms of science fiction and fantasy have only grown more vital, not only as a means of escape from blaring headlines, political turmoil, and the crescendo of climate change, but as […]
As has become our tradition, we’re looking ahead to the next year of new science fiction and fantasy books—with the help of the editors and publishers responsible for bringing them to our shelves each and every week. Here are 95 new books they can’t wait for you to read (and that’s just the tip of […]
Have you ever felt the desire to peek into your favorite author’s head—to find out just what it is that makes that glorious brain tick? The prolific and ever-capable Jo Walton seems to have anticipated that wish, and packaged up the answer for delivery alongside her first collection of short fiction, Starlings. Inside is a […]
For two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s best science fiction & fantasy books.
