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Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan grew up near Detroit and now splits his time between San Francisco and the internet. He graduated from Michigan State with a degree in economics and, from 2002 to 2012, worked at Poynter, Current TV, and Twitter. Mr. Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore was his first novel.

Genres: Science Fiction, Literary Fiction

Series

Penumbraverse
   0.5. Ajax Penumbra 1969 (2013)
   1. Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store (2009)
   The Suitcase Clone (2022)
   Moonbound (2024)

Novels

Sourdough (2017)

Novellas and Short Stories

The Writer & the Witch (2009)
Annabel Scheme (2010)

Robin Sloan recommends

Forget I Told You This (2023)
Hilary Zaid
"Twisty and textured, rich and hyperreal."

The Tatami Galaxy (2022)
Tomihiko Morimi
"The team of Tomihiko Morimi and Emily Balistrieri is unbeatable: this novel vibrates with a voice that is sharp and funny, wacky and winning. It's a perfect slice of contemporary Japanese pop: a tangle of fates, simultaneously cosmic and comic. I loved my voyage through The Tatami Galaxy."

The Mountain in the Sea (2022)
Ray Nayler
"Ray Nayler has taken on the challenge of a near future that's less certain than ever, and made it gleam -- not only with computer terminals and sentry drones (we love those, sure) but also polished coral and cephalopod eyes. From these pages, I got the sense of William Gibson, and Paolo Bacigalupi -- and Donna Haraway, and Octavia Butler. This is a planetary science fiction, and a profound new kind of adventure, featuring - among so many other wonders - the best villain I've read in years. In the end, the enormity and possibility of this novel's vision shook tears loose. What a ride; what a feeling; what a future."

Cult Classic (2022)
Sloane Crosley
"I love a secret society, and I love a wry narrator alive to the mysteries and absurdities of the world. Cult Classic has both, taking us on a journey that, even as it unspools into comic mayhem, only becomes more real. Here is a book that is unbelievably smart on modern love and startup mystics alike, and a Manhattan that feels accurate down to the molecule. Sloane Crosley can do it all."

This Weightless World (2021)
Adam Soto
"This Weightless World is pure polyphony. Adam Soto sets programmers alongside revolutionaries, the contours of love alongside the coruscations of code, the power of classical music alongside the beauty of video games, and he does it all with total authority. Here it is: the social novel for the 21st century."

Infinite Detail (2019)
Tim Maughan
"Looping and layered, disruptive and deeply linked--Tim Maughan's unsparing tale of the internet's end is a paper internet unto itself. The native 21st-century novel is coming into view; it looks like Infinite Detail."

The Bird King (2019)
G Willow Wilson
"The Bird King takes a time period that’s passed into cliché and makes it new and strange again. In this novel, the real runs alongside the fantastic, one informing the other, G. Willow Wilson’s eye for detail and her titanic imagination pumping together like pistons. She’s incredible. The Bird King has big things to say about states and souls, and it’s going to take you on a rollicking ride while it says them. I was fascinated and riveted and, by the end, deeply moved."

The City in the Middle of the Night (2019)
Charlie Jane Anders
"Like a classic from another timeline… This book has notes of Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip Pullman."

Convenience Store Woman (2018)
Sayaka Murata
"This is a story about what’s normal and not, a drama played on a stage so violently plain it becomes as vivid and surprising as an alien planet. I loved Convenience Store Woman: its brevity, its details, its opinions about life."

Autonomous (2017)
Annalee Newitz
"Annalee Newitz has conjured the rarest, most exciting thing: a future that's truly new ... a terrific novel and a tremendous vision."

Woman No. 17 (2017)
Edan Lepucki
"Edan Lepucki tells her tale with preternatural clarity and total believability."

Spoonbenders (2017)
Daryl Gregory
"Spoonbenders is X-Files meets The Sopranos with a real, roaring heart."

The Ready-Made Thief (2017)
Augustus Rose
"Unexpected, categorization, unputdownable."

Bellweather Rhapsody (2014)
Kate Racculia
"Funny and exuberant, twisty and captivating. Racculia tells the truth here, about art and life and the many trajectories that talent can take. She's also written the most resonant descriptions of music—how it really works in the head and the heart—that I've ever read. For its darkness and its glee, I loved this novel."

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