Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories

by Tobias S. Buckell

Overview

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories is Tobias S. Buckell's seventh short fiction collection and is comprised of 15 stories, several of which are original to the collection or were previously only available through his Patreon.

This collection ranges from galactic adventures to intimate explorations of humanity—sometimes in the same story—rich with a sense of wonder and deft storytelling.

This collection includes the following stories:
Io, Robot
A Jar of Goodwill
Pale Blue Memories
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance
The Might Slinger
Sunset
Chi's Cargo
Destination Day Blues
The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex
Five Point Three Milligrams
By the Warmth of Their Calculus
DW
The Very Last Curator of What Little Remains of the Western World
A Girl and Her Rover
The Longest Distance

Product Details

BN ID:	2940167530911
Publisher:	Apex Book Company
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	605,229
File size:	533 KB

About the Author

Tobias Buckell is the New York Times bestselling author of The Tangled Lands, Crystal Rain, and Halo: The Cole Protocol. His other novels and more than fifty short stories have been translated into seventeen languages. Bucknell has been nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, the Prometheus, and the Campbell Award for Best New Author. He lives with his family in Ohio.

William DeMerrit is a voice talent and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator.

Editorial Reviews

02/27/2023

These 15 thinky hard sci-fi tales from bestseller Buckell (Halo: The Cole Protocol) explore the confluence of man and machine and provoke contemplation on what it means to be human. In the title story, a starship’s crab-like maintenance robot is forced to save the life of a warmongering human—but the robot gets the last laugh. The touching “A Jar of Goodwill,” set in a dystopian future ruled by the corporate-minded alien Gheda, follows genetically engineered Alex Mosette and Beck, a Hive-minded drone, as they work to uncover whether a distant planet’s newly discovered alien life is intelligent. A return to the Gheda universe in “Chi’s Cargo” riffs on the classic dilemma of Tom Goodwin’s “The Cold Equations”: What should be done about a stowaway on a ship that can’t handle the extra weight or extra fuel? In “Io, Robot” an antiquated robot refuses to believe that the two mechanically enhanced beings who recently crashed on Io are actually humans who need its help. The humorous “Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex” takes readers to a depressed near-future Earth where a Manhattan cab driver accidentally kills a high-class interstellar tourist. Throughout, Buckell creates detailed worlds and delivers emotional payoff in few words. Readers are sure to be impressed. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly