Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan expands the Penumbraverse to new reaches of time and space in a rollicking far-future adventure.In Moonbound, Robin Sloan has written a novel with the full scope and ambitious imagination of the very books that lit the engines of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore: an epic quest as only Sloan could conceive it, mixing science fiction, fantasy, good old-fashioned literary storytelling, and unrivaled enthusiasm for what’s next.It is thirteen thousand years from now . . . A lot has happened, and yet a lot is still very familiar. Ariel is a boy in a small town under a wizard’s rule. Like many adventurers before him, Ariel is called to explore a world full of unimaginable glories and unknown enemies, a mission to save the world, a girl. Here, as they say, be dragons. But none of this happens before Ariel comes across an artifact from an earlier civilization, a sentient, record-keeping artificial intelligence that carries with it the perspective of the whole of human history―and becomes both Ariel’s greatest ally and the narrator of our story.Moonbound is an adventure into the richest depths of Story itself. It is a deeply satisfying epic of ancient scale, blasted through the imaginative prism one of our most forward-thinking writers. And this is only the beginning.

Global conspiracy, complex code-breaking, high-tech data visualization, young love, the secret to eternal life. Mostly in a hole-in-the-wall San Francisco bookstore. Clay Jannon tells how serendipity, sheer curiosity, and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey has sent him from Web Drone to night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. After just a few days on the job, Clay realizes just how curious this store is. A few customers come in repeatedly without buying anything. Instead they “check out” obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. All runs according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes.He embarks on a complex analysis of the customers’ behavior and ropes in friends to help. Once they bring their findings to Mr. Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the bookstore. A quest to New York City dips in a world conspiracy for eternal life. The current of romance pulls Clay onward.

Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions. She codes all day and collapses at night, her human contact limited to the two brothers who run the neighborhood hole-in-the-wall from which she orders dinner every evening. Then, disaster! Visa issues. The brothers close up shop, and fast. But they have one last delivery for Lois: their culture, the sourdough starter used to bake their bread. She must keep it alive, they tell her—feed it daily, play it music, and learn to bake with it.Lois is no baker, but she could use a roommate, even if it is a needy colony of microorganisms. Soon, not only is she eating her own homemade bread, she’s providing loaves daily to the General Dexterity cafeteria. The company chef urges her to take her product to the farmer’s market, and a whole new world opens up.When Lois comes before the jury that decides who sells what at Bay Area markets, she encounters a close-knit club with no appetite for new members. But then, an alternative emerges: a secret market that aims to fuse food and technology. But who are these people, exactly?

August 1969 San Francisco. Ajax Penumbra seeks a book--the single surviving copy of the Techne Tycheon, a mysterious volume that has brought and lost great fortune for anyone who has owned it. Late one night, after another day of dispiriting dead ends, he stumbles across a 24-hour bookstore, and the possibilities before him expand exponentially.

Annabel Scheme is a detective story set in an alternate San Francisco where the digital and the occult live side-by-side. It's a short, snappy read -- about 128 pages/128,000 Kindle locations -- and perfect for people who like Sherlock Holmes, Douglas Adams, ghosts and/or the internet. Finally, it makes a great Kindle gift. In Scheme's San Francisco, an indie rocker's new tracks are climbing the charts, even though the rocker herself is long dead. A devout gamer has gone missing, and the only trace of him that remains is inside his favorite game, the blockbuster MMORPG called World of Jesus. And the richest man in the city, the inventor of the search engine called Grail, might just have made a deal with a devil. Meanwhile, Annabel Scheme has just hired herself a Watson, an A.I. assistant who's now learning the ropes on a case that will quickly transform into Scheme's biggest -- and possibly her last.Come on. Fog City is waiting.

At last, the story that definitively bridges the world of Sourdough to that of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s all one Penumbraverse.James Bascule is adrift. College beckons—but not quite strongly enough to actually get him to campus. A trip to Europe showed him a world bigger than his Northern California upbringing—and yet, one broken heart later, Northern California is where he’s returned. Back to his old bedroom, paying his bemused parents rent with his new hobby, baking bread with the sourdough starter that is his only souvenir of what was apparently just a summer fling.The future is being built an hour or two down the highway—it’s 1985; the twenty-first century is just around the corner!—but that’s not his world either. While sitting in a Sonoma County bar, indulging in a little aimless day drinking with a junior college acquaintance, he meets a man. A man with . . . something like a plan. Has James ever heard of a “suitcase clone”? It’s a cutting of a vine used to clone and propagate noteworthy grapes—say, from a legendary European vineyard to an upstart Napa Valley operation. This man has an operation. He has a suitcase. He just needs an enterprising young accomplice up for an adventure.Just how deliriously fun and thrillingly mind-expanding an adventure, James can’t yet know. But we, of course, know how Robin Sloan crafts a story. Crossing the international literary-techno-conspiracy of Mr. Penumbra with the delicious experimentation of Sourdough, The Suitcase Clone is a tale that enriches and expands the Penumbraverse in ways you never saw coming, told by a mysterious narrator with an unexpected perspective on the great puzzles of life. Who could it be?

The title doesn't lie: This is a story about a young writer and an old witch who meet on a lonely road that winds towards the New Capital. Actually, they meet there twice. The first time, there's a curse involved. The second time--you'll have to read and find out. It all adds up to about 4,000 words--perfect as a train read or an after-dinner fable. (Didn't you hear? Doctors recommend after-dinner fables.)

This is a detective story about all the possible versions of a place. It features a bustling city built on a filled-in San Francisco Bay, a pop star tech genius named Quintessandra, a sea witch, and internet teeth.Excerpted from Robin Sloan's Note to Readers:"This story was initially published as a daily serial in two Bay Area newspapers, the Mercury News and East Bay Times, in 2020. It ran from June 7 to June 21. ... This adventure is neither sequel nor prequel to the original Annabel Scheme novella published in 2009. It is instead...another possibility. Scheme fans will understand."

Original Fiction, Short Story.Robin SloanIf you intend to read the novel, start with that, then return here to see where it all began. There are mild spoilers. If you aren't quite sold, by all means read on.

Web edition of short story commissioned by the digital product studio Brand New Box as a year-end gift for their clients and friends, available for all to read at Brand New Box's website. You can also play with the synthesizer."It’s a truly interactive presentation — don’t miss the play button." - Robin SloanBRAND NEW BOX is a digital product studio that builds new superpowers for high-performing teams. We like creating new things, and we have a very special place in our hearts for Lawrence, Kansas. We commissioned this new short story from Robin as a little love-letter and thank-you to the city and people that support BNB. Here’s to learning new things in 2023!

Original fiction from the author's site.I got on the wrong plane with a very strange briefcase, and it might be about to save my life. We’re landing now — not in the place I intended to land — and if I do this right, I’ll survive.But I’m not sure I can do this right.

Short story available online at archive of author's 2019 email newsletter and public notebook.

“My Father the Druid, My Mother the Tree” is a short story about families, synthetic biology, and the secret origin of the most calamitous event of the late 21st century.Limited edition released as the final installment of Robin Sloan's "Year of the Meteor" project.Also available online at archive of author's 2019 email newsletter and public notebook.

In March 2015, I&A commissioned authors to write a series of narratives that investigated near future concerns around intelligent systems in warfare, urban design, medicine, and labor. These stories served as the centerpiece of a two-day intensive forum bringing together participants to identify the core set of challenges that consistently arise in deploying intelligent systems regardless of arena. "The Counselor," by Robin Sloan focuses on the persuasive qualities of these systems in the medical context. Available to read online at vice website.

A science fiction story on the unexpected perils of science fiction itself. Available to read online at MIT Technology Review website."Elyse Flayme and the final flood, my short story for MIT Technology Review, has come out from behind the magazine’s paywall. It’s a weird one, and I’m proud of it! If you read it, I’d love to hear what you think. I would also, of course, love to link to your Elyse Flayme fan fiction … " - Robin Sloan

Тайные общества и поиски бессмертия, древние книги, старинные типографии, подземные читальные залы, пыльные склады потерянных артефактов и блестящие хранилища данных «Гугла», зубодробительные шифры, визуализация данных, настоящий квест, настоящая дружба, многообещающая любовь и, как ни странно, драконы. Все это свалилось на веб-дизайнера Клэя Дженнона, потому что он, потеряв работу и бесцельно блуждая по Сан-Франциско, ненароком завернул в круглосуточный (и, между прочим, вертикальный) книжный магазин. И тотчас устроился туда продавцом, который ничем не торгует – только выдает явно одержимым людям загадочные тома нечитабельной абракадабры в обмен на другие такие же нечитабельные тома. Среди ночи.Конечно, Клэй попытается разгадать, что творится у мистера Пенумбры в магазине. Конечно, выяснится, что здесь кроется многовековая тайна, старинный неразгаданный шифр. И этот шифр вместе с Клэем будут взламывать кодеры и библиотекари, археологи и дизайнеры, хакеры и музейные хранители, создатели спецэффектов и скалолазы.«Круглосуточный книжный мистера Пенумбры» побывал в списках бестселлеров The New York Times и National Public Radio, сразу после публикации был признан книгой года по версии Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle и NPR, а впоследствии издан в тридцати с лишним странах. Эта книга – поклон Нилу Стивенсону, Уильяму Гибсону, Харуки Мураками, Дэну Брауну и раннему Умберто Эко, но главным образом – футурологическим теориям самого Робина Слоуна, который с легкостью примиряет адептов лампового мира бумажных книг с обитателями неосязаемой цифровой вселенной, потому что просто-напросто не видит между ними противоречий. Мир аналоговый и мир дигитальный удивительны, добры и полны загадок. Мы родились для того, чтобы их разгадывать – по возможности вместе со всеми, кого любим.Роман «Круглосуточный книжный мистера Пенумбры» и его предыстория, повесть «Аякс Пенумбра 1969», публикуются в новом переводе и впервые под одной обложкой.

I rode my bike to the beach on the last of the beautiful days.Short story available online at author's website.

This short story is part of “Shadowland,” a project about conspiracy thinking in America. Available online at The Atlantic website.

This a short story about curios­ity, obsession, and one of the great­est cover-ups of all time. Also: Greek gods.It’s pre­sented as one looong scroll with images along the way.Available to read online at author's website.

Short fiction available at author's website.

Short story written for Commercial Type’s Food Issue and available to read online at Commercial Type's website. "The type foundry Commercial Type wanted to produce a type specimen that went beyond the usual boundaries of the form — usually, it’s just a few weird, typographically-interesting sentences and paragraphs — to offer up some actually compelling content. So, they commissioned work from a range of writers, including me. They asked for a story that had something to do with food, and also, if possible, their home: New York City. My contribution was Harriet Amber in the Conan Arcade, which you can now read online, presented in two of Commercial Type’s great typefaces — which can be reshuffled with a button in the corner." — Robin Sloan

Das atemberaubende neue Abenteuer vom Autor von »Die sonderbare Buchhandlung des Mr. Penumbra«Die ferne Zukunft. Das Leben auf unserem Planeten hat sich auf dramatische Weise verändert – und doch ist vieles immer noch so, wie wir es kennen. Der junge Ariel de la Sauvage lebt in einem kleinen Dorf, das von einem Zauberer regiert und von Rittern beschützt wird. Er liebt es, sich glorreiche Abenteuer auszumalen, während er die Wälder um seine Heimat erkundet. Eines Tages findet er einen Metallsarg in einer Höhle. Als er ihn öffnet, befreit er damit eine KI, die die gesamte Geschichte der Menschheit aufgezeichnet hat – und setzt damit eine Reihe von Ereignissen in Gang, die das Schicksal der Menschheit für immer verändern wird.

Treasured Subscribers is the clever and possibly vengeful ghost of a book that could have been. An early version of my novel Sourdough wasn’t working; this early chapter didn’t properly launch it anywhere; and yet, whenever I returned to the text… I loved it so much. And I still do!The format is a two-color Risograph print on light paper, cut to an odd size. It feels nice in your hands. About 2,500 words.(part of Robin Sloan's limited-run "Year of the Meteor" project)

Short story commissioned by Google and produced using a new AI-powered editor called Wordcraft, available to read online at Google's Wordcraft Writers Workshop site. "On a medium-long drive, an opening line occurred to me. Beside a pool in Fresno, a story took shape. Then, I cracked it, by establishing a fenced-in space for the AI to contribute what it could. This AI, like many of its predecessors, is very good at “riffing”: given an example, it can generate lots more, often with impressive fidelity to genre and vibe. This new story called for a litany of grisly deaths, so, I asked the AI to dream up grisly deaths. I asked it, also, to tell me the names of the dead: characters from a fantasy saga, cliched in the best possible way. Red meat! This assignment, it could handle. Now, when you read the story, you’ll know that the litany of deaths is mostly the work of the AI. I prompted and prodded; I curated and edited; I smoothed and re-arranged. But “Captain Cirrus, trampled by a hippopotamus”? That’s 21st-century technology in its fullest bloom bringing you that!" — Robin SloanThe Wordcraft Writers Workshop is a collaboration between Google's PAIR and Magenta teams, and 13 professional writers from a diverse set of creative writing backgrounds. Together we explore the limits of co-writing with LaMDA and foster an honest and earnest conversation about the rapidly changing relationship between technology and creativity.

Database is one of those fragments-from-the-archives things, but not the boring kind. It’s more graphically adventurous than previous zines; I invite you to support my development as a Risographer.The format is a two-color print on light paper, cut to an odd size. It feels nice in your hands.

"We’ve run the simulation a million million times… and every time, the Dark Lord wins. So we’ll run it again."An experiment in AI, collaboration, and fiction. You, an apprentice mage, will define the parameters of a quest against the Dark Lord. You’ll receive a map (A MAP!) and a short story narrating that quest and revealing its conclusion.

Das atemberaubende neue Abenteuer vom Autor von »Die sonderbare Buchhandlung des Mr. Penumbra«Die ferne Zukunft. Das Leben auf unserem Planeten hat sich auf dramatische Weise verändert – und doch ist vieles immer noch so, wie wir es kennen. Der junge Ariel de la Sauvage lebt in einem kleinen Dorf, das von einem Zauberer regiert und von Rittern beschützt wird. Er liebt es, sich glorreiche Abenteuer auszumalen, während er die Wälder um seine Heimat erkundet. Eines Tages findet er einen Metallsarg in einer Höhle. Als er ihn öffnet, befreit er damit eine KI, die die gesamte Geschichte der Menschheit aufgezeichnet hat – und setzt damit eine Reihe von Ereignissen in Gang, die das Schicksal der Menschheit für immer verändern wird.