Eugenia Byney

Reading Ted Chiang’s Exhalation

An unnamed mechanical being narrates Exhalation. They live in a world powered by compressed air. The narrator finds that mechanical clocks in different districts are running faster than individuals’ internal clocks. This has never happened before. Most dismiss these reports as coincidental. However, the narrator suspects something more serious. They decide to test their theory…

Ghost Syntax

We’ve just put together a new preview of Eugenia Byney’s forthcoming collection ‘Ghost Syntax’. It includes the Prologue and the complete opening story, ‘The Silent Epoch’, presented as they will appear in the book, together with four of Eugenia’s original illustrations. You can read the preview here:https://www.amaurea.co.uk/amaureapress/p/ghost-syntax-eugenia-byney Ghost Syntax is a collection of ten science-fiction…

Reading Olga Ravn’s The Employees

The Employees describes itself as “a workplace novel of the 22nd century.” It consists of statements from employees on the Six Thousand Ship. Some are human, while others are humanoid. They interact with strange alien forms known as “objects.” These objects come from a colonised planet called New Discovery. The crew places them in various…

Reading Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police

Some books welcome you in by explaining their worlds. Others, like Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, sweep you off your feet. You only realise the world you’ve entered after you start falling. When I began reading, the ideas felt so strange. For the first twenty-five pages, I felt lost in an unanchored universe. It was…