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Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas
Think you want to live forever? Think again. You may wake up as a zombie tourist, doomed to shamble the sights of Los Angeles. Or you could be a clone, body and memories intact but lacking something you can’t quite name. Your frozen head might linger for centuries in a museum while other souls gallivant about the universe. You might be reincarnated as a plastic lawn flamingo or seated Buddha or garden gnome. Or into an unbreakable cycle of servitude. Or you may just outlive the people and things that gave life its flavor.
Emily C. Skaftun’s debut collection brings you flippant wish-granting fish, flying tigers, foul-mouthed fairies, rogue robots, vengeful trees, medical dreams, interstellar squirrels, murderous teddy bears, magic-helmet-wearing rollergirls, rampaging aliens, a dash of eldritch horror, and a sprinkle of ghosts.
These 18 stories, spanning a decade, balance on the knife-edge between whimsical and poignant, exploring fates far weirder than death.
Emily C. Skaftun’s debut collection brings you flippant wish-granting fish, flying tigers, foul-mouthed fairies, rogue robots, vengeful trees, medical dreams, interstellar squirrels, murderous teddy bears, magic-helmet-wearing rollergirls, rampaging aliens, a dash of eldritch horror, and a sprinkle of ghosts.
These 18 stories, spanning a decade, balance on the knife-edge between whimsical and poignant, exploring fates far weirder than death.
312 pages, Paperback
Published November 10, 2020
4 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Emily C. Skaftun
16 books25 followersEmily C. Skaftun’s tales of flying tigers, space squids, and evil garden gnomes have appeared in Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Daily Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and more. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and attended the Clarion West Writers Workshop in 2009.
Emily lives just north of Seattle with a mad scientist and their Cat, Astrophe. She is the former editor of a Norwegian newspaper and practices norsk bokmål by translating comic strips. Emily has cuddled a crocodile in Cuba, attended Elf School in Reykjavík, swam in a Yucatán cenote, and flown over an active volcano.
Emily lives just north of Seattle with a mad scientist and their Cat, Astrophe. She is the former editor of a Norwegian newspaper and practices norsk bokmål by translating comic strips. Emily has cuddled a crocodile in Cuba, attended Elf School in Reykjavík, swam in a Yucatán cenote, and flown over an active volcano.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 22, 2020
I wrote this book, so I'd better like it, hadn't I? But don't take my word for it! Here's what some other people have to say:
"Each of the 18 disquieting pieces in Skaftun’s debut collection twist reality into absurdity and are united in their exploration of death and the afterlife. Skaftun’s stories set up everyday objects and events, and spin them into the realm of the surreal . . . thoughtful explorations of wildly unusual concepts will keep fans of literary chills hooked. Eerie, unsettling, and occasionally zany, this philosophically minded collection offers a delightful diversion."
—Publishers Weekly
"One more proof that you can't judge a book by its title. Emily C. Skaftun's Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas contains some pretty damn good ideas after all. Plus intriguing human characters, and some who are not so human—such as a pink plastic lawn flamingo and a metal Icelandic horse and a magic fish from Chicago—in stories that will make you smile and make you think and make you feel."
—John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus and The Moon and the Other
"Skaftun deals in the stuff of nightmares. As in real nightmares, the situations in her stories are often preposterous—animate toys and lawn decorations, jocular talking fish, invading aliens with wheels for feet who are captivated by the phenomenon of roller derby—but the earnestly striving humanity of her characters, even the non-human ones, forbids you to dismiss them with a laugh or an impatient shake of the head. . . . You’ll come away from these stories with some odd new furniture in your subconscious—and you’ll find that it definitely livens up the décor."
—Tim Powers, author of Forced Perspectives
"A superb collection—full of wit and surprise and sparkle. Skaftun's superpower is to reliably conjure from a variety of familiar elements something unexpected and unsettling. There is magic in these stories. She might be a witch; she's most definitely a writer. Hugely enjoyable and highly recommended."
—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
"Who can resist murderous garden gnomes on a sacrilegious crusade, or zombie tourism in L.A., or the troubled life of a sentient message? Not me! Emily Skaftun's collection of stories is a delight, inspired zaniness with a knife hidden in the middle. Read it, and you will never view—as just one example—Teddy bears the same way again."
—Nancy Kress, author of The Eleventh Gate and Sea Change
"Surreal dreaming on the fly. Killer garden gnomes, roller-derby, frozen heads, sex in the snow. Fresh, sinister, fey, punk. . . . The most fun you'll have this year."
—Rudy Rucker, author of The Ware Tetralogy
"These are lively, fun stories, full of vivid characters and brain-twisting ideas. Many of these pieces are very short, but they pack a punch bigger than their size. Skaftun is especially adept at combining genre tropes, as in the haunting last story, which translates a beloved folk tale into a dark cyberpunk future."
—Susan Palwick, Philip K. Dick Award Nominee of All Worlds Are Real
"Each of the 18 disquieting pieces in Skaftun’s debut collection twist reality into absurdity and are united in their exploration of death and the afterlife. Skaftun’s stories set up everyday objects and events, and spin them into the realm of the surreal . . . thoughtful explorations of wildly unusual concepts will keep fans of literary chills hooked. Eerie, unsettling, and occasionally zany, this philosophically minded collection offers a delightful diversion."
—Publishers Weekly
"One more proof that you can't judge a book by its title. Emily C. Skaftun's Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas contains some pretty damn good ideas after all. Plus intriguing human characters, and some who are not so human—such as a pink plastic lawn flamingo and a metal Icelandic horse and a magic fish from Chicago—in stories that will make you smile and make you think and make you feel."
—John Kessel, author of Pride and Prometheus and The Moon and the Other
"Skaftun deals in the stuff of nightmares. As in real nightmares, the situations in her stories are often preposterous—animate toys and lawn decorations, jocular talking fish, invading aliens with wheels for feet who are captivated by the phenomenon of roller derby—but the earnestly striving humanity of her characters, even the non-human ones, forbids you to dismiss them with a laugh or an impatient shake of the head. . . . You’ll come away from these stories with some odd new furniture in your subconscious—and you’ll find that it definitely livens up the décor."
—Tim Powers, author of Forced Perspectives
"A superb collection—full of wit and surprise and sparkle. Skaftun's superpower is to reliably conjure from a variety of familiar elements something unexpected and unsettling. There is magic in these stories. She might be a witch; she's most definitely a writer. Hugely enjoyable and highly recommended."
—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
"Who can resist murderous garden gnomes on a sacrilegious crusade, or zombie tourism in L.A., or the troubled life of a sentient message? Not me! Emily Skaftun's collection of stories is a delight, inspired zaniness with a knife hidden in the middle. Read it, and you will never view—as just one example—Teddy bears the same way again."
—Nancy Kress, author of The Eleventh Gate and Sea Change
"Surreal dreaming on the fly. Killer garden gnomes, roller-derby, frozen heads, sex in the snow. Fresh, sinister, fey, punk. . . . The most fun you'll have this year."
—Rudy Rucker, author of The Ware Tetralogy
"These are lively, fun stories, full of vivid characters and brain-twisting ideas. Many of these pieces are very short, but they pack a punch bigger than their size. Skaftun is especially adept at combining genre tropes, as in the haunting last story, which translates a beloved folk tale into a dark cyberpunk future."
—Susan Palwick, Philip K. Dick Award Nominee of All Worlds Are Real
December 22, 2021
A well-titled book: This book is full of ideas, terrible or not. It is an example of the idea-based short story, where the author has a quirky concept that plays out on a single plotline with appropriate characters. This kind of story is a staple of the short-form science fiction that has appeared in magazines for years.
One blurb calls the book “eerie and unsettling”, but many of the stories are clever and funny. The one really unsettling one is 'Down in the Woods Today' which gives a sickening twist to the Teddy Bears' Picnic. The longest story, 'Oneirotoxicity' was previously unpublished but should probably be published somewhere, as it is an amazing consideration of dreams and consciousness.
The funniest is probably 'The Thing With The Helmets', an aliens-invading-Earth story where the resistance fighters are roller derby women. It's goofy, but it works; you don't mess with roller derby. And the derby aliases the author comes up with are priceless: Try Sarah Topps, Ballistic Missy, Skaty McSkateface. In a story note, she admits her own derby name is V. Lucy Raptor (say it quickly).
The story notes are fun, giving a background to the creation of the concepts and writing of the stories.
One blurb calls the book “eerie and unsettling”, but many of the stories are clever and funny. The one really unsettling one is 'Down in the Woods Today' which gives a sickening twist to the Teddy Bears' Picnic. The longest story, 'Oneirotoxicity' was previously unpublished but should probably be published somewhere, as it is an amazing consideration of dreams and consciousness.
The funniest is probably 'The Thing With The Helmets', an aliens-invading-Earth story where the resistance fighters are roller derby women. It's goofy, but it works; you don't mess with roller derby. And the derby aliases the author comes up with are priceless: Try Sarah Topps, Ballistic Missy, Skaty McSkateface. In a story note, she admits her own derby name is V. Lucy Raptor (say it quickly).
The story notes are fun, giving a background to the creation of the concepts and writing of the stories.
April 19, 2022
Author Emily C. Skaftun personifies lawn ornaments, tells a frozen head's life story and inhabits a sentient text message, and that's just in the first handful of stories in this collection. In the story of the sentient text message, "Only the Messenger," Skaftun creates alternative, ungendered pronouns: "ze, zim and zir"; I'd never heard of that before, but it's so much more elegant than referring to an individual as "they, them and their." I honestly enjoyed reading one of the stories every night before falling asleep; it would be a great October choice for a book club. I got a little bit of creepy without going full-blown horrifying, and I appreciated Skaftun's approach to endings: she actually gave me closure most of the time.
September 23, 2020
Emily C. Skaftun’s Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas (Fairwood Press, 2020) is a collection of 18 of her short stories, which range from hilarious to heartbreaking. It’s a lovely mix of previously published and brand new stories, all dazzling in their prose.
One trend that her modern fantasy stories, and some of the sci-fi stories, have in common is that they present a world that is slightly different from the one we know, and yet her unusual touches all seem to blend in seamlessly with our reality. There are apocalypses of various shades with surreal causes, but somehow, they all seem completely reasonable within the contexts of the stories. Particular favorites of mine were “The Thing with the Helmets” for roller derby girls taking on an alien invasion, and “Apology for Fish-Dude” for a wonderful retelling of “The Fisherman and His Wife.” But I also enjoyed the darkness of “Oneirotoxicity” and the shared universe and characters of “Frozen Head #2,390” and “Only the Messenger.” But every story in this book is a lovely gem, and I enjoyed all of them for different reasons.
If you like surreal speculative fiction that feels completely reasonable even in its surreality, check out Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas. It will be out in November, but you can pre-order it now to have something to look forward to!
The author provided me with an advance copy of this book for review consideration. (This review originally appeared on my blog.)
One trend that her modern fantasy stories, and some of the sci-fi stories, have in common is that they present a world that is slightly different from the one we know, and yet her unusual touches all seem to blend in seamlessly with our reality. There are apocalypses of various shades with surreal causes, but somehow, they all seem completely reasonable within the contexts of the stories. Particular favorites of mine were “The Thing with the Helmets” for roller derby girls taking on an alien invasion, and “Apology for Fish-Dude” for a wonderful retelling of “The Fisherman and His Wife.” But I also enjoyed the darkness of “Oneirotoxicity” and the shared universe and characters of “Frozen Head #2,390” and “Only the Messenger.” But every story in this book is a lovely gem, and I enjoyed all of them for different reasons.
If you like surreal speculative fiction that feels completely reasonable even in its surreality, check out Living Forever & Other Terrible Ideas. It will be out in November, but you can pre-order it now to have something to look forward to!
The author provided me with an advance copy of this book for review consideration. (This review originally appeared on my blog.)
September 9, 2021
Concise, wryly funny short stories in the speculative fiction and science fiction genres, all exploring the title theme in surprising and original ways. As Skaftun explains in her introduction to the collection, these stories were written over a period of several years. Always imaginative, the stories come to vivid life within multiple subgenres: science fiction, fantasy, somewhat skewed literary fiction, fable, and space opera. While most of the stories have some eerie qualities, Kaftun's writing is engaging, dryly funny, and always imaginative, with emotional depth. I was delighted by a short satirical piece that is a twist on one of my least favorite books of all time! As a Librarian, I’d recommend this book to SF/F fans; readers seeking to expand the scope of the fiction that they read; and writers that want to strengthen their own short story writing skills by reading other short fiction.
February 9, 2024
Every high school has That Kid ... "nice, but a bit weird" ... "has these crazy ideas" ... I think Emily is one of us.
These are such wacky story hooks that I can easily imagine an editor spiking the manuscript then thinking "how did this end up back in front of me again?" then "what the hell, I'll skim a few pages" then "Eddie! Get this Skaftun person on the line STAT!"
See, what's great about using novelty story ideas is that we readers get a chance to cackle with glee as each "if-this-exists-then-that's-GOTTA-happen" pops up like a shocker in a carnival ride.
Good fun, recommended, I'll look for more from Emily.
These are such wacky story hooks that I can easily imagine an editor spiking the manuscript then thinking "how did this end up back in front of me again?" then "what the hell, I'll skim a few pages" then "Eddie! Get this Skaftun person on the line STAT!"
See, what's great about using novelty story ideas is that we readers get a chance to cackle with glee as each "if-this-exists-then-that's-GOTTA-happen" pops up like a shocker in a carnival ride.
Good fun, recommended, I'll look for more from Emily.
November 29, 2020
These stories are a creative and fun read, especially if you are a flexible thinker that likes to speculate about life. I see many of these stories as a kind of metaphysical science fiction that, instead of playing with science, they play with the mechanisms that might happen when you die. All of the stories entertaining, but I especially loved the first two and the diary of a pod person.
November 29, 2020
A collection of enjoyable science fiction and fantasy stories, mostly about immortality and reincarnation. Some are surprisingly moving, some very clever, and the book is heavily back-loaded - the stories got better as I went along, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Skaftun's work.
February 4, 2021
I found this book from the "Big Idea" section of John Scalzi's blog and I loved it. In general, I don't love short stories, but these short looks at love, life and reincarnation were a blast.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews