Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep

Description

A collection of unsettling and uncanny ghost stories traveling across time, space, and genres by the author of critically acclaimed novel This Weightless World.In the words of Robin Sloan, Adam Soto’s debut, This Weightless World, was “the social novel for the 21st century.” Soto writes speculative fiction that subverts expectations while adhering to the tropes that make the genre so familiar. With his sophomore collection of ghost stories, Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, he continues in this tradition, switching modes from sci-fi to horror while maintaining his signature style.
 
In Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep, a soon-to-be empty-nester is visited by her son’s comatose girlfriend every night; a couple travels to see a childhood friend in Wyoming after she has killed her abusive husband; a trillionaire centenarian, bent on becoming the first person to die of natural causes on Mars, puts his plans on hold when a Martian woman is murdered; and a one-armed Harlem Hellfighter discovers a German tailor’s alterations to his military uniform mysteriously return his missing arm to him while influenza ravages Philadelphia.
 
Sorrowful, funny, and surreal, the warped and eerie stories in Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep explore the ways we haunt each other and ourselves through our choices, institutions, and dreams. Adam Soto is a co-web editor at American Short Fiction. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a former Michener-Copernicus Foundation Fellow. He lives with his wife in Austin, TX, where he is a teacher and a musician. Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep is his second book. US