Now in paperback, the debut Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” This Weightless World subverts classic sci-fi tropes set in gentrified Chicago, Silicon Valley, and across the vastness of the cosmos.From the streets of gentrified Chicago to the tech boom corridors of Silicon Valley, This Weightless World follows a revolving cast of characters after alien contact upends their lives. We are introduced to Sevi, a burned-out music teacher desperate for connection and fighting to find meaning in rekindled love; Ramona, his on-again, off-again computer programmer girlfriend who is a determined to build an AI that will prevent mankind’s destruction; and Eason, Sevi’s cello protégé, who struggles to measure his commitment to a childhood friend against the chance of escaping neighborhood troubles after his Chicago high school is shuttered. When a mysterious signal–at first seen as a sign of hope–stops as abruptly as it started, they all must grapple with its aftermath.
The Sellout meets Interior Chinatown in this satirical debut about a German Indian student whose world is upended when she discovers that her beloved professor who passed for Indian is, in fact, white.Nivedita (a.k.a. Identitti), a well-known blogger and doctoral student is, in awe of her supervisor―superstar postcolonial and race studies professor Saraswati. But her life and sense of self are turned upside down when it emerges that Saraswati is actually white. Nivedita’s praise of Saraswati during a radio interview just hours before the news breaks―and before she learns the truth―calls into question her own reputation as a young activist. Following the uproar, Nivedita is forced to reflect on the key moments in her life, when she doubted her identity and her place in the world. As debates on the scandal rage on social media, blogs, and among her closest friends, Nivedita’s assumptions are called into question as she reconsiders the lessons she learned from her adored professor.In her
