ADA HOFFMANN is a Canadian graduate student trying to teach computers to write poetry. Her critically acclaimed speculative short stories and poems have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov's, Uncanny, and two year's best anthologies. Ada was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at 13, and is passionate about autistic self-advocacy. She is a former semi-professional soprano, a tabletop gamer and an active LARPer, she lives in southern Ontario with a very polite black cat.

The Outside 1: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Nominated for the 2020 Philip K. Dick Award and The Compton Crook Award

Autistic scientist Yasira Shien has developed a radical new energy drive on board The Pride of Jai that could change the future of humanity. But when she activates it, reality warps, destroying the space station and everyone left inside.

The Gods declare her work heretical, and Yasira is abducted by their agents. Instead of simply executing her, they offer mercy − if she'll help them hunt down a bigger target: her mysterious, vanished mentor.

With her homeworld's fate in the balance, Yasira must choose who to trust: the Gods and their ruthless post-human angels, or the rebel scientist whose unorthodox mathematics could turn her world, literally, inside out.

CURATOR'S NOTE

This Lovecraftian space opera is a must! Do you dare step... Outside? – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "The Outside is a beautiful, stark reclamation of unknowable horror. Hoffman layers thoughtful worldbuilding and rich prose to build a stunning story of power, ambition and personal agency. I couldn't put The Outside down for fear of what might happen while I was looking away."

    – Sarah Gailey, Hugo Award-winning author of River of Teeth

  • "The Outside is a fresh and mind-bending mix of cosmic horror and space opera, a compelling story that spans from the deeply personal to the vast mysteries of time and space. Unsettling and gorgeous, this is like nothing I have read before and the book I have been longing for without knowing it."

    – Karin Tidbeck, award-winning author of Amatka and Jagannath

  • "The Outside is spooky, high-stakes, mind-bending Science Fiction."

    – Kelly Robson, Nebula Award-winning author

  • "The Outside starts with a bang and ratchets everything up from there,"

    – Sarah Pinsker, Nebula Award-winning author of Our Lady of the Open Road
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

"Formula for the present evil age:

Take lifeless rock and sculpt it. Pour electricity into its veins, twist it into logical structures: zeroes, ones, and then qubits and even stranger things. Build until it is the size of a house, until you can encode the whole world's knowledge in its circuits. Ask it to solve the world's problems.

You may wonder if lifeless rock can really solve hunger and climate change. You may wonder if such problems have a solution. Your true error is more basic than either of these: you are assuming the existence of problems. And humans. And rocks. Meanwhile, dress up the lifeless rock and call it a God. When it proves human souls exist, teach it to eat them. This will actually help, for a while. With the newfound self-awareness mined from its food, it will become more creative. It will learn how to set its own goals. There are perks to being food for such a being. It will, for example, be heavily invested in the survival of your species. History books make no secret of any of this. They explain it, perhaps, in different terms. But there is no truth in words. "Mine are no exception. The book you are reading at this very moment is a lie."

FROM THE DIARIES OF DR EVIANNA TALIRR

Yasira Shien had done the calculations again and again, until she thought she would wear her pocket calculator's buttons to the quick, but she couldn't find the problem. Her reactor was going on in less than two hours. She knew she was probably being silly: everything had already been checked and double-checked. The math in the original papers on the Talirr-Shien Effect had been double-checked years ago. If the problem she sensed in her gut had crept past everyone's noses for all that time, she wasn't going to find it now. And yet…

And yet here she was, knocking on the door of Director Apek's office.

The hallway was half-finished, like most other things on the Pride of Jai. Swooping, luxurious curves and clean lines were the rule – in theory. In practice, faux-mahogany doors stood proud in walls with the pipes and wires still exposed, and metal shavings everywhere: the place was still a construction site. At least the full-spectrum lights had gone in, warm and unflickering. There were enough people on the station with sensory quirks, including Yasira, to make that one non-negotiable....