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 3: The Infinite by Ada Hoffmann

The final instalment from Philip K Dick Award-nominated series from Ada Hoffmann.

Time is running out for the planet Jai. The artificially intelligent Gods who rule the galaxy have withdrawn their protection from the chaos-ravaged world, just as their most ancient enemy closes in. For Yasira Shien, who has devoted herself to the fragile planet's nascent rebellion, it's time to do or die – and the odds are overwhelming. Enter Dr. Evianna Talirr.

Talirr, the visionary who decimated the planet and began its rebellion, is not a woman to be trusted. But she's returned with an unsettling prophecy: the only way to save Jai is for Yasira to die.

Yasira knows it can't be that simple. But as she frantically searches for other options, what she finds will upend everything she knew about the Gods, the galaxy she lives in, and herself.

CURATOR'S NOTE

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

 

REVIEWS

  • "Hoffmann confidently layers morality and disability rights into a breezily told adventure that bursts with sheer fun."

    – Publishers Weekly

  • "A great read for fans of postapocalyptic novels."

    – Booklist

  • "an intellectually rigorous story"

    – Financial Times
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

"Yasira Shien had been dreaming of unsettling things. The ruins of cities blasted by the Gods. Pain and death. Her former mentor, Dr Evianna Talirr, who had smiled enigmatically at the dream's end and said, I'll see you in the morning.

She woke with a gasp, in her little bedroom inside what had once been Ev's lair, and stared at the ceiling, shivering.

It wasn't much of a bedroom, really just four cubicle walls with a tarp for a ceiling, the interior plain as a guest room. She'd been in here for six months, but never bothered to decorate; she didn't have much more than a bed and a dresser and a light to turn on and off. But that wasn't what troubled her.

Being awake, right now, was even worse than being in a dream.

Yasira was exhausted. Her limbs felt like brackish little puddles. Her head hurt. There was a reserve of Outside energy deep in Yasira's soul, a power that was virtually limitless – but to draw that energy into the physical world cost something. Yesterday she had drawn on it more deeply than ever before, and now she felt like the ragged outline left after a blast. Just an afterimage. Barely a body.

She needed to get up, though. Yasira needed to eat, even if her stomach felt like it would turn inside out at the smallest movement. She needed to care for her body in all the usual ways, now more than ever.

She closed her eyes, and the speech that the Gods had broadcast the night before, after the battle, flashed in front of her again.

People of Jai, this is a message from Nemesis Herself. You have been heard. You have coordinated to voice your defiance against the Gods on a scale never seen since the Morlock War, and We have heard you.

That was something Yasira had done. She and her team had organized a mass protest across every part of Jai's Chaos Zone – mostly peaceful, sometimes not.

We will grant your wish. Since you so desperately desire not to be under the rule of the Gods, you will no longer be. Effective immediately, the forces of the Gods will be withdrawn from this world.

They'd wanted–

Well, they'd wanted a lot of things. Because of how Outside filled the Chaos Zone, the Gods had made every part of life there even more difficult: declaring simple everyday activities heretical; giving out deliberately inadequate aid. The Gods wanted order, and literally everything in the Chaos Zone was an insult to that order. The mortal rebels just wanted to survive."