Those We Leave Behind and other stories

This collection brings together seventeen of Vaughan Stanger’s innovative, imaginative, and thought-provoking science fiction and fantasy stories, also his first ever published poem. Here you will learn how it feels to be a virtual human being downloaded into a smart brick, or to participate in the Soviet Union’s first moon-landing while all hell breaks loose back on Earth, or to midwife an industrial revolution for aliens who communicate using colour and texture. Some of these pieces can be read in a minute or two. Others might transport you to a fascinating elsewhere for the duration of your regular commute. But all of them will make you think about the futures that might await us, or the traps set for us in the present day that we haven’t noticed yet. Two of the stories in this collection – Skin Deep and Second and Seventh (the sequel to First and Third) – have not been published before.