Not What I Intended

Anyone who thinks that, at an early age, they can plan their entire life is mistaken.

Nancy Kress has been exploring the possibilities of genetic engineering, human evolution, alien contact, artificial intelligence, and the future of the species for over forty years, with one eye on the bleeding edge of science and the other on the human soul and what makes it bleed. These stories, and the essays that explain her own history and worldview, compose a brief tourist’s guide for the world to come.

In the title memoir, “Not What I Intended,” Kress discusses a childhood and community life where no young girl ever dreams of becoming a writer, and how she made those nondreams come true.

“Patent Infringement” is a short piece inspired by Kress’s own time writing corporate copy that managed to predict COVID, COVID vaccines, and the patenting of genes for profit.

“Laws of Survival” is a tale of first contact in which humanity is hardly the species the aliens are interested in—can an amateur dog trainer save the world the aliens have trashed, or at least herself?

“Amy Lowell, Cixin Liu, Jane Austen, and the Art of Fiction” is a compelling essay about the human drive to create patterns, and what the cognitive limitations of patternmaking means for fiction … and for politics.

“Machine Learning” is science fiction but might also be a work of psychological realism about the creation of AI and the healing of a scientist’s grief over the loss of his daughter.

And featuring an in-depth Q&A with new Outspoken Authors series coeditor Nick Mamatas, who traveled up to Seattle to talk to Nancy about the future of plagues, sleepless nights, teaching science fiction writing, and dogs dogs dogs!

Praise

“Nancy Kress is one of the best science-fiction writers working today. Her use of science is tricky and thought-provoking, her command of fiction sharp and full of feeling.”
—Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Mars Trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt

“Nancy Kress comprehends the grimy relationships among bioscience, technology, and politics; and soon we will too, if only enough of us read her. Too soon it cannot be.”
—Gene Wolfe

“Kress’s villains are not diabolical conspirators but willfully ignorant hypocrites, shortsighted and greedy dunderheads, the well-intentioned half-baked—in short, us. But we are also the heroes whose generosity, honesty and energy could turn our lemming tribe away from the polluted waters ahead.”
—Washington Post

“Kress’s depiction of science is much like her characters’ experiences with love: by turns glorious and terrible, and always a little disturbing, even in triumph.”
―Publishers Weekly

“Kress, a witty and engaging writer, creates chilling suspense as twisty as a DNA double helix.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Her style is devilishly inventive.”
—CNN.com

About the Author

Nancy Kress is the author of twenty-seven novels, three books on writing, four short story collections, and over a hundred works of short fiction. Her fiction has won six Nebula Awards, two Hugo Awards, and a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her work has been translated into Swedish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Danish, Polish, Croatian, Korean, Lithuanian, Chinese, Romanian, Japanese, Russian, and Klingon, none of which she can read.

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