The Universe Box

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction’s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with new tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. 


[STARRED REVIEW] “All of Swanwick’s stories awaken insights into the mystery of being human in an increasingly mind-bending technological world. This is an author at the height of his powers.”

—Publishers Weekly


In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves) sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.


With two stories original to this collection, Michael Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling.