The World Wasn't Ready for You: Stories
Written by Justin C. Key
Narrated by Adam Lazarre-White and Susan Dalian
5/5
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About this audiobook
“The most profound terror is rooted in love—the terror of losing love, of love betrayed, of love in peril. Justin C. Key’s work is a cold knife through a hot heart, a surgical blade unleashing gouts of searing fear.”—Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues, Little Brother, and Radicalized
“An electrifying collection of stories that would make Octavia E. Butler smile.”—Ebony
Black Mirror meets Get Out in this gripping story collection reminiscent of the work of Octavia E. Butler, which deftly blends science fiction, horror, and fantasy to examine issues of race, class, and prejudice—an electrifying, oftentimes heartbreaking debut from an extraordinary new voice.
Justin C. Key has long been obsessed with monsters. Reading R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps as a kid, he imagined himself battling monsters and mayhem to a triumphant end. But when watching Scream 2, in which the movie’s only Black couple is promptly killed off, he realized that the Black and Brown characters in his favorite genre were almost always the victim or villain—if they were portrayed at all.
In The World Wasn’t Ready for You, Key expands and subverts the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, loneliness, and what it means to be a person in the world, while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us. In the opening story, “The Perfection of Theresa Watkins,” a sci-fi love story turned nightmare, a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In “Spider King,” an inmate agrees to participate in an experimental medical study offered to Black prisoners in exchange for early release, only to find his body reacting with disturbing symptoms. And in the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a prejudiced world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat.
The World Wasn’t Ready for You is a gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key’s remarkable literary gifts—a skill at crafting science fiction stories equaled by an ability to sculpt characters and narrative—as well as his utterly fresh take on how genre can be used to delight, awe, frighten, and ultimately challenge our perceptions. Wildly imaginative and powerfully resonant, it introduces an unforgettable new voice in fiction.
Justin C. Key
Justin C. Key is a practicing psychiatrist and speculative fiction writer whose stories have appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Escape Pod, and Lightspeed, and on Tor.com. He received a BA in biology from Stanford University and recently completed his residency in psychiatry at UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.
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Reviews for The World Wasn't Ready for You
5 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wow! Listened to this book in 2 days. Only stopped because I was too spooked to continue before bed (not typically freaked out by books). Woke up and ravished this book in the morning. So many jaw dropping moments with several colorful descriptive scenes that creeped me out at times. Please make this a series! Keep these stories coming! Can't say my fave stories without giving anything away. Just read for yourself if you like Black Mirror, Changeling, AI gone wrong and the Black experience wrapped into one. Blew my lil mind. Epic! ??
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