Fiction

The Science of Lost Futures

The Science of Lost Futures is a prize-winning collection full of quirky humor and intelligent absurdity. Ryan Habermeyer is a yarn spinner of the first order. Drawing on urban legends, internet hoaxes, and ancient medical folklore, these stories go beyond science fiction and magical realism to create a captivating collection of fabulist stories that revel in the alien and the absurd.

PRAISE FOR THE SCIENCE OF LOST FUTURES

"If the Brothers Grimm wrote today, they might turn out something like this imaginative collection, Habermeyer’s debut." —Publishers Weekly

“Ryan Habermeyer gives his protagonists quite a bit more trouble than they can reasonably handle, and their earnest forbearance is consistently funny, lovely, and moving. Come to this book for outlandish premise; stay for the compassionate depiction of frail humanity. The BOA Short Fiction Prize strikes again with yet another terrific collection.” —Chris Bachelder, National Book Award finalist for The Throwback Special

“Ryan Habermeyer’s collection of stories is hilarious, brilliantly inventive, ribald, insightful, and sometimes disturbing. He uses the absurd to express the truths of humans’ relationships to one another and to the bizarre world which we actually populate, and in so doing, often sees deeply into places that realism might not spot. All of this is possible because he is a master of tone, the alchemy that makes words into worlds.” —Tim Parrish, author of Fear and What Follows: The Violent Education of a Christian Racist

"The Science of Lost Futures is a magical book. These stories are as unpredictable and consoling as old fairy tales, and quite a bit stranger, if you can imagine. I adore Ryan Habermeyer's aphoristic, imagistic, humble narrative gifts." —Kate Bernheimer, World Fantasy Award-winning editor and author of How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales

Publication Date: May 8, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-942683-60-5

FormatPaperback

Publication DateMay 8, 2018

ISBN978-1-942683-60-5

$16.00

About the Author

Ryan Habermeyer was born and raised outside of Los Angeles. He earned his MFA from the Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts and his PhD from the University of Missouri. His work has appeared in Cream City Review, Carolina Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, and Chattahoochee Review. As a scholar of European folklore and fairy-tales, he has lectured nationally and internationally on the genre. He lives with his wife and children on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Salisbury University.