EDITOR’S NOTE

THE UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR

Among our starred reviews this issue is an unforgettable dystopia, The Pyronauts. Before you get too excited, be warned: it’s a book that never existed. At least not in this universe. Rather, The Pyronauts is the exclusive property of a book that you will be able to get your hands on in March, Tin House’s Famous Men Who Never Lived.

I do my best not to play favorites with the many wonderful books that come through Foreword’s doors, but I must admit: I love this title. It’s a science fiction story that concerns refugees from a parallel universe and the challenges they face when they integrate with those who were always here. The Pyronauts is an artifact from their world; it’s one of several projects that never were, but that exist within the books of our March/ April issue.

In our climate change feature, we covered Spaceship in the Desert, a book about an ambitious United Arab Emirates project to create a technologically advanced green city, though those efforts fell apart under pressure. Giraffes on Horseback Salad is a crazy and colorful graphic novel revival of a Salvador Dali script that never did become a film. And in the horror thriller All My Colors,a vain and arrogant man finds that he can perfectly recall a bestselling novel that no one else remembers.

Possibilities that fade into the ether, and the scientific probability that whole similar and dissimilar worlds exist parallel to ours—that comprise the spectrum of all that is possible—are increasingly the domain of the books that we’re seeing, both in fiction and nonfiction. And why shouldn’t they be? Independent books have always sought to push the boundaries of what’s known. Now they’re just doing it in a more metaphysical way. We’re definitely here for it. We can’t wait to see what else the multiverse reveals through the uniquely capable vehicle of independent books.