Advance Praise for Metallic Realms
“A brilliant, funny, and pulpy homage to the golden age of science fiction.” —Esquire, The 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2025
Metallic Realms
A Novel
Description
Fantastic universes and personal dramas collide as a group of friends blur the line between real life and fiction with delightfully disastrous results from the acclaimed author of the “timeless and original” (The New York Times) The Body Scout.
Perennially single, socially awkward, and drowning in debt, Michael Lincoln finds his life has turned out nothing like the intergalactic lives of the pulp heroes of his youth. But these are pedestrian concerns—he has a higher calling, and that is to preserve for all posterity the greatest series in the history of the written word: The Star Rot Chronicles.
Written collectively by Michael’s best (and perhaps only) friend Taras K. Castle and his misfit science fiction writing group, the Orb 4, the stories follow Captain Baldwin and his fearless crew on their mind-bending adventures across the Metallic Realms, from solar whales swallowing suns at the edge of spacetime to extraterrestrial romances and interstellar wars. These masterpieces have gone tragically unpublished—until now.
But the most urgent story Michael must tell takes place in the more intimate (if no less dramatic) confines of literary Brooklyn. Behind the greatest universe ever created, there are the all-too-mortal people who wrote it. As Michael chronicles the personal melodramas of the Orb 4 as well as the fun house reflections in their fiction, the line between real and unreal becomes dangerously thin, and the true reasons for the group’s fallout begin to emerge. As he labors away in hiding, Michael has just one mission: to bring the Metallic Realms to the world. No matter the cost.
Reviews
“Like any good book-within-a-book, Lincoln Michel’s latest is a complex tale that also finds intimacy and depth in its characters at every turn. The brilliance of Metallic Realms will burn your senses.” —The Chicago Review of Books
“Exciting and tragic and funny and bewildering and just plain wonderful.” —Booklist
“A riveting tale of a sci-fi writing group…This captivates.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)