New
York Times bestseller!
In The
Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer,
singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, futurist, and worldwide
superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the
Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed
albums, exploring how different threads of liberation—queerness,
race, gender plurality, and love—become tangled with future
possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape…and
what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into
freedoms.
Whoever controls our memories
controls the future.
Janelle Monáe and an incredible
array of talented collaborators have crafted a collection of tales
comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe
such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer
introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of
self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. And
whether you were human, AI, or other, your life and sentience were
dictated by those who’d convinced themselves they had the right to
decide your fate.
That was until Jane 57821 decided
to remember and break free.
Expanding from that mythos, these
stories fully explore what it’s like to live in such a totalitarian
society . . . and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the
tradition of speculative fiction writers such as Octavia E. Butler,
Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor—and filled with
powerful themes and Monáe’s emblematic artistic vision—The
Memory Librarian serves to readers tales that dissect the human
trials of identity expression, technology, and love, reaching through
to the worlds of memory and time, and the stakes and power that pulse
there.
