A collection of fanciful, philosophical science fictions by "one of Mexico's finest novelists". The characters that populate Yuri Herrera's surprising new story collection inhabit imagined futures that reveal the strangeness and instability of the present. Drawing on science fiction, noir, and the philosophical parables of Jorge Luis Borges's Fictions and Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, this collection features fantastical stories in which monsters and aliens abound, but knowing who is the monster and who is the alien is a tricky proposition. In Ten Planets, objects can be sentient and might rebel against the unhappy human family to which they are attached. A detective of sorts finds clues to buried secrets by studying the noses of his clients, which he insists are covert maps. A meager bacterium in a human intestine gains consciousness when a psychotropic drug is ingested. In Ten Planets, you will find Herrera's consistent themes--the mutability of borders, the wounds and legacy of colonial violence, and a deep love of storytelling in all its forms.

Contents:            

The science of extinction -- Whole entero -- The obituarist -- The cosmonaut -- House taken over -- Consolidation of spirits -- The objects -- The objects -- Flat map -- The Earthling -- The monsters' art -- Obverse -- Inventory of human diversity -- Zorg, author of the Quixote -- The other theory -- The conspirators -- Appendix 15, number 2: The exploration of Agent Probii -- Living muscle -- The last ones -- Warning.