Overview

Hugo Award winner Bogi Takács spins a tale of adventure, mystery, and political intrigue in space. Plus sentient fungus! Three experienced counterintelligence operatives from Alliance Treaty Enforcement are on a mission to find the source of shapeshifting infiltrators within Alliance space. Will the gruff Ereni commander, the Chasidic Jewish shapeshifter, and the cynical insectoid grandma be able to work together? Or will their differences drive them apart before they can reach their goal? Not to mention dealing with the sentient spaceship and symbiotic pilot, who only signed on to provide transportation, not to be eaten by giant space fungus. Are they even on the right side of history when everything comes crashing down? Can the galaxy possibly survive? This is weird space opera at its finest!

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9781940372754

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Reviews

""A seamless juxtaposition of intricate truths and bold fictions, these stories mesmerize."" (Nicky Drayden, reviewing Power to Yield and Other Stories, author of Escaping Exodus and The Prey of Gods) ""It's rare to find an author that truly deepens the speculative genre and human experience simultaneously but Takács is clearly one of them. E deftly unravels our preconceived notions of the self, society, culture, desire, power and the other and re-braids them in new insightful ways in each story. As you move through each richly-crafted story, you are challenged and transformed whether you realize it or not. This intimate yet expansive collection is not one to miss."" (Sloane Leong, reviewing Power to Yield and Other Stories, author of Prism Stalker, Graveneye, and A Map to the Sun) ""Bogi Takács's stories never fail to awe with their breadth and depth of thought, precise prose, and fascinating characters. In Power to Yield and Other Stories, Takács reveals emself to be a masterful gardener, cultivating these tales of science and magic, of immigrants and exiles, of deep loss and abiding hope. Whether you're new to eir work or know it well, this collection will welcome you, for it is expertly tended and blooming with glorious sights, its roots stretching across cultures, bodies, worlds, and ages."" (Izzy Wasserstein, reviewing Power to Yield and Other Stories, author of All the Hometowns You Can't Stay Away From) ""['Power to Yield'] is a fascinating take on aspects of power, history, personal obsession, and sadism, the latter all taking place within an asexual framework that removes those questions from their normal sexual-overtone-laden context."" (Karen Burnham, reviewing Power to Yield and Other Stories, for Locus Magazine) ""['Power to Yield'] is laced with pain and with the fractured lines of a people stitched together from trauma and systemic abuse, who come together out of necessity and the need for freedom to make something powerful and beautiful. [...] And it's a lovely, rending read that I definitely recommend people check out immediately!"" (Charles Payseur, reviewing Power to Yield and Other Stories, for Quick Sip Reviews)

""Song of Spores is a rare find: a truly innovative science fiction novel with psychological depths as nuanced and complex as our own world. Takács reveals emself to be a true heavy hitter, marrying the sharp, cinematic coolness of Peter Watts with Le Guin's lyrical, unbounded imagination. The characters are fascinating, the plot both riveting and batshit unpredictable, the writing beautiful. An absolute gem."" (Maria Dong, author of Liar, Dreamer, Thief and Psychopomp) ""A rollicking adventure full of fungi, shapeshifters, and groupmind shenanigans. Song of Spores bursts with inventive exuberance. As always with Bogi Takács, it's also a thoughtful book with light to shed on gender, collective identity, neurodiversity, religion, and what happens when an organization is more concerned with cleaning messes up quickly than with protecting its own."" (Ada Hoffmann, author of The Outside and Resurrections) ""Is it enough that Song of Spores revives the zesty weirdness of the classic space opera without the self-important bloat and anthropocentric pulp baggage? No! Because Bogi Takács effortlessly models the kindness and curiosity we'll need to find our way among the stars, not by fetishizing what it means to be human but by celebrating how all sentient beings grow by being humane."" (Cody Goodfellow, Wonderland Award-winning author of Radiant Dawn and New Tomorrow) ""What does it mean to be alien among humans as well as extraterrestrials? These characters connect and intersect in a kaleidoscopic gamut of identity and experience: insect and mammal, hive mind and individual, investigator and criminal. That's not even mentioning the tensions of strict religious Judaism versus queer genders boosted by practical alien shapeshifter tech. Yes, please. I need more science fiction as original as Song of Spores."" (Evan J. Peterson, author of Better Living Through Alchemy) ""Song of Spores is a fast-paced interstellar adventure with a diverse cast and sentient fungi! I loved the premise and the characters, and I hope to see more set in this world."" (Catherine Lundoff, publisher at Queen of Swords Press) ""Takács's first full-length novel is a SF procedural set in a far-flung part of space with a shapeshifting protagonist and an alien crew [...] They deftly weave intersex, trans, and other identities into this fine book that thrillingly crosses genre lines."" (Booklist)

Author Information

Bogi Takács is a Hungarian Jewish agender trans person (e/em/eir/emself or they pronouns) and an immigrant to the US. Bogi lives in Lawrence, Kansas, with eir family and a congregation of books. Bogi writes, edits, and reviews speculative fiction and poetry. E is a winner of the Lambda Literary award for editing Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, the Hugo award for Best Fan Writer, and a finalist for the Ignyte award, the Locus award, and the Hexa award for advocates of Hungarian SFF. Bogi talks about books at www.bogireadstheworld.com, and you can also find em as @bogiperson on various social media websites.

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