';The most profound terror is rooted in lovethe terror of losing love, of love betrayed, of love in peril. Justin C. Key's work is a cold knife through a hot heart, a surgical blade unleashing gouts of searing fear.'Cory Doctorow, author of Red Team Blues, Little Brother, and Radicalized
';An electrifying collection of stories that would make Octavia E. Butler smile.'Ebony
Black Mirror meets Get Out in this gripping story collection reminiscent of the work of Octavia E. Butler, deftly blending science fiction, horror, and fantasy to examine issues of race, class, and prejudicean electrifying, oftentimes heartbreaking debut from an extraordinary new voice
now available as a limited Olive Edition from Harper Perennial.
In The World Wasn't Ready for You, Justin C. Key builds on his lifelong obsession with monsters as he expands and subverts the horror genre to expertly explore issues of race, class, prejudice, love, exclusion, loneliness, and what it means to be a person in the world, while revealing the horrifying nature inherent in all of us.
In the opening story, ';The Perfection of Theresa Watkins,' a sci-fi love story turned nightmare, a husband uses new technology to download the consciousness of his recently deceased Black wife into the body of a white woman. In ';Spider King,' an inmate agrees to participate in an experimental medical study offered to Black prisoners in exchange for early release, only to find his body reacting with disturbing symptoms. And in the title story, a father tries to protect his son, teaching him how to navigate a racist world that does not understand him and sees him as a threat.
The World Wasn't Ready for You is a gripping, provocative, and distinctly original collection that demonstrates Key's remarkable literary giftsa skill at crafting science fiction stories equaled by an ability to sculpt characters and narrativeas well as his utterly
