Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“Oh great pizza sage,” Peter began. “I wish to order the perfect pizza for my gathering, one which will please everyone.”

The pizza sage, seated upon his great stone pie, replied without opening his eyes. “Order multiple pizzas, my son, one half-pizza for every guest who expresses a strong preference and an additional half-cheese as a contingency.”

“Uh, yeah, I don’t want to do that,” Peter said. “I want to order ONE pizza.”

“Describe to me your friends’ preferences, and I will tell you the perfect order,” the pizza sage said evenly, eyes still closed, with no sign that he was upset after Peter rejected his firest suggestion.

“Okay, so I like classic pepperoni and cheese, but Tandi is a vegetarian, Cooper is a vegan, Alf is a pescatarian, and his girlfriend Britney is a Republican who refuses to eat vegetables or cheese substitutes.”

“Holy shit, boy,” the pizza sage said, evenly, eyes closed. “There is no pizza that has ever existed or will ever exist that can fulfill those criteria. You need to go to a taco bar or something.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The rub is that no one either inside the village or out thought to question why O’Doul persisted in carrying a rotten and inedible potato. They each assumed, wrongly, that it was a simple meal that had spoiled and just another sign of his sad fall from grace since the accusations.

What no one understood or heeded was that O’Doul was a man both brilliant and utterly vengeful. In seeing the response of his town, his home, to the accusations, he had broken. He had vowed that, if the town would not warm him with friendship and brotherhood, it would warm him as it burned to the ground.

Not literally of course. He couldn’t afford, in his destitute state, the fuel required for a good arson, and it would be traceable. Instead, he had acquired a blighted potato from Kilkenny and carefully exposed it to the seed potato stores that the town kept. Up to that point the blight had largely spared them, but the subsequent crop failed utterly, as did the next. O’Doul’s revenge—which could not be traced back to him, at least not in an official capacity—was so complete that within five years the town was barely a village, having been so denuded of people that abandoned buildings and roaming livestock outnumbered the living.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“I have figured out,” Jerd proclaimed, “how to make waffles.”

“Oh, please, share with us,” said Nacluv. “Considering you’re fed the same mush as the rest of us.”

“Happily,” Jerd said. “For the batter, simply grind up a Type 2 nutrient cake and mix with water. I’ve got the exact ratio written down here if you want to try it. That will approximate a true waffle batter.”

“Of course,” said Nacluv, eyes rolling.

“Then, a pair of standard metal boot treads, fresh from the sterilizer,” Jerd continued. “They can go right back in afterwards, too, making cleanup a breeze.”

“And to cook it?” Kowe said, smirking.

“Put the unit in a plasma conduit during a purge cycle. Clean, even heating means a perfect waffle. You can even use this schedule that I made up to determine the proper purge cycle for the waffle consistency you like. I prefer crispy, so I use Cycle 8.”

“Most important question, now,” said Kowe. “What about syrup?”

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” said Jerd. “There is a small amount of sugar syrup in Extract 32a. Just keep boiling it and you’ll eventually get a very viable syrup equivalent.”

“Sounds like you have it all figured out then,” Nacluv said. “Congratulations.”

“Not quite,” sighed Jerd. “I still need to find a good plate, fork, and knife. Those latter two are super-contraband.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Katsuhiro Sato, the famed mangaka and creator of the “Multipage Multiverse” quadrilogy, left specific instructions that his personal effects and spaces were not to be disturbed after his death. Therefore, after his untimely passing in a car accident, his family did not disturb his suite of rooms in the family home for 8 years. Eventually, though, in search of items for a charity auction, his daughter Miyoko attempted to put her father’s items in order. A locksmith was retained, as virtually all of Sato’s furniture had been fitted with locks, and eventually they all had to be drilled out.

Inside, they found none of the sketches or foul papers that they had expected. Those, it seems, had all been sent to Sato’s archive or destroyed, going by the number of paper scraps found in his fireplace. Nor was there any correspondence, as Sato had switched entirely to email in his later years.

Instead, each drawer that was drilled out and opened was found to contain…fish. A variety of fish, from tilapia to goldfish to trout, and all of them real. They had been carefully prepared using a variety of taxidermy methods to remain stable, and it seemed like Sato had experimented with a number of processes before deciding on a combination of flash mummification and lucite coating. A number of receipts were found for the purchase of fish and their subsequent treatment by a concern on Hokkaido, but the company could provide no clues as to the purpose of the fish. Sato had been polite but terse with them, paying generous bonuses but inviting no questions.

Ultimately, Miyoko donated the fish to the Emperor Emeritus Wing of the Ichthyological Institute, where they remain as the Katsuhiro Sato Collection. One fish was eventually auctioned for charity, and admirers began leaving fish on Sato’s grave as a sign of respect for what was clearly a very important, if private, pursuit for him.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“For decades, stamp collecting was THE big hobby. Ever since the King of England started doing it, and you know how people get about royal trends.”

“But no one does it anymore.”

“Right. People realized that you can just buy stamps, and collecting is too easy and pointless. So as old people died, their stamp collections were worthless and got thrown out. As such things do, like sought out like as it drifted into the cosmic sargasso sea, and we wind up with the Swamp of Stamps, a vile place filled with pulp, glue, saliva, and shattered dreams.”

“I’ll say. The stench of glue and spit is…pretty overwhelming.”

“But if you want the proper stamp to use to send your transdimensional letter—and more importantly, you want it for free—this is THE place to look.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“Hello, Bronner’s Reality Glitch Repair, with 24-hour emergency service, this is Shelley speaking, how can I help?”

“Uh, hi, Shelley. I think I might have a reality glitch and the 911 dispatcher said to call you.”

“Okay, we will see what we can do. Can you describe the glitch in question?”

“Um, it’s my…couch. It’s hovering in midair, about three feet off the ground, I guess? It’s kind of crooked, I haven’t measured it.”

“All right, that sounds like it might be a Level 2 quantum gravity glitch, but I’m going to need some more information. Has the couch been altered in any other way?”

“Yeah, it’s…um…curly now.”

“Curly?”

“Yeah, like a dog of a person’s hair? It had kind of a bouclé or synthetic lambskin.”

“Oh dear. That is going to kick us right up to a level 6. Please keep your distance and stay on the line, I’m going to transfer you to our mobile unit.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

The no longer mild-mannered atomic physicist Bann Brucer, the Transcredible Bulk advanced angrily on Captain Numerica.

“ME…CRUSH…YOU!”

“Hadn’t you better flee?” said Captain Numerica’s partner Siren Woman.

“Hell no.” Captain Numerica, with the power of ALL numbers, walked over and pushed the Transcredible Bulk on the shoulder. The creature went down like a ninepin.

“Wha…?” Siren Woman said.

“The Transcredible Bulk’s size increased, but not its mass,” Captain Numerica said. “That would be a violation of the laws of physics. So even though it looks tough, it’s got the same mass as mild-mannered physicist Bann Brucer—that is to say, a real pushover!

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

Written by a court poet identified only as “The Gourmand” in the later Zwei dynasty, the Onion Cycle is a series of works perhaps best described as a short story cycle but more often characterized as a novel. Each new section of the work (variously glossed as a “chapter,” “book,” or “stanza”) contains an element of the previous work—a character, setting, or situation—but tells a largely independent story that nevertheless shines light on the previous part of the tale.

For instance, Stanza VII in the Earlham translation is the story of a thief, Lee, attempting to recover a valuable gold chain stolen from him by a rival. Stanza VIII is the story of the kingpin Poe and his struggles with running his criminal enterprise, but readers also learn that he stole the gold chain with the intent to bribe an official with it and pin the blame on Lee.

In this manner, the 108 surviving parts gradually move toward more and more important figures in society and themes. The final story, now lost but repeatedly reconstructed from context clues, reportedly featured the Emperor as its central character, in defiance of social and legal norms of the time.

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

An old proverb holds
Some noodles did fret
About who would go first
When they would be et

They wanted it so
Felt their destiny lay
In a hungry man’s mouth
Or so they say

The debate went on
Becoming quite uncouth
About who would go first
Past palate and tooth

In the end they decided
What they knew all along
One noodle leads
The others follow strong

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!

“This is the letter I was telling you about, Postmaster.” Lila held out a letter with tongs in his direction. It was old-fashioned, seemed to be made of vellum and folded in on itself rather than in an envelope, and most importantly seemed to be dripping a reddish substance despite being sealed with actual sealing-wax.

“Mail cannon bleed,” Postmaster Chapman said. “It’s probably just water-soluble ink.”

“Small creatures keep being drawn to the bl—the liquid,” Lila said. “Cockroaches, spiders, even that one rat Smith has been trying to catch. They just come out and lap it up. I think we should call someone.”

“Call who? The hospital, to test it for bloodiness? No, put a ‘return to sender’ on it and be done with it.”

“And…keep it here? Overnight?” Lila said, nervously.

“We’re the post office, Lila. We handled that pallet of manure someone tried to ship to the governor. We can handle one letter. And mail does not bleed.”

• Like what you see? Purchase a print or ebook version!