-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
Ten Science Fiction Stories to Rewire Your Perceptions
by A. R. Capetta
In a mind-bending MITeen anthology, ten top YA authors use emerging technologies to explore startling new realities.
What does the future hold? Ten speculative short stories by leading young-adult authors imagine what the world could be through the lens of technologies emerging today. When the modification industry transforms how humans look, sound, and interact, a nonbinary teen braves the "reinvention room" to accept a gift from the dead. In an accidental city in space, a young apprentice holds neighborhoods together with braided carbon filaments until distraction and inspiration arrive in the wake of a visitor. Entitlement-fueled drug use alters the landscape of white privilege, robots remember the Earth, and corporate "walkers" stroll for unknown subscribers—until one hacks the system. In tales buzzing with possibility, hope, innovation, anger, and tenderness, Tasting Light offers a dazzling challenge to connect with open minds, hearts, and senses in a fast-changing world.
With stories by: William Alexander, K. Ancrum, Elizabeth Bear, A.R. Capetta, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Nasugraq Rainey Hopson, A.S. King, E.C. Myers, Junauda Petrus-Nasah, and Wendy Xu.
"This dazzling speculative collection comprising 10 authors and edited by Capetta, who also contributes, and Roush explores emerging innovative technology to imagine expansive futures...The creators seamlessly tackle relevant issues such as colonization, misogyny, transphobia, and white entitlement in this eclectic celebration of infinite possibility and the ever-present human spirit." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A diverse anthology showing hopeful futures imagined through the lens of technology...celebrates queerness, a variety of gender identities, and the freedom to be oneself, delving into how technology can influence and transform reality as well as be used for the greater good—or to oppress...A top-notch hard science fiction collection." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The 10 short stories in this luminous collection are set in the future in different locations...At once unsettling and moving, this crystalline collection will find or create a connection with its readers." - Booklist
This information about Tasting Light was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
A. R. Capetta is the author of The Heartbreak Bakery, Echo After Echo, The Lost Coast, and the bestselling Once & Future series, coauthored with their spouse, Cory McCarthy. They live in the Green Mountains and teach in the MFA program in writing for children and young adults at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Wade Roush is a journalist and audio producer who focuses on how science and technology are changing our lives and what we can do as individuals to steer that process. He is the editor of the hard science anthology Twelve Tomorrows, published by MIT Press. He holds a PhD from MIT in the history of technology and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
If you liked Tasting Light, try these:
by Ed Park
Published 2026
A deadpan, wildly imaginative collection of stories that slices clean through the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, from the author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams.
by Nnedi Okorafor
Published 2026
In this exhilarating tale by New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor, a disabled Nigerian American woman pens a wildly successful Sci-Fi novel, but as her fame rises, she loses control of the narrative—a surprisingly cutting, yet heartfelt drama about art and love, identity and connection, and, ultimately, what...
by Anton Hur
Published 2025
Negotiating the terrain of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun and Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, a brilliant, haunting speculative novel from a #1 New York Times bestselling translator that sets out to answer the question: What does it mean to be human in a world where technology is quickly catching up to biology?
L.A. Women by Ella Berman
Two ambitious writers in 1960s LA face betrayal when one writes a novel based on the other's life.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
