Urbane without being arch, sweet without being maudlin, mysterious without being cryptic.-Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing A dazzling, postmodern debut collection of pulp and surreal fictions: a writer of alternate histories defends his patron's zeppelin against assassins and pirates; a woman transforms into hundreds of gumballs; an emancipated children's collective goes house hunting. Benjamin Rosenbaum's stories have appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction and McSweeney's, been translated into eleven languages, and listed in The Best American Short Stories 2006, Shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards, Rosenbaum's work has been reprinted in Harper's and The Year's Best Science Fiction, He lives in Switzerland with his family.