Walker’s got a problem. A human salesman on an alien world, he’s got software to sell. But he doesn’t understand the language or the culture, and he’s running out of resources. Sometimes survival means understanding the difference between what’s most valuable and what’s most important. Translated into 7 languages, “Tk’Tk’Tk” won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 2006.

“Tk’Tk’Tk,” a short story, is also available as part of Space Magic, an award-winning collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by David D. Levine.

Praise for Tk’Tk’Tk:

“Asimov’s for March contains a gloriously old-fashioned story of incomprehensible obsequious aliens giving a human trader the run-around: ‘Tk’Tk’Tk’ by David D. Levine, who appears very fluent across a multitude of SF subgenres. Writing somewhat in the mode of Jack Vance’s classic novella ‘The Moon Moth,’ Levine puts his harassed computer salesman up against insectoid beings with bizarre codes of decorum and business ethics, a language of custom and evasion the poor commercial traveler only slowly begins to fathom; the act of translation becomes a conceptual breakthrough, leading in an unexpected and yet curiously inevitable direction. One can speculate that Levine’s Walker is ultimately wiser in his choice of accomodation to the exotic than was Vance’s Edwer Thissell; but whatever the conclusion, ‘Tk’Tk’Tk’ is a skillful confection, another token of its author’s burgeoning virtuosity. … Recommended.” —Locus

“In the March Asimov’s I appreciated David D. Levine’s ‘Tk’tk’tk’, about a salesman struggling to stay afloat on an alien planet where the culture spins him so off-balance he finds himself re-orienting. Do you ever find out what ‘Tk’tk’tk’ means? Read it and you may see; sometimes you have to let go of your goals in order to accomplish them.” —Emerald City

“There is a sort of old-fashioned Orientalness to these aliens, which makes it fitting that Walker would be an old-fashioned travelling salesman. … But when Walker cracks the alien code, so to speak, it transforms more than just his mission. Levine brings in Eastern spiritual elements to give the story an added dimension: understanding the other as the key to understanding the self.” —The Internet Review of Science Fiction

“[T]akes a premise that seems very “Golden Age”… but gives it a very 21st-century sensibility. In the Golden Age, the salesman would have proved the superiority of Earth culture, or would have been shown to be venal and deserving of being bested, or something equally simplistic. Levine adds some layers to the story.” —MT VOID

“The alien world was vividly imagined, the holiday, everything. Anywhere Levine decides to take me, I’ll believe I’m there.” —Tangent Online