Sublimation

[psocoptera]

Sublimation, Isabel J. Kim, 2026 sff novel. Excellent and recommended. Not to pit brilliant Asian-American short fiction writers who recently expanded a story into their first novel against each other, but this is how you get a whole novel out of a short story! (And I'll put everything else behind a spoiler cut, while avoiding specific spoilers.) Kim goes both longer and wider, telling us both what happens next for the main character of the original story (although some of her details have changed) and also a bigger story about technology and social change and more exploration of how instancing is woven into culture. I thought she did a great job of interweaving the personal character-driven story and the more thriller-y bits while still not losing track of the tone and themes of the original. I imagine there's a type of reader who it really won't work for - the kind of reader who dislikes fantastical alternate universes where there's some major metaphysical or biological difference, like a soulmate AU or an O/B/A AU, and yet the world is still our world with the same history and culture when shouldn't that make the whole world different - but if you do have practice reading that kind of AU (and understanding it as a way to explore a theme or idea) then I think this is a fascinating and compelling one.