Ten Planets

‘These stories don’t simply imagine new worlds – they create them.’ El País

‘Startling concepts another writer might take hundreds of pages to explore are distilled into perfect miniatures. It’s tempting to gulp them down at once, but such rich fare is best taken slowly, allowed to digest.’ Lisa Tuttle, The Guardian

-- Lisa Tuttle

‘Ten Planets is – if this isn’t too reductive an analogy – a tapas selection of tiny delights, individually tasty, infinitely moreish, and adding up to a very satisfying whole.’ James Lovegrove, Financial Times

‘A new collection of short stories from the beloved Mexican author Yuri Herrera. Ten Planets (translated by Lisa Dillman) is bold, philosophical science fiction.’ I-D Magazine, ‘All the books to be excited for in 2023’

‘The characters that populate Yuri Herrera’s first collection of stories inhabit imagined futures that reveal the strangeness and instability of the present.’ London Review Bookshop, ‘Gayle’s New Year Picks 2023’

‘Sheffield-based And Other Stories previously published Mexican political scientist Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World to critical acclaim. In February it publishes his book of short stories, Ten Planets, translated by Lisa Dillman, and blending the best of science fiction, noir and the philosophical parables of Calvino and Borges.’ Big Issue North, ‘Indies to Watch in 2023’

In Ten Planets, Herrera shifts from the fantastical (monsters and aliens) to the eerily materialist (a bacterium achieves sentience) like a boy flipping through the pages of a beloved comic book: with delight and conviction.’ LitHub, ‘Most anticipated books of 2023’

‘Ten Planets encapsulates Hererra’s mastery of language, his unique imagination where always something unexpected awaits you.’ Morning Star

‘At times so dazzling and drenched in ideas, that the reader must take pause, regain breath, think and think again, indeed turn back to the start, read anew and be rewarded anew … These odd, unsettling encounters ring in the mind like enlivening waking dreams, their significance spilling in many directions, inviting us to toy with and complete them in our own ways.’ New Internationalist

‘There are vignettes of imagined futures, twinkling with Borgesian promise, placed beside hard-boiled noirish pieces that expose the absurdity of bureaucratic systems.’ The Big Issue

‘Yuri Herrera’s expansive, delicate world-building makes the slim book seem bigger than it is – because of how far and fast the stories go.’ Word Factory

‘The ideas are refreshingly bizarre – such as the alien that writes Don Quixote and is critiqued for this work of “speculative fiction” by his editor – and bring new life to the genre, cutting through some of its hackneyed tropes.’ Sunday Times

‘An impressive achievement: bold, disturbing, ironic.’ Patrick Graney, Times Literary Supplement

* TLS *

‘This speculative collection draws inspiration from Melville, Jorge Luis Borges, Philip K. Dick and others to produce contemplative, emotive and richly imagined stories.’ New York Times Book Review

* New York Times Book Review *

‘A highly original set of voyages to imaginary worlds that shed unexpected light on our own.’ Wall Street Journal