Portable Childhoods

Emerging from a unique and powerful voice, this innovative collection offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies hidden just beyond the ordinary, skirting the border between childhood and adulthood. Mysticism, heroism, cruelty, and compassion thread through these multifaceted taleswhich range from the origins of the Manhattan Project to a culinary object-lesson, from 1950s corruption to a slight glitch in Creation. Collected here for the first time and including an excerpt from her breakout first novelThe Green Glass Sea, these stories are timeless and delightful, chilling and beautiful.

Ellen Klages is the Nebula Award-winning author of The Green Glass Sea. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous science fiction and fantasy anthologies and magazines, including Black Gate, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. She lives in San Francisco.

Introduction by Neil Gaiman

“A Taste of Summer”
“Basement Magic”
“Be Prepared”
“Clip Art”
“Flying Over Water”
“Guys Day Out”
“In the House of the Seven Libraries”
“Intelligent Design”
“Möbius, Stripped of a Muse”
“Portable Childhoods”
“Ringing Up Baby”
“The Feed Bag”
“The GreenGlass Sea”
“Time Gypsy”
“Travel Agency”
“Triangle”


Afterword