Evil Robot Monkey first appeared in the Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, volume 2. To test a new microphone,¹ I decided to record this because it is darn short.

Here you go. Six minutes of science-fiction.

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

Someone banged on the window of his pen. Sly jumped and then screamed as the vase collapsed under its own weight. He spun and hurled it at the picture window like feces. The clay spattered against the Plexiglas, sliding down the window.

The audio version of “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Based on a work at www.solarisbooks.com.

1. A Blue Snowball mic, which I think I might love [↩]

SF Signal The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 2 edited by George Mann and gives it an overall favorable rating.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Evil Robot Monkey” is an affecting snapshot in the life of a chimp with an implant in his head that increases his intelligence. Unfortunately for him, that lands him in the “hellish limbo” of being “too smart to be with other chimps, but too much of an animal to be with humans.” He becomes the subject of ridicule of children in what is presumably a school where he spends his time behind a pottery wheel. The interesting premise is delicately overlaid with emotion by having a single human show the chimp some compassion, resulting in a quick-and-dirty sf short story that is both charming and memorable.

The Fix gave a lovely favorable review to The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2, edited by George Mann. It included this bit:

Mary Robinette Kowal’s “Evil Robot Monkey,” the shortest piece in this anthology, is a smart tale about monkeys with implants and a cautionary tale of how intelligence can sometimes be very lonely.

The Guardian has a review of Solaris’s Book of New Science Fiction which opens with this line.

Early in 2007 the science-fiction imprint Solaris marked its launch with The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction. A year later, editor George Mann returns with a follow-up, this time featuring strong stories from Kay Kenyon, Michael Moorcock, Mary Robinette Kowal, Eric Brown and others.

I’m so stunned that all I can see is “stories from celebrity, celebrity, me, celebrity…”

So, that box the post office tried to deliver yesterday wasn’t Shimmer.

It contained my contributor copies The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, volume two. Keen!

I want to give a shout out Mike Munsil, who created Liberty Hall Writers, an online group that does weekly flash challenges. My story, “Evil Robot Monkey” came out of one of those. Each weekend, you get a trigger and then have an hour and a half to write a story.

The story itself is sort of the product of two triggers. See, at Shimmer we have a running gag which stemmed from when we were testing the submission system. Beth sent in a trial submission called “Harry Potter and the Evil Robt Monkeys!”¹ Brilliant. I decided that whatever the trigger was, my story would have that title. The trigger itself was a piece of clockwork art.

Here’s the first bit of the story.

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

You can see that I kept the hairy potter.

1. The misspelling is intentional. You’d be amazed by how many people send in stories with misspellings within the first five lines. [↩]

Solaris has purchased my short story “Evil Robot Monkey” for The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume 2.

I couldn’t be more pleased. I had a long chat with the Solaris gentlemen, George Mann and Christian Dunn, at Readercon about robot monkeys. It was bar conversation, but I just happened to have this short called “Evil Robot Monkey” and on a whim I sent it over thinking they would get a laugh out of the title.

I didn’t realize that they were actively reading for an anthology.

Behold! A sale. Remember back when I was watching the paint dry and said I had three good things I couldn’t mention yet? This is number 2.

Here’s a teaser snippet of the first few lines for you.

Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.

I’ll let you know when the book is available for pre-order.