Emergency Skin (Forward collection)

4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars | 7,643 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 12-18-2024


About this item

Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.

Audible narration by Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery)


Top reviews from the United States

  • Colleen Villasenor
    5.0 out of 5 stars A great story and commentary on modern society
    Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2024
    This story may be too "woke" for some people. It suggests that if we just abandon prejudice and start caring for people, we can change the world. I love the careful unfolding of the author's message. The foibles of our current society are revealed in an organic development of the plot. I will be recommending this to others
  • Kindle Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff
    Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2024
    Maybe a bit too Utopian for me, but I can get behind "the Elites left, and the planet got better. Solid Sci Fi, check it out.
  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this!!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2024
    This was, hands down, the best short story I’ve read. If only it were true, how wonderful our world would be!!
  • dwight
    3.0 out of 5 stars good writing; kinda communist
    Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
    book was fun with decent writing. this said, felt like 80% propaganda where a bunch of white male founders flee earth on a musk spaceship and then all earth's problems are solved when people abolish borders, work together, pay folks what they need regardless of output, increase social safety nets, and work on the "right" problems. the main character proceeds to see the error in their white techno capitalist wage slave ways and plans a revolution on the colony planet.

    pleasantly, it was a gentle rebuke rather than a particularly hateful one, but perhaps as a techno capitalist myself it felt like wishful thinking and in blatant disregard of which swathe of society has historically invented the most useful stuff (imho us techno capitalists).
  • ACK
    5.0 out of 5 stars best yet
    Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2024
    I began this series a while ago and came back to this today. It’s the best yet in the series, and I can’t wait to read more of Jamisin’s work. It’s such a beautiful snapshot of how life can and will be once the lower and lesser classes unite for the good of all, over and against the workings of the billionaire class. So lovely.
  • Waspish Bookie
    4.0 out of 5 stars This was an excellent short story
    Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2024
    This was nothing like I expected. Jamisin puts allegory to the concept that the oppressed understands their oppressors to an exceptional level. That compassion can accompany strength, protection and logic. That to "defend yourself" does not have to include the death of another.
    It is an incredibly unique take on a dystopian future that I actually find hopeful and inspiring.
  • Barb Waloven
    5.0 out of 5 stars WOW
    Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2024
    At first I didn’t know what was happening but once I did…holy wow! Definitely unexpected and something that makes me think about how things are now and how they could end up.
  • Kindle Customer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining fantasy listening ????????
    Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2022
    Another will written fantasy world ???? paranormal space opera adventure thriller short story by N. K. Jemisin (Forward Collection book 3). They left earth ???? along time ago and now they are coming back to check ✔ things out. But they do not understand what they find. It can not be? I would recommend this series and authors too readers of fantasy paranormal novels ????????. Enjoy the adventure of reading or listening to books ????. 2022 ????

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