A Kirkus Science Fiction and Fantasy Book You'll Want to Read in July

A 2016 Publishers Weekly Best Summer Read

A Foreword 4 Great Indie Sci-Fi Titles for Summer 2016

[STAR] “In this very fine reprint anthology, Weisman has brought together 22 SF stories by authors who, although not generally associated with the genre, are clearly fellow travelers (not the ominous invaders suggested by the title). Among the major names are Pulitzer Prize–winner Junot Díaz, George Sanders, Katherine Dunn, Jonathan Lethem, Amiri Baraka, W.P. Kinsella, Steven Millhauser, Robert Olen Butler, and Molly Gloss. Among the best of the consistently strong stories are Díaz’s “Monstro,” the horrifying tale of a disease outbreak in Haiti; Gloss’s near-perfect first-contact story, “Lambing Season”; Kinsella’s totally bizarre “Reports Concerning the Death of the Seattle Albatross Are Somewhat Exaggerated”; Ben Loory’s fable-like “The Squid Who Fell in Love with the Sun”; and Saunders’s “Escape from Spiderhead,” a deeply sexy tale of wild experimental science. In general, the stories tend toward satire and emphasize fine writing more than hitting genre beats—technology is usually a means to an end rather than the center of the story—but most of them could easily have found homes in SF magazines. This volume is a treasure trove of stories that draw equally from SF and literary fiction, and they are superlative in either context.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Further proof, if any more were necessary, that the line between genre and literary fiction is simply speculative.”
—Library Journal

“Invaders lives up to its tagline – ’22 tales from the outer limits of literature’. In here, some of the best writers have freestyled on a blank page, without care for rules or patterns. And in so doing, they’ve produced stories that push the envelope not only of sci-fi, but of literature as a whole.”
—Bookmunch

"This is tight writing and perfectly formed . . . It is evident the authors are playing with the genre, and revelling in it.”
—Strange Alliances

“This new anthology from Jacob Weisman collects an intriguing set of short stories from authors not typically associated with science fiction.”
—The Verge

“Invaders is a playful and imaginative exploration of what it means to write in the field of science fiction”
—AV Club

“Well, damn. From the first page to the last, Invaders surprised and intoxicated me, offering one stirring, visionary, warm-hearted, funny, probing story after another. Reading them in quick succession made me feel as if the world was flickering before my eyes, ricocheting from one possible reality to another, beneath a dozen different suns. It would be hard to devise a better survey of those contemporary short fiction writers, both celebrated and undersung, who have worked to smuggle the methods of science fiction into the mainstream.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, bestselling author of The Brief History of the Dead

“For almost forty years I've believed and practiced and preached that there's no necessary distance between ‘high literature’ and ‘science fiction.’ Invaders is convincing proof. Funny, absurd, frightening, streetwise, probing, heartbreaking—the fiction collected here touches all registers."
—Carter Scholz, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of Radiance and The Amount to Carry

“[O]ne of the best SFF collections I’ve read in years. It’s a smorgasbord of visionary and thought-provoking stories…”
—Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased

“Consistently excellent”
—Foreword Reviews

“This collection really explores the outer limits of literature as it claims. I recommend it to you.”
—Magic Realism

“A superb batch of stories by literary authors who have invaded science fiction — and left distinct footprints behind.”
—Black Gate

“The stories are smart and balanced, with a dark side but highly readable.”
—Lit Reactor