Thumbs up for The Fox’s Tower and Other Stories by Yoon Ha Lee. Science fiction and fantasy short stories.
I’ve raved about Lee’s work here before and will do so again. If you’re not ready to commit to his bizarre and wonderful trilogy about starship warfare based around calendars, try The Fox’s Tower. Most of the stories are at most a page or two, poetic and strange and warm. This collection is a box of rich chocolates perfect to be savored one at a time when life looks grim and you need a little jolt of beauty.
Since dragons did not exist in their part of the galaxy, the robots decided to build one. They spent the better part of a year in research and design. They consulted symbologies burned pixel by pixel into old starships and oral histories collected from deep-dreaming visitors in ages past. They tested exoskeletons based on various luminous alloys, for robots are nothing if not empirically minded. And when they had any doubts, they erred in the direction of beauty.
–from “The Dragon Festival”
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