Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin - 2019 - Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

 Emergency Skin by N. K. Jemisin - 2019 - Winner of the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

K. Jemisin is one of, it not most, award winning Science Fiction writers of all time. She is the first author ever to win the genre’s most prestigious award, The Hugo Award for Best novel of the year in three consecutive years for her Broken Earth Trilogy.  

I’m glad that her Emergency Skin (reading time 45 minutes) can be read free by Amazon Prime members (or purchased as a Kindle for $1.95).  This is a very imaginative work with a marvelously realized future setting.

The Earth seemed headed for self destruction.  An elite group left for a distant location to continue humanity.  Now much time has gone by and

an explorer is being sent to report on the current state of the planet. Centuries have gone by and he is being prepared to encounter a ravaged place.  He finds something very unexpected.

So far I have read book one of The Broken Earth Trilogy and hope to finish it next year.  I have her full The Inheritance Trilogy and hope to also read that in 2021.

From the Author’s website 

N. K. Jemisin is the first author in the genre’s history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards, for her Broken Earth trilogy. Her work has won the Nebula and Locus Awards. The first book in her current Great Cities trilogy, The City We Became, is a New York Times bestseller. Her speculative works range from fantasy to science fiction to the undefinable; her themes include resistance to oppression, the inseverability of the liminal, and the coolness of Stuff Blowing Up. She’s been an instructor for Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. Among other critical work, she was formerly the speculative book reviewer at the New York Times. She is a MacArthur 2020 Genius Grant Fellow. In her spare time she’s a gamer and gardener, responsible for saving the world from Ozymandias, her dangerously intelligent ginger cat, and his destructive sidekick Magpie. Essays and fiction excerpts are available at nkjemisin.com.