Fiction Reviews
Tailored Realities
(2025) Brandon Sanderson, Gollancz, £25, hrdbk, 429pp, ISBN 978-1-399-63322-2
Here we have a collection of 10 short stories from the prolific Brandon Sanderson, spanning twenty-five years of his writing career. Each story is followed by a postscript where he explains more about the origins of the story, problems he had with the plot, the characters, the ending, which is really interesting. The very first story, “Inception”, is over 60 pages long, and the very last story “Moment Zero” is a novella told over 150 pages Each story is accompanied by an illustration and some of the stories have appeared elsewhere, either in magazine form, or in an anthology, dating as far back as 2005. Sanderson admits that readers like his Cosmere tales most of all, but writing outside the Cosmereverse allows him to flex his writing muscles, develop some ideas, and just have fun, and Tailored Realities is fun in places, presenting science fiction and fantasy stories, with one of them – “Defending Elysium” – straying into his Cytoverse world.
The stories vary in length. One –“ Probability Approaching Zero” – is only about 500 words, concerning a human who has been chosen to have his consciousness uplifted into a higher state of being, but who is doing the uplifting, and is he the first human this has happened to? And will he be the last? An intriguing very short piece, and who knows, Sanderson might revisit this story in the future.
But let’s go back to the start and the story “Snapshot” where the police can enter a “snapshot” of a day to try and find clues that will solve a crime that happened that day. Here, two Detectives – Anthony Davis and Chaz – enter a simulation of the day, an artificial construct inside which a city’s population exist, only to be erased when the exercise is over. It’s an interesting and morally grey scenario, and in his postscript Sanderson mentions that of all his work, this is the one that is closest to appearing on screen.
“Brain Dump” is a new story, and Sanderson explains he was in an Apple story with his wife who was looking for a new i-phone, while he was thinking about a designer shop selling designer brains, culminating in this story about a couple shopping for the perfect brain for their child. A fun, quick read.
Originally inspired by a dialogue-only writing exercise, “I Hate Dragons” presents the reader with Skip, who has the ability to smell delicious to dragons, a handy gift to have if you want to hunt dragons, which Skip would rather not do, but others want to use him to get their dragon. Skip also has the ability to hear spelling and punctuation, which is a pretty neat concept. Again, this is a funny, and fast story, with a slightly longer version available through Sanderson’s website.
“Dreamer” is a Sanderson horror story about people who can jump bodies chasing each other. No spoilers here, because it would be easy to spoil the story with more details, but it is another fast and slightly furious story in keeping with some of the noir-ish elements of several of the stories collected here.
We are in Matrix territory in “Perfect State” where humans are called Liveborn and stored in jars, and live in a “State”, which is their own simulated world inspired by their personality. The main character Kai lives in his own personal state which he rules and has magical powers and his state is populated by AI constructs called Machineborns that exist to add to Kai’s greatness. There are “Communal States” which the liveborn can visit, that Kai has no real interest in, until he has to go on a date with another Liveborn that will change his view of himself and the personal world he lives in. It is an interesting idea, and one Sanderson struggled to fulfil as he reveals in his postscript.
“Defending Elysium” is the oldest story in the collection, taking place in his Skyward oeuvre and the Cytoverse, and is a sort of prequel to the events related there being set well before the novels that followed, and gives the answers to some of the questions that these novels threw up as Jason Write, Phone Company (PC) employee, investigates the disappearance of a colleague and we learn how humans discovered faster than light travel and what happened when they first encountered aliens.
I won’t review every story, but “Firstborn” and “Mitosis” are two of the stronger stories in the collection which ends with the novella “Moment Zero”, a fast-paced adventure story involving time travel, wormholes and zombie-like creatures called Revenants who feed on people’s spirit or soul, rather than their brains, and bodies. The story starts off with two detectives – Lisa and Andrew investigating a missing person, but coming across a wormhole experiment that goes wrong. The moment this happens - Moment Zero – sends Lisa into the past by a few days and Andrew into the future where the Revenants are, lucky Lisa! Now at either end of this event, they have to do what they can to stop it happening. Like “Snapshot”, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn this is in TV or film development somewhere.
Sanderson fans will no doubt snap this up, and while some stories are fairly short, bouncing off wacky ideas and writing exercises, the longer stories see Sanderson flex his action and adventure muscles, and giving some tales a noir-ish, hard-boiled vibe. It is really interesting to read his postscripts where he reveals the problems he encountered with some stories and aspects like character arcs and endings, even writing several endings to try and get it right. Also interesting are his self-doubts and struggles when he was an unpublished writer. He wanted to be a writer, but it looked like that was going to be a long way off, and might never happen. No wonder given the success that he has had, that sometimes he thinks he is living in his own simulated world, like the characters in “Perfect State”.
Ian Hunter
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