Gwyneth Jones’ short story collection, The Universe of Things, has just been published by Aqueduct Press, and is available for purchase here (at a reduced price until Jan 25). (Amazon lists the volume here).
I’m proud that I was asked to write the Introduction to the volume. Jones is one of the greatest and most important science fiction authors writing today, and she still hasn’t gotten quite the level of recognition that she deserves.
The volume is named after one of the stories therein. The phrase “the universe of things” comes originally from Shelley’s poem “Mont Blanc.” In addition to writing the Introduction to Jones’ volume, I have also myself written an essay called “The Universe of Things”; the essay cites both Jones’ story and Shelley’s poem in the course of arguing for a Whiteheadian understanding, or revision, of the claims of object-oriented ontology. I now seem to have written several essays more or less on this theme; I am working, hopefully, towards a short book that will address the question of “Whitehead in the light of speculative realism”; and that book, if I manage to finish it, will probably also bear the title, The Universe of Things, thus continuing the semantic chain.