A physicist turned writer, Toh EnJoe is one of Japan’s leading literary figures. His work combines the rigor of mathematics with the humor and absurdity of the marvelous. Like an unsolvable equation stretched across a whiteboard of near-infinite length, you never quite know what you’ll end up with, even after you get to the end.

The title story, “The History of the Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire,” is an epic of interstellar intrigues, metafictional examination of science fiction’s famous tropes, and a 99-item list! This story has everything, literally.

“A-to-Z Theory” is a fable about mathematical research, Sherlock Holmes’s archnemesis Moriarty, and universes colliding hard enough to change history…and math.

“Endoastronomy” asks the question, “If subtraction was banned, how would we know anything about anything?” The answer may lie in the stars, in the bottle, or in the nature of inquisitive, heretical children.

“Shuffle Drive” presents a brand-new way to move between galaxies as easily as shuffling a deck of cards. As everyone knows, shuffling cards incorrectly can lead to catastrophic failure, so it is into chaos we all go!

In the essay “A Title Offered by Machine” EnJoe-san explores the future, and present, of human language, machine language, artificial intelligence, and neurological emotion. Can you feel him?

And featuring, “Get in the Robot,” an in-depth Q&A with new series coeditor Nick Mamatas; topics include giant robots, bobby socks, ghost stories, the difference between Anglophone and Japanese science fiction, the beauty of mathematics, the future of AI, the Death of the Author and the Death of the Character, and also Godzilla.