“Hard scifi a’la Andy Weir, where the characters are forced to do quick-and-dirty science to succeed, with a touch of Becky Chambers’ focus on interpersonal relationships and interiority.”

—Goodreads reviewer

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“A lovely story of first contact that takes some unexpected twists and turns—full of lush biology, tense survival, empathy, and friendship.”

—S.B. Divya, award-winning author of Runtime,

Machinehood, and Meru | Lok (The Alloy Era)

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“Ellipses is a must-read science fiction tale of first contact, complete with a thousand-year journey through space, strange mysteries, and a uniquely puzzling alien species. A joyous exploration of life, culture, and survival in a massive universe where understanding other viewpoints is the most difficult obstacle humanity will ever encounter.”

—Jason Sanford, finalist for the Nebula and Philip K. Dick

Awards and author of Plague Birds

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​“Spires channels Octavia Butler’s gift for marrying rigorous science with intimate human stakes: grief, kinship, and the cost of survival.”

—Dr. Jake D. Turner, Exoplanet Astronomer, Cornell University

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“From cozy to dramatic, D.A. Xiaolin Spires takes us on a wild ski ride to a new world alongside its explorers and strange inhabitants.”

—Dr. Julie Nováková, award-winning author, scientist, science communicator and editor of Strangest of All and Life Beyond Us

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​“A gene-ark’s future rests with three researchers. D.A. Xiaolin Spires serves their first contact like ais kacang: colorful on the surface, treasures underneath.“

—Taiyo Fujii, award-winning author of Orbital Cloud, Man-Kind, and Gene Mapper, and former chair of the Science Fiction

and Fantasy Writers of Japan (Ais kacang is a dessert

from Southeast Asia featured in my novella.)

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​“In Ellipses, D.A. Xiaolin Spires infuses an ostensibly hard sf setting with a level of humanity and joyfulness that raises her work above that of many of her contemporaries. It’s a surprisingly upbeat tale of colonies and exploration that feels like an adrenaline shot into the heart of that most ancient of sf narratives, the first contact story.”

—Gary Gibson, author of Stealing Light,

Extinction Game and Echogenesis

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 Ellipses starts off as an exquisitely-detailed hard sci-fi yarn about first contact with genuinely intriguing aliens, and gradually becomes something deeper and more poignant. Spires explores the loss of the old world and the embrace of the new in effervescent prose that never loses its sense of awe at the universe. Further, she sets out themes of death and rebirth with elegant precision as the story unfolds. As the scientists, particularly the protagonist, Koharu, come to embrace their new world, they become both more human in so doing–and, paradoxically, something beyond human, as well. A lovely novella, well worth the read!

—Deborah L. Davitt, author of The Carrying Capacity of Paradise

 

“A somersaulting hard-SF novella with an achingly human core of companionship, heritage, and hope, made all the more joyful by Spires’s uniquely acrobatic prose.”

—Dafydd McKimm, author of My Heart and Other Planets, “The Colossus Stops” and “I Will You Back to Time and Space”