7 at the beginning of the book

15 People Who Stay and Fight
The Birth of a Great City 33
Witch of the Red Earth 61
Alchemist 95
Wastewater Engine 119
Dragon Cloud Sky 167
Trojan Girl 187
Graduate Representative 221
The Storyteller's Agent 249
Brides of Heaven 267
Evaluators 287
Wake Up and Walk 313
Elevator Dancer 341
Cuisine de Memoir 349
Stone Hunger 371
405 on the Rex River
Sleep Wizard 427
Henosis 475
Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows 487
U Train 505
Non-zero probability 517
Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Ghosts of the City Beneath the Calm Waters 535

Acknowledgements 568

A new horizon in SF fantasy, N.
K. Jemisin's first short story collection
Includes 22 works covering steampunk, urban fantasy, and more.

Locus Award and Alex Award Winner
Nominated for the World Fantasy Award and British Fantasy Award

N., who made unprecedented history by winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel for three consecutive years with the "Broken Earth" trilogy.
K. Jemisin's first collection of short stories has been published.
The title, "How Long Will It Take to Get to the Black Future Moon?" is taken from the author's essay of the same name, in which she discusses how difficult it was for her as a Black woman to love science fiction and fantasy. The book contains 22 stories written between 2004 and 2017, and won the Locus Award for Best Anthology and the American Library Association's Alex Award.
It contains short stories that provide a glimpse into Jemisin's wide-ranging literary world, including the works that formed the basis for the conception of the full-length series ("The Birth of a Great City," "The Stone Hunger," "The Sleep Wizard"), reinterpretations of masterpieces by science fiction masters Ursula Le Guin and Robert Heinlein, and "Non-Zero Probability," which was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Short Story.
Although the collection covers a truly diverse range of time, space, and subject matter, including a steampunk story set in 19th-century America where airships were commonplace, and trade negotiations with alien life forms in the 23rd century, the diverse characters and the sense of resistance against the old order and framework permeate the entire collection, making us think again about the author's words, "This is a chronicle of my growth as a writer and activist."

“So look.
There is a future there.
“Let’s all set off together.”
From a perfect utopian society to an apocalypse where only humans vanish! A feast of colorful thought experiments.

The first story, "The Those Who Stay and Fight," takes place in the technologically advanced city of Um-Helat, a city filled with happiness and prosperity, similar to the setting of Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas."
So, is this place, where diversity is respected and members care for one another, also sustained by the sacrifice of the child in the basement, like Omelas? Jemisin presents a challenging, yet by no means easy, choice in the ending.
The same is true of "Walking Awake," which is based on Robert Heinlein's short story "The Puppet's Secret," which deals with a body snatcher who controls the human body.

"The Sky of Dragon Clouds," which depicts a future where humanity is divided between two choices: living on a polluted Earth due to an environmental disaster or escaping into space; the series "Trojan Girl" and "Graduate Representative," in which creatures from cyberspace advance into human society; "Brides of Heaven," in which only Muslim female researchers survive on a colony planet during a space exploration; "The Evaluators," which records the process from intellectual exploration of extraterrestrial life to trade negotiations; and the postcard "Elevator Dancer," set in a controlled society dominated by religious dogma, each impressively convey unique characters in unique situations.

There are also works that address the theme of the end in an extremely everyday and familiar way.
In "By the Rex River," abstract beings such as gods and spirits wander the streets or stand in line at Starbucks after humanity suddenly disappears from the face of the earth, leaving no one to believe in them. In "Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows," individuals yearn for connection with others in a reality where everything except their online records, such as chats and emails, are reset every day.
The Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated novel "None Zero Probability" depicts the daily lives of ordinary citizens adapting to New York City, where disasters like subway accidents occur frequently and serious illnesses are easily cured, so to speak, where the probability of any event occurring has been reversed.

“But wait a minute.
Let's go back.
Yes, I said it was a black character.”

In the foreword, Jemisin acknowledges the marginalization of women and people of color in the industry, both as writers and within their own work, and explains that she consistently included black characters in her stories because she could not afford to be excluded.
Such efforts are evident in all the works included, but among them, “The Red Soil Witch,” which depicts a woman’s struggle to protect her daughter from an evil fairy in Alabama in the 1960s when the civil rights movement was spreading; “The Sewage Engine,” which depicts a romance between a female spy from Haiti, the first black republic to escape slavery through revolution, and a mixed-race American woman; and “Sins, Saints, Dragons and Ghosts of the City Beneath Calm Waters,” which depicts characters struggling against hatred embodied in the form of “monsters” in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, are works that will remain even more appealing and leave a strong aftertaste now that the reality of entrenched racism is being revealed day by day.