Paul Di Filippo delivers a thrilling and thought-provoking adventure through the multiverse in Vangie’s Ghosts, a compelling science fiction novel about one girl with extraordinary powers.
Three-year-old Vangie is mute and unresponsive. She shows no interest in the people or world around her, much to the frustration of her callous adoptive parents. Little do they know, Vangie is otherwise occupied observing “ghosts”—an infinite number of versions of herself, in an infinite number of parallel universes.
When a tornado hits their trailer and Vangie is severely injured, she makes a desperate leap into another timeline where she survives the tornado, but her adoptive parents do not. So begins a life of shuttling through various foster homes, cultivating her abilities to seek out alternate timelines, and making jumps calculated to better her circumstances in order to avoid the exploitation of adults who seek to harness her powers for their own means.
Vangie never communicates with her avatars, until one day the “Council”—a group of Vangies—appear to her and warn her of an ominous, growing threat in the multiverse: a man they call the Massive. And thus begins an epic conflict, spanning millennia and worlds, in a brutal effort to control the fate of the multiverse.
Vangie’s Ghosts is Paul Di Filippo at the height of his imagination and versatility, filled with compelling characters who play captivating roles in a story where the stakes are nothing less than existence itself.
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“Vangie’s Ghosts is brilliant and utterly surprising. With the sure hand of a master storyteller, Paul Di Filippo handles many characters and many timelines with unmatched confidence. The result: a funny, whimsical, sometimes horrifying novel that has everything I love about well-conceived science fiction. Vangie’s Ghosts contains multitudes.”
— Cadwell Turnbull, award-winning author of We Are the Crisis and No Gods, No Monsters
“Vangie’s Ghosts is a startling thought experiment, worthy of the deepest thinkers in academe. Plus it’s a hoot and a gas with a jolt at the end—swept along by Di Filippo’s fecund, playful prose. Call him the James Joyce of SF. The multiverse will never be the same again.”
— Rudy Rucker, author of the Ware Tetralogy“A dark, brilliantly realized extrapolation of the multiverse having its ever more various ways with human nature.”
— William Gibson, New York Times bestselling author of The Peripheral and Neuromancer“A witty novel of the multiverse and its abundant possibilities…Packed with winks and nods to the work of other science fiction writers, this will be a treat for genre fans.”
— Publishers Weekly“Fans of mind-bending, paradoxical time travel SF might think Vangie’s Ghosts is worth the jump.”
— BooklistBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Paul Di Filippo sold his first story in 1977. Since then, he has written and published over two hundred more, as well as several novels, amounting to roughly thirty-five books. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with his partner, Deborah Newton.
Emily Lawrence, an actor and writer, is passionate about bringing stories to life. Her greatest strength as a performer is her ability to bring herself to the role, creating a wide range of emotionally resonant performances that leap off the page, stage, or screen. Her favorite characters are complicated, conflicted, and still searching for their inner truths. She has narrated more than 425 audiobooks, many of which were USA Today or New York Times bestsellers, and has also worked in film, television, and theater. Born and raised in New York, she moved to Los Angeles shortly after receiving her BFA in drama from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She also lived in London while studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her greatest loves are acting and reading, so narrating audiobooks is a dream come true. Her other passions include traveling, LARPing, aerial circus, and chocolate.