Larissa Lai Reads Tonight

In the spring of 2004, a weird and wonderful friendship formed between digital artist Myron Campbell and writer Larissa Lai . Both had the same sense of living "half in another world that is haunted by strange human/animal hybrids". Inspired by Lai's work, Myron created the eerie, saturated image pictured above for the reissue of When Fox Is A Thousand.

I like this image because it begins to hint at the compelling, shape-shifting creatures--part woman part fox, or bioengineered factory worker who is 0.03% carp--that populate her stories. And at the curious interpolations of time-frames, with plots twinned across mythic pasts and dystopian futures: medieval China and a contemporary Pacific Northwest coexisting uneasily.

Like Hiromi Goto and Nalo Hopkinson, Lai plays with science fiction, stretching it open.
Lai reads tonight @ 8 pm at Spartacus Books (319 W. Hastings) with Egyptian American poet Maged Zahar.