Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century

Winner of the 2023 Washington State Book Award
Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award
Winner OF the 2022 DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD
Finalist for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize

In the twelve unforgettable tales of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, the strange is made familiar and the familiar strange, such that a girl growing wings on her legs feels like an ordinary rite of passage, while a bug-infested house becomes an impossible, Kafkaesque nightmare. Each story builds a new world all its own: a group of children steal a haunted doll; a runaway bride encounters a sea monster; a vendor sells toy boxes that seemingly control the passage of time; an insomniac is seduced by the Sandman. These visions of modern life wrestle with themes of death and technological consequence, guilt and sexuality, and unmask the contradictions that exist within all of us.  

Mesmerizing, electric, and wholly original, Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century blurs the boundaries of the real and fantastic, offering intricate and surprising insights into human nature.

Listen to the story “#ClimbingNation” on Levar Burton Reads.
Read the story “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” on Tor.com.
Read the story “Sandman,” introduced by Kevin Brockmeier, on Electric Literature.

“An endlessly entertaining bestiary from one of the country's most exciting practitioners of fiction.”
—Minnesota Star Tribune

“A terrific collection of speculative fiction, with evocative, textured prose.”
—Locus

“This is storytelling at its finest.”
—Lightspeed

“There are no throwaway lines in Lesser Known Monsters; each story is rich and metamorphic.”
—Wired

“The best speculative fiction seeks to decenter, decolonize, and disrupt what many have taken for granted as the universe’s natural order. Or at least, that’s what I decided after reading Monsters, because in it, Fu leaps so nimbly from story to story, center to center, taking whatever perspective necessary to take nothing in the multiverse for granted.”
—South Seattle Emerald

“Fu’s mastery of clever, strange concepts is undeniable… Tautly controlled language communicates the lyrical imagination that is the foundation for each piece."
—ZYZZVA

“As they summon disturbing signs and wonders, the stories invite readers into portraits — of marriage, childhood, grief and our glum zeitgeist — that delight, provoke and entertain.”
—Toronto Star

“A must read. Not just for those who enjoy short stories, but anyone who is looking for small escapes from the real world.”
—International Examiner

“What we have here is not twelve stories but twelve shimmering portals into a surreal landscape that read like a warning.”
—Lithub

“Things get weird in this mesmerizing debut short story collection featuring 12 stories about macabre, beautifully dark images (not unlike a Lana Del Rey song)… Think: sexuality, guilt, contradictions, drama!”
—Nylon

“Vivid and surreal, readers of Carmen Maria Machado will enjoy this collection.”
—Buzzfeed

"How I loved the cool wit of these speculative stories! Filled with wonder and wondering, they’re haunted too by loss and loneliness, their imaginative reach profoundly rooted in the human condition." —Peter Ho Davies, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

"Each story is spectacularly smart, hybrid in genre, and bold with intention. The monsters here are not only fantastical figures, brought to life in hyper-reality, but also the strangest parts of the human heart. This book is as moving as it is monumental." —Lucy Tan, author of What We Were Promised

"Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century crushes the coal-dark zeitgeist between its teeth and spits out diamonds, beautiful but razor-sharp. This will be one of the best short story collections of the year." —Indra Das, author of The Devourers

"Precise, elegant, uncanny, and mesmerizing—each story in this collection is a crystalline gem. Kim Fu's talent is singularly inventive, her every sentence a surprise and an adventure." —Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution

“When a collection is evocative of authors as disparate as Ray Bradbury and Stephanie Vaughn, the only possible unifier can be originality: and that’s what a reader finds in Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. The strangest of concepts are tempered by grounded, funny dialogue in these stories, which churn with big ideas and craftily controlled antic energy.” —Naben Ruthnum, author of A Hero of Our Time