Lake of Souls: The Collected Short Fiction

This retrospective collection of the short stories of Hugo Award– and Nebula Award–winning Leckie (Translation State) also includes two new tales. The titular story combines classic science-fiction themes, as the last surviving crew member of a cryogenic ship must make a new life on an unknown planet and meets a native of that planet who has to determine whether this weird creature is “people.” The story evolves into a search for identity and the results of finding it. While “Lake of Souls” and seven other previously published stories here are not part of Leckie’s established universes, the collection does include seven stories in the universe of The Raven Tower and three from the “Imperial Radch” series, including the other new story in this collection, “The Creation and Destruction of the World,” a lyrical creation myth for the world that gave birth to the empire.