The Summer
Book Sale

I’ve cleared some book­shelves, and I am now pleased to offer the har­vest to you in my online shop. I’ll release these books in tranches over the next few weeks. Today, we begin with (1) books acquired while researching and writing Moonbound, and (2) sci­ence fiction.

I’ve stamped all of these with my ex libris, which adapts the sigil of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore:

Take a look, follow your nose, snag a book. Their con­di­tions range from good to as-new; all are totally readable. I’ll ship next Monday.

I’m Robin Sloan, a fiction writer with wide-ranging interests, which I capture here in my newsletter. This is an archived edition, originally transmitted in July 2025. You can sign up to receive future editions using the form at the bottom of the page.

“But Sloan, my book­shelves overflow,” you say, “while my pantry goes bare.”

Over at Fat Gold, we’ve got you covered: our Summer Flash Sale fea­tures the olive oil remaining from our spe­cial batch pre­pared for annual sub­scribers in December, plus an oppor­tu­nity for free shipping.

That December oil, milled by me from arbosana olives, is really deli­cious, and it comes labeled with a magnet based on an abstract painting by Georgia O’Keeffe.

A few notes on book­shelves.

It goes without saying that I am of the antili­brary party. In the pos­ses­sion of books unread, there is not shame but virtue: the pur­suit of a super­cool project: the pro­duc­tion of a perfect-for-you library; an intel­lec­tual armory.

Some frac­tion of the books I’m selling are in as-new con­di­tion because they are, indeed, unread. Naturally, I’ll never tell you which are which 🥸

Other books are doubles, and their twins remain with me.

How did I decide which to sell, which to keep? In general, any book that feels dif­fi­cult or impos­sible to reac­quire must remain. Used book­store finds are more pre­cious than titles pur­chased new. Ref­er­ence has a firmer grip on my shelves than fiction. Among my most beloved books are my niche dictionaries:

I do believe a great library is both a prac­tical asset and a per­sonal achievement. It’s a way of saying, this is who I am; this is what I value. Saying it to yourself, most of all. I’m very proud of my shelves! Browsing them, you’d quickly iden­tify major preoccupations, glaring omissions: and those things are me.

Makes you think about the power of choosing what, and what not, to read. The reader’s mind is molded by books, but, after a cer­tain age, that same mind also eval­u­ates what it reads: con­necting and integrating, accepting and rejecting, all in realtime. So it’s a dynamic process, rich with feedback; cybernetic.

Note that this simple trick is beyond the AI models, as cur­rently constituted: in their training, every book, every sentence, every word, is equally true.

As a writer, it doesn’t take much for a book to jus­tify its expense. I’m thinking of those dictionaries: if such a book sup­plies one character’s name, one deli­cious phrase, it has earned its place on my shelves forever. Books don’t con­tain such poten­tial in equal density. In my experience, the odder the volume — antique, academic, abstruse — the better the bet.

A few high­lights from the cur­rent offerings:

Writing Tools is for sure the most useful book I’ll offer all summer: a bright, indis­pens­able companion. This is one of my four (!?) copies; THREE REMAIN IN EMER­GENCY RESERVE.

Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird is slim and superfun — an intro­duc­tion to the East Asian four-act story structure.

Der Klang Der Familie: Berlin, Techno, and the Fall of the Wall is a strange and evoca­tive oral history; I wrote about it a year ago.

Junk­yard Planet is rich and surprising — a key influ­ence on Moonbound’s Matter Circus!

Chil­dren of Time is the best kind of sci-fi, spec­tac­ular in its imagination. Read it along­side The Moun­tain in the Sea. Other minds!

Per­i­hilion is scary and timely — a drama of the hottest summer ever.

The 2020 Com­mis­sion Report is also timely, also scary, as well as super inter­esting in terms of form and genre. I wish it wasn’t quite so gripping, but here we are!

Area X, the omnibus edi­tion of the Southern Reach trilogy, is a gor­geous object — entirely char­ac­ter­istic of MCD’s pro­duc­tions.

As an endeavor, this book sale is only mar­gin­ally economic. It’s really mostly aesthetic, even political.

This is a modest cel­e­bra­tion of the fact that (1) a phys­ical book can be passed along, and (2) the act actu­ally … makes every­thing better? The book is bur­nished by enjoy­ment and transmission; the reading ecosystem grows live­lier by a degree. Denser. Think of walking a trail, your foot­steps beating down the dirt, main­taining that same trail.

This isn’t what hap­pens with e-books, because in the dig­ital domain, one copy is a mil­lion copies, and the whole com­mer­cial logic unravels. More than com­mer­cial: there are other dimen­sions in play: social, aesthetic, even emotional.

It is para­dox­i­cally the lim­i­ta­tions of the phys­ical book — the fact that it can only be in one place at a time; that fact that it bears marks of its use; the fact that when a friend presses a book into your hands, they are actu­ally giving some­thing up—that make it so pro­duc­tive as a cul­tural object.

Readers of my reality zine will detect a recur­ring theme. I’ll reprint that one before the summer is over.

2025 is appar­ently the year Sloan went phys­ical! Maybe the weightlifting had some­thing to do with it.

I’ve had Max Schödl’s paint­ings book­marked for a while; I love their glit­tering sharpness. You can find sub­stan­tial col­lec­tions here and here. For this edi­tion, I chose the ones with books.

The Summer Book Sale is on! Fat Gold’s flash sale, too!

From the lab,

Robin

P.S. More books to come — I’ll release another tranche in a week or so.

July 2025