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Happy Book Birthday to Nick Mamatas + New Fall Workshops Drop Tomorrow

Published 24 days ago • 1 min read
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Dear Writers,
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Happy Fall. Our very own Introduction to Fiction Instructor Nick Mamatas has just published his book Kalivas!
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Nick Mamatas' latest novel, Kalivas, came out this week on Clash Books. Nick teaches Intro to Fiction with SF Creative Writing Institute on Saturday afternoons.
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In this science-fiction revision of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Kalivas lives in solitude on the Farallon Islands, off the San Francisco Bay, until the Master and his daughter M colonize his lonely realm.
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Kalivas, the last free-range human, is pressed into completing dangerous and menial tasks on the Master’s behalf. The new regime is disrupted when a great storm brings more cyborg mainlanders to the island shores. Can Kalivas finally break free and reclaim his islands, or will his affection for M keep him tied to the Master forever?
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Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest reframes the drama as an anticolonial fantasia through futuristic gizmos, a broken continent, and a one-act play invoking the theater of the absurd. Told by the Bard’s least civilized and most human creation, Nick Mamatas crafts a micro-epic for the modern era.
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You can buy your copy of Kalivas at your local bookstore, here!
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Nick Mamatas

Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels, over one hundred short stories, and many essays and articles. His novels include I Am Providence and The Second Shooter. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Asimov's Science Fiction, Tor.com and many other venues. Much of it was recently collected in The People's Republic of Everything. Nick is also an anthologist; his latest book is 120 Murders; Dark Fiction Inspired by Alternative Music. His latest novel, Kalivas! Or, Another Tempest, just came out in September 2025.
Here's what some other writers have to say about Kalivas:
"Dripping with slippery decadence, dark humor, and drones, Kalivas! is the version of Shakespeare we need as an antidote to the ascendency of the tech bros. Like what might happen if you crossed Gene Wolfe with William Gibson, forced the resulting hybrid to sit in a series of tech product launches, and asked it to predict the future."
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—Brian Evenson, author of Last Days
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"An inventive, invigorating science fiction romp. This is the nanobot Shakespeare our dystopian lives demand."
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—Silvia Moreno-Garcia, author of Mexican Gothic​
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"Kalivas! is not only a hilariously self-aware reworking of The Tempest but a vertiginously deep dive into the monstrous id of the techno-oligarchs of our own day, and the catastrophic futures they would call their dreams."
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—Vajra Chandrasekera, author of The Saint of Bright Doors and Rakesfall​
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Nick will be attending our Litquake reading at DogEared Books on Oct 25 from 8-9pm in San Francisco.

He also has a reading on Oct 24 at Books Inc in Alameda at 6:30pm.

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