And Side by Side They Wander

A far-future gang attempts an interstellar museum heist in this crafty sci-fi novella from Tanzer (Creatures of Charm and Hunger). Led by Tarquin Lennox, a wealthy human man affiliated with Earth’s last corporation, the crew also includes Arakachi Misora, “a set of sextuplets folded into a single body” acting as the team’s muscle; Jack Kirby, a powerful machine intelligence there to interface with the computer systems; Tchick-tchick, the insect-like alien hive mind captaining their space craft; and Fennel Tycho, Jack’s former attaché and the tale’s first-person narrator. Their mission: to liberate six masterpieces of Earth art from a distant Celerian museum and replace them with exact copies. In the 21st century, humanity allowed the Celerians to temporarily safeguard these pieces in exchange for technological solutions to Earth’s “multifarious” problems, but the aliens subsequently refused to return them. The mission gets off to a rocky start when the team learns they no longer have corporate support—Tarquin has gone rogue. As they forge ahead, Fennel recounts the wacky sequence of events that brought her and humanity to this point, complicating the otherwise straightforward adventure with poignant observations about the significance of original art and art history. This bite-size romp is a wild and thought-provoking ride. (May)