Content levels
Protagonist archetypes
Tropes
Synopsis
These 18 tales represent Scott Robinson's best short fiction in the new millennium, bridging the sci-fi/fantasy spectrum - horror, dystopia, time travel, AI/robots, and humor. They include: - an expedition of time travelers, trapped in the past, setting themselves up as deities; - a day when the sun doesn't rise, and madness takes its place; - an automated world inhabited only by a family dog; - a feral robot, lost in the Pacific Northwest, raiding the local neighborhood; - a billionaire's vanity AI that bursts beyond its firewalls and vanishes into the Internet; - a hypochondriac witch who cooks up an infinite joy spell from her bed in a British sweet shop; - a team of interstellar engineers, hosted in android bodies, who inexplicably begin to dream; - a nameless wraith who endlessly leaps across the decades, from one night into another, selecting strangers for death; - a magnificent castle on a faraway, resplendent planet, where a young woman from elsewhere discovers long-lost family and an unspoken horror...
Is Vault: The Very Best of Scott Robinson appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 16 and up.
This short story collection features dark sci-fi and fantasy themes including death, madness, AI gone rogue, and horror elements, with moderate violence and disturbing scenarios across varied speculative settings.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, no sexual content, and mild language. Content notes include death, madness, and horror.
Who'll love this
Teens who enjoy thought-provoking sci-fi and fantasy with dark twists will appreciate these imaginative tales of time travel, rogue AI, and otherworldly mysteries.