Alex Shvartsman (Brooklyn, NY) is the author of The Best of All Possible Planets (2026), Kakistocracy (2023), The Middling Affliction (2022), and Eridani's Crown (2019) novels. Over 150 of his stories and his translations from Russian have appeared in Analog, Asimov's Clarkesworld, F&SF, Nature, Reactor, Strange Horizons, and several Year's Best volumes. He won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction, was a three-time finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction and a three-time finalist for the BSFA Award.

His website is http://www.alexshvartsman.com.

Unidentified Funny Objects 10 edited by Alex Shvartsman

The Unidentified Funny Objects series delivers an annual dose of funny, zany, and unusual science fiction and fantasy stories. All-new fiction from the genre's top voices! In this volume you'll find:

* Space orc diplomats

* Hapless necromancers

* Gamification of everything

* Plumbing problems at an evil wizard's castle

* Get-rich-quick schemes gone wrong

* Seussian cyberpunk

No AI! Written by organic, locally-sourced human authors.

CURATOR'S NOTE

The iconic, long-running series of humorous science fiction and fantasy short stories, featuring some of the best-known names in the field as well as exciting newcomers. This one is hot of the presses, it was only published last month! – Alex Shvartsman

 

REVIEWS

  • •"This book is a delight. There are a lot of giggles here, and every now and then you'll laugh your head off. This is a hoot from start to finish."

    – Paul Cook, Galaxy's Edge

  • •"Shvartsman delivers a wonderful anthology and if you want to broaden your humorous SFF reading, Unidentified Funny Objects is a great place to start."

    – Mieneke van der Salm, A Fantastical Librarian
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Hot0n

by Mark S. Bailen

The sky was the color of green eggs and ham.

Hort0n, a data hustler with a head full of RAM, bio-hacked ears and a double-cammed proboscis, sat perched on a stool in the Red Fish District, slurping up soup, cold, gray and viscous.

"Gadzooks!" Hort0n yelled, spooking a poodle eating noodles. The data egg in his skull was emitting oodles and oodles, disconcerting blurts and high-pitched alerts, broadcast at four-hundred-and-fifty megahertz. Hort0n had taken a job that he came to regret, from a sneetch clinic that he wished he could forget. Data had been forced into his skull, through and through, by a surgical device devised by Thing One and Thing Two.

Unsure where to go next, Hort0n rode a tuk-tuk to Na Nupp, a maze of snook parlors and underground zoos, where he met with a fox with very long lashes, a pair of blue socks, and mirrored sunglasses. The fox directed him to a shielded backroom, scanned him top to bottom, and a screen flashed into view.

"Just as I suspected," said the fox. "You have a severe case of Whos."

"Whose?"

"Not whose. WHOS. And not one or two. A whole Whoville of Whos are living in you."

Hort0n collapsed. "Full sentences, please."

The fox batted her lashes. "Fine, here's my diagnosis. In the recesses of your noggin you're hatching unsanctioned consciousnesses, artificial thought processes, entire nascent populouses, enough quantum-level qualia to supply a major metropolis."

Hort0n tugged on his proboscis. "So what's my prognosis?"

"Galoshes."

That wasn't the sentience Hort0n was hoping for. He felt woozy and lay on the floor. Darn Thing One and Two for putting him under the knife and stuffing his head with algorithmically-generated life.

"Can you free the Whos?" Hort0n begged. "Get them out of my egg?"

The fox clicked her extendable claws. "Sorry, but I must refuse. If you wanna save your Whos, visit WinterSeuss."

"The AI who's mostly insane? Who enslaves millions of Whos in virtual domains?"

"The very same."

Hort0n felt miserable and rotten. Weak and downtrodden. Ennui and malaise. And four other French words that he couldn't explain.

And yet from somewhere inside, the Whos continued to cry. "Help us, Hort0n! Help us, please! Don't let us be uploaded into nefarious machines, stored on prison planets, and in torture routines. Oh, the places we will go!"