
Emergency Skin: Forward collection
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2020 Audie Award Winner for Best Science Fiction
Audible narration by Jason Isaacs (Star Trek: Discovery)
What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award - winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.
An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: A graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind - hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.
N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
- Listening Length1 hour and 4 minutes
- Audible release dateSeptember 17, 2019
- LanguageEnglish
- ASINB07X7HG6GW
- VersionUnabridged
- Program TypeAudiobook
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Product details
Listening Length | 1 hour and 4 minutes |
---|---|
Author | N. K. Jemisin |
Narrator | Jason Isaacs |
Whispersync for Voice | Ready |
Audible.com Release Date | September 17, 2019 |
Publisher | Amazon Original Stories |
Program Type | Audiobook |
Version | Unabridged |
Language | English |
ASIN | B07X7HG6GW |
Best Sellers Rank | #11,639 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #41 in Science Fiction Anthologies & Short Stories #75 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books) #96 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) |
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This is climate sci-fi. This is in second person perspective. There are real bodies. There are discussions of class/race/gender divisions. All in a hugely creative package.
Great stuff!
Well, maybe not so fast. The premise of NK Jemisin’s 2019 “Emergency Skin”, a short story in the Amazon Forward Collection devoted to exploring how technology might affect human development and behavior, delves into this idea. And there is a basis in fact for this notion.
In 1951 scientists unexpectedly found certain human cells could be grown in a lab and replicate without dying after a set number of divisions, even though separate from the African-American donor, Henrietta Lacks, who had died. Generally, human cells lasted at most a few days. These were named the “HeLa” cells using the first two letters of her names and would be used by Jonas Salk in the development of his polio vaccine.
Set in a future the tale opens when an offshoot of the human race has moved to a distant planet. A traveler acting as a scout is returning to Earth, or Tellus, to acquire HeLa skin cultures. The scout is accompanied by the consensus consciousness of the new planet Founders through whom most of the action is narrated.
Presumably the scout is enclosed in some kind of composite skin – sort of like a cell wall - while traveling but able to “initiate emergency-skin fabrication” when needed.
As might be expected, this trip moves through unexpected discoveries and explanations for the missing results of past journeys from the distant planet.
The story development is mainly dialogue with no descriptive passages, adding a disembodied weightless quality to the quest. For me this approach got confusing at times and took some work to track who was speaking with the main narrator. I am still little unsure how the story ended.
That said, learning about HeLa cells was fascinating and certainly worth the price of admission.
(If interested, here are links to my Amazon reviews for other Forward Collection short stories:
Amor Towles’ “You Have Arrived at your Destination”:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3I9Q3EY81DYTF/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Veronica Roth’s “Ark”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1BH20S06203HK/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Paul Tremblay’s “The Last Conversation”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Q3HWY0SCW9R5/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Blake Crouch’s “Summer Frost”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Q3XD351WUGT9/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Andy Weir’s “Randomize”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R314XTTT53LDYH/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8)

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 1, 2020
Well, maybe not so fast. The premise of NK Jemisin’s 2019 “Emergency Skin”, a short story in the Amazon Forward Collection devoted to exploring how technology might affect human development and behavior, delves into this idea. And there is a basis in fact for this notion.
In 1951 scientists unexpectedly found certain human cells could be grown in a lab and replicate without dying after a set number of divisions, even though separate from the African-American donor, Henrietta Lacks, who had died. Generally, human cells lasted at most a few days. These were named the “HeLa” cells using the first two letters of her names and would be used by Jonas Salk in the development of his polio vaccine.
Set in a future the tale opens when an offshoot of the human race has moved to a distant planet. A traveler acting as a scout is returning to Earth, or Tellus, to acquire HeLa skin cultures. The scout is accompanied by the consensus consciousness of the new planet Founders through whom most of the action is narrated.
Presumably the scout is enclosed in some kind of composite skin – sort of like a cell wall - while traveling but able to “initiate emergency-skin fabrication” when needed.
As might be expected, this trip moves through unexpected discoveries and explanations for the missing results of past journeys from the distant planet.
The story development is mainly dialogue with no descriptive passages, adding a disembodied weightless quality to the quest. For me this approach got confusing at times and took some work to track who was speaking with the main narrator. I am still little unsure how the story ended.
That said, learning about HeLa cells was fascinating and certainly worth the price of admission.
(If interested, here are links to my Amazon reviews for other Forward Collection short stories:
Amor Towles’ “You Have Arrived at your Destination”:
https://www.amazon.com/review/R3I9Q3EY81DYTF/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Veronica Roth’s “Ark”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R1BH20S06203HK/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Paul Tremblay’s “The Last Conversation”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Q3HWY0SCW9R5/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Blake Crouch’s “Summer Frost”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2Q3XD351WUGT9/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8
Andy Weir’s “Randomize”: https://www.amazon.com/review/R314XTTT53LDYH/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8)

I’m really enjoying the Forward collection and plan on reading it more slowly the second time around.
As they approach Tellus, they find that the orbital junk that had been left behind is gone. The atmosphere is clean. The planet appears to be completely healthy, unlike what the AI claims it expected. The soldier is puzzled.
Then he discovers that humans are living happily on this supposedly ruined planet.
Is the AI lying? Is the AI deceived?
It's not long before the soldier discovers facts that can't be explained away, and starts to ask questions the AI won't answer, and threatens to punish him for. We also start to learn some really interesting things about the Founders.
This is an interesting story, and an interesting world I'd like to see more of. Recommended.
I received this story as part of the Hugo Voters packet, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
Top reviews from other countries

The writing format is unusual but very effective, if a little clunky at times. The A.I.'s comments and outbursts are often amusing in context and the whole is a clever indictment of present day politics. Narrator Jason Isaacs does an excellent job of providing voice both for the A.I. and for the others encountefed. Well paced and nicely modulated, also, his was a good performance.
A fun, far futuristic short story, which pokes fun at present day circumstances, if a little over hopeful about the furure. Nothing wrong with that: we all need a little more hope in our lives.

Emergency Skin is a brilliant short story written by N. K. Jemisin as part of the Forward collection. It is written from an interesting point of view of an AI interface focused entirely on the explorer’s mission, giving him commands and guiding him through Earth. It is a confident and self-righteous voice, and his narration contains offensive comments. I listened to this story as an audiobook, and Jason Isaacs adds to it with his very dramatic performance. I would recommend this story to everyone, especially the audiobook.


