Vanishing World bonus

Bonus content for paid subscribers... plus: a functional link!

Hello everyone! I just sent out a post about my New Yorker profile of Sayaka Murata, only to learn that the link doesn’t work! Sorry to everyone who clicked on the bad link and had to see that upsetting image of the monocle guy with his top hat flying off. Here is the correct link.

In the meantime, I figured I would take advantage of this occasion to send out some bonus material as a thank-you to paid subscribers. It’s a Mysterious Tale from my daily life, and is related to the cover art for Murata’s new book, Vanishing World, which involves an alternate reality where all children are born through annual mass artificial inseminations, and are raised collectively in centers, and call all adults “Mother”:

In February, I received an actual petri dish in the mail, from Murata’s publicist at Grove. The petri dish contained two of those little plastic babies. I think it was a gift mailing that mostly went to Book Tok people, I don’t know. Obviously I was thrilled to receive it. But subsequent events left me unsettled, to say the least.

A full report (with pictures) is appended below, as an expression of my special gratitude to paid subscribers.

Thanks for reading! And sorry about the link!

“Annual mass artificial inseminations?”