THE BOOK OF BOTS

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JAMES PATRICK KELLY
  • August, 2026   978-1-958880-41-8
  • trade paperback, 5.5 x 8.5​​
  • Pre-order copies below; more ebook & print venues forthcoming. 
  • Cover art by Devrim Erdogan

Hugo and Nebula award winning writer James Patrick Kelly has spent the last thirty years thinking about robots. In the twelve stories of The Book of Bots they take many forms. Some look like humans or are embodied in spaceships. One is a house and another is a car. Several exist only in cyberspace. Two are visitors from the future. They are caretakers and lovers, explorers and financial advisors. All have been created to serve, but also have personal agendas that arise from a fierce sense of identity. 

​Fans of Kelly’s long running column in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine will also want to read two new articles included here. “The Comedy of Science” is a wry tour of the history of robots in science fiction and “Robots on Parade 2026” is frank assessment of the current state of robotics and AI.
​"For over fifty years, James Patrick Kelly has explored the crossroads of cyberpunk edge and humanist depth. In The Book of Bots, he brings that perspective to a world where machines don't just think — they care. About us and themselves, and futures we may not survive to see. He's observed the rising ocean of A.I. and robots. Start with 'Robots on Parade: 2026,' then read from there. Kelly writes with wit and perception. A new collection from him is a celebration."
     — James Van Pelt, author of Summer of the Apocalypse

"Kelly's stories depend on future technologies based on physics, information theory, genetics, and other au courant disciplines, but they're about love, friendship, and loyalty." 
     — Booklist

"James Patrick Kelly is one of the masters of science fiction. He imagines futures both high-tech and human, both dizzyingly complicated and determinedly simple . . . James Patrick Kelly at his best, and there’s nothing better.”
     — Connie Willis

"Think like a Dinosaur combines hard SF like the title story with near-mainstream character studies and near-cyberpunk grim futures."
     — Gary Wolfe



  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. His previous project was King of the Dogs, Queen of the Cats, a short novel from Subterranean Press. He's the author of the collections The Promise of Space, Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories, Strange but Not a Stranger, and The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories, as well as many novels, including Wildlife, Look Into the Sun, and the Audible Original Mother Go. Centipede Press published a career retrospective in its Masters of Science Fiction series entitled James Patrick Kelly, Master of Science Fiction. He has published over a hundred stories and his fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology,  Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology.  He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and retired from faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine where he taught for fifteen years.