"Electric Resurrection. Born again perfection. The six-zero correction."

For the last decade, Malon Edwards has been spinning out a world where humans have conquered death but still haven't bothered to take care of the living. Where resurrection is the ultimate commodity-if you're rich enough, powerful enough, and white enough to buy in.

If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories collects 10 cyberpunk dispatches, including a brand-new, epic rap novella. On offer is a guided tour of an independent Chicago, a beacon of Black excellence that is done with the ever-hostile State of Illinois showing its ass.

Your guides are a little rough around the edges: hackers and assassins, thieves and grieving parents, elders and teenagers. Don't fret. These people will take good care of you, so long as you mind yourself.

Welcome to the Sovereign State of Chicago.

"If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes brings us deep into a world that Edwards has been building for years, a steampunk future where gynoid replacements of loved ones are sparingly doled out by corporate interests.

"The stories form a kaleidoscopic look at grief, love, community, and privilege. Edwards' fine-grained worldbuilding opens space for both love stories and horror stories, dystopias and punk-edged urban rebellions. Every angle poses new questions and suggests different conclusions, each one rich with Edwards' particular brand of Haitian-Chicagoian Afrofuturist society. The end result doesn't feel like a short story collection; it feels like a picture being described by a dozen strangers, each with their own view, and the results are beautiful."

-Charlotte Ashley