The debut fiction collection from Janelle Monáe, The Memory Librarian, explores identity, technology, time and love through tales set in the futuristic universe of her album Dirty Computer. This signed edition returns to the Afrofuturistic world of Dirty Computer to explore how different threads of liberation—queerness, race, gender plurality, love—become tangled in a totalitarian landscape... and to discover the costs of unravelling them.

Whoever controls our memories controls the future.

Janelle Monáe and collaborating creators have written a collection of tales expanding from the world of Dirty Computer, which introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. Whether human, A.I., or other, life and sentience was dictated by those who'd convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate. That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories explore what it's like to live in such a totalitarian existence... and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the traditions of speculative writers such as Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor, The Memory Librarian serves readers tales grounded in the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, reaching through to the worlds of memory and time within.