Exit 66

Exit 66 collects eleven stories of science fiction, suspense, and allegories about human nature.

Set in the Arizona desert, a San Francisco ballpark, the far side of the Moon, Seoul, Taipei, Berlin, New York, Greenland, and beyond, the stories span from 1939 to 2089. Technology and absurdity, desire and human nature, again and again arrive at the boundary between reality and illusion.

〈Route 66〉

Two Japanese women set out on a four-day road trip across Arizona. Following a white light in the desert, they turn onto a side road and appear to witness an enormous craft descending and merging into the rock face...

〈110-Mile Fastball〉

At San Francisco’s home ballpark, an ace pitcher faces an extreme athlete capable of throwing a 110-mile-per-hour fastball. When the showdown begins, so does the end of humanity.

〈1963〉

On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald walks into the Texas School Book Depository carrying a rifle. Why did he assassinate Kennedy?

〈The Far Side of the Moon〉

What lies on the far side of the Moon? Did Armstrong tell the truth? Years later, when Armstrong’s grandson has the chance to expose what really happened, what will he choose?

〈The Trickster〉

An F-35A pilot encounters a trickster over Nevada. He cannot report it to air traffic control, because what he witnessed is simply too insane.

〈The Twenty-Fifth Lightning Strike〉

A woman meets her dead AI boyfriend for lunch every day, until twenty-five bolts of lightning strike Sejong-daero in Seoul beneath a cloudless sky, exposing the truth piece by piece.

〈Do Not Reply〉

The space center thirty-six levels beneath Nangang knows that when the universe transmits coordinates to Earth, only one choice remains: do not reply.

〈Proxy Pain〉

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〈Hitler’s Ex-Wife〉

In 1939, one day before the German invasion of Poland, a mysterious woman arrives at the Reich Chancellery and claims to be Hitler’s ex-wife. She tells Hitler what he must do next.

〈Quantum Entanglement〉

Xu Chengying and Huang Wanting remain quantum-entangled, their love no longer bound by time or space. They become the positive and negative ends of the same system, and whatever happens to one is reversed in the other.

〈The Twelve Vessels〉

I remember twelve children with superpowers. One in Busan can hide from sight. One in Greenland can make people hallucinate. One in New York...