Overview

A debut collection of stories from author Daisuke Shen, wherein divine beings and humans alike must rely on omens to navigate the unpredictable lives they find themselves inhabiting. A couple employs exact clones of their partners, but then slowly begin losing their memories. Four boys with cruel intentions come across a field of statuesque women, unaware of the vengeance that awaits them. Paranoia leads a brilliant engineer into creating a language-processing machine that will tell her the truth of others' emotions. Vague Predictions and Prophecies explores the myriad ways in which desire structures (and destroys) the self, language, and love, questioning the very nature of human connection. Through beautifully written prose, Shen invokes the surreal to create gigantic worlds packed inside deceptively small packages, emphasizing a resounding truth: that our fractured understandings of each other may yet be enough.

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9781960988133

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Reviews

""Daisuke Shen is the best and smartest talent working in the short long form today. Shen’s characters satisfy both expected and eccentric, terrestrial and astrological, humanoid and primal demands. Sharp in pungency and volatile like soy nuts in their composition, Shen’s recklessly unforgettable characters are wasabi-like in their delivery and psyche-stimulating in their inventions. Shen’s stories capture their suffering, distress, oddity, madness, futility, dejection, love, and misery with depths of empathy, sharp honesty, and clear foreshadowing. These stories ooze with nail polish, sandpaper, with horseradish roots. Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a rice cake on fire."" —Vi Khi Nao, author of War is Not My Mother ”Confessions of sexbot addicts, confessions of divination addicts, mighty marvels fighting, further rabbit god incarnations, cosmological parables that gust inverted the umbrella of your epistemology—Shen's stories are literary NDEs where worlds dissolve and shift but the rock-steady sadness does not. Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a sensitive, risky, and brilliant collection of dazzles engineered to wink out of a profound and dark terrain.""  —Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs and Search History “Women stand like scarecrows in a pasture outside of town; boys tip them over like cows. Archangel Gabriel slams his head into a wall, over and over again. A single orange geranium peeks out from underneath snow. And right in front of everybody, a mother begins to eat her hand on the train. In Daisuke Shen’s Vague Predictions & Prophecies, transformations are violent/painful, passion is revenge/playful, and the world can end anytime—but love is forever. An inspiring debut—so alive and full—Daisuke Shen’s a genius.” —Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, author of Sleepovers ""Addictive, elegant and juicy… These stories feel limitless and buzzing. They move coolly between time, culture and literary form, exploring the triviality of it all. Shen’s writing is sweet and eerie; their characters strange and ordinary, on the edge of miracle or violence. Vague Predictions & Prophecies perfectly captures Shen’s talent and versatility as a writer—I’m sitting on the edge of my seat for more."" —Jamie Marina Lau, author of Gunk Baby and Pink Mountain on Locust Island “With a strangeness and risk so refreshing it recalls the best of Kelly Link’s short fiction, or the ghosts of Alice Munro and Ryu Murakami commingling in an expanse of broken promises to late capital’s rush for incorporation, Daisuke Shen’s stories beg us to maintain a visceral attachment to absurdity as the only true contestant against the lackluster psychic domination of the real.” —Joseph Earl Thomas, author of Sink and God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer “Daisuke Shen’s Vague Predictions & Prophecies are stories that carve themselves into your bones, tapping into some primal energy that is both completely relatable yet singularly strange. Their way of writing about the world is so big-hearted, so fucked up, so tender and also so brutal.” —Juliet Escoria, author of You are the Snake ""Daisuke Shen’s stories are strange, funny, beautiful, and terrifying. Characters include tortured lovers, migrants, zombies, video games, teenagers practicing a debauchery of sadness, and different versions of God, all serving as witnesses in a cross-examination of human nature. Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a constant play of styles, genres, the frontiers between nightmares and reality, and the power of silence. The  marvelous thing about these stories is that they use the reader’s own blank spaces to convey horror not as an extraordinary occurrence, but as a portrait of everyday life.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Signs Preceding the End of the World and Ten Planets

"""Daisuke Shen is the best and smartest talent working in the short long form today. Shen’s characters satisfy both expected and eccentric, terrestrial and astrological, humanoid and primal demands. Sharp in pungency and volatile like soy nuts in their composition, Shen’s recklessly unforgettable characters are wasabi-like in their delivery and psyche-stimulating in their inventions. Shen’s stories capture their suffering, distress, oddity, madness, futility, dejection, love, and misery with depths of empathy, sharp honesty, and clear foreshadowing. These stories ooze with nail polish, sandpaper, with horseradish roots. Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a rice cake on fire."" —Vi Khi Nao, author of War is Not My Mother ”Confessions of sexbot addicts, confessions of divination addicts, mighty marvels fighting, further rabbit god incarnations, cosmological parables that gust inverted the umbrella of your epistemology—Shen's stories are literary NDEs where worlds dissolve and shift but the rock-steady sadness does not. Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a sensitive, risky, and brilliant collection of dazzles engineered to wink out of a profound and dark terrain""  —Eugene Lim, author of Dear Cyborgs and Search History"

“Shen’s Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a rice cake on fire. Shen’s characters satisfy both expected and eccentric, terrestrial and astrological, humanoid and primal demands. Sharp in pungency and volatile like soy nuts in their composition, Shen’s recklessly unforgettable characters are wasabi-like in their delivery and psyche-stimulating in their inventions. Shen’s stories capture their suffering, distress, oddity, madness, futility, dejection, love, and misery with depths of empathy, sharp honesty, and clear foreshadowing. These stories ooze with nail polish, sandpaper, with horseradish roots.” – VI KHI NAO

"""Shen's Vague Predictions & Prophecies is a rice cake on fire. Shen's characters satisfy both expected and eccentric, terrestrial and astrological, humanoid and primal demands. Sharp in pungency and volatile like soy nuts in their composition, Shen's recklessly unforgettable characters are wasabi-like in their delivery and psyche-stimulating in their inventions. Shen's stories capture their suffering, distress, oddity, madness, futility, dejection, love, and misery with depths of empathy, sharp honesty, and clear foreshadowing. These stories ooze with nail polish, sandpaper, with horseradish roots."" - VI KHI NAO"

Author Information

Daisuke Shen is the author of the short story collection Vague Predictions & Prophecies (CLASH Books 2024), and the novella Funeral (KERNPUNKT Press 2023). They live in New York City. www.daisukeshen.com

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