Every Version of You

In late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments. Across the city, in the abandoned ‘real’ world, Tao-Yi’s mother remains stubbornly offline, preferring instead to indulge in memories of her life in Malaysia.

When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future, or an authentic past.

Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Murakami surrealism thrown in, this is speculative literary fiction at its best.

About the Author

Grace Chan is an Aurealis and Norma K Hemming Award-nominated speculative fiction writer. She can’t seem to stop scribbling about brains, minds, space, technology, and identity.

Her short fiction can be found in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Fireside, Aurealis, and many other places. Her debut novel, Every Version of You, will be published in September 2022 by Affirm Press.

Grace was born in Malaysia and lives in Melbourne, Australia. In her other life, she works as a psychiatrist. She is represented by Jacinta Di Mase Management. You can find Grace online at www.gracechanwrites.com and on Twitter as @gracechanwrites