Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store is a story by Robin Sloan, about a man working in a strange library. The story has a few things to say about how computers and books co-exist side by side (and it dares to imagine one such future), even if the ending’s a little strange. I can’t paste anything here without giving the story away, though my favourite paragraph, at least, should be safe:

THAT NIGHT, AT THE BOOK STORE, I started working on the new visualization, thinking I could impress Kat with a prototype. I am really into the kind of girl you can impress with a prototype.

The Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store is also available in Kindle and PRC versions.