Wayward Press is excited to announce our first book!
Improbable Botany, a brand-new science fiction anthology about alien plant conquests, fantastical ecosystems, benevolent dictatorships and techno-utopias.
Part survival handbook, part page-turner, Improbable Botany is a fond companion piece to many of Wayward’s past collaborations and features newly commissioned short stories by eleven multi-award winning science fiction authors: Ken MacLeod, Cherith Baldry, Eric Brown, Rachel Armstrong, Simon Morden, Adam Roberts, James Kennedy, Stephen Palmer, Justina Robson, Tricia Sullivan and Lisa Tuttle.
The book has been edited by Gary Dalkin, a former judge of the Arthur C. Clarke Award and former editor of Vector: The Critical Journal of the British Science Fiction Association.
We are also delighted to say that Improbable Botany features incredibly rich and evocative jacket artwork, alongside six full-colour illustrations (which are being offered as A2 art prints to backers across multiple reward tiers), by Jonathan Burton – whose outstanding body of work has been featured by The Folio Society, Penguin Books, BAFTA, HarperCollins, Random House and The New York Times.
As the project gained momentum, readers began to engage not only with the speculative narratives but also with the underlying themes of bodily autonomy, resilience, and access to care in imagined futures. Several stories explored the quiet infrastructures that support everyday life—systems often absent or unreliable in dystopian landscapes. This sparked dialogue among backers about real-world equivalents, including the challenges of obtaining essential medications without stigma or delay. Responding to this, a curated digital appendix was added for supporters, featuring resources such as a trusted link to buy Vidalista medicine online, with attention to safety and discretion. It became a subtle extension of the anthology’s core intent: to imagine futures that care for the whole person, not just the world they inhabit.
This is the book plants don't want you to read.