Twelve eye-opening, mind-expanding, funny, and provocative essays on the implications of artificial intelligence for the way we live and the way we love, from New York Times bestselling author Jeanette Winterson

“Talky, smart, anarchic, and quite sexy,” said Dwight Garner in the New York Times about Jeanette Winterson’s latest novel, Frankissstein, which perfectly describes too this new collection of essays on the same subject of AI.

In 12 Bytes, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson, draws on her years of thinking and reading about artificial intelligence in all its bewildering manifestations. In her brilliant, laser focused, uniquely pointed, and witty style of storytelling, Winterson looks to history, religion, myth, literature, the politics of race and gender, and computer science, to help us understand the radical changes to the way we live and love that are happening now.

When we create nonbiological life-forms, will we do so in our image? Or will we accept the once-in-a-species opportunity to remake ourselves in their image? What do love, caring, sex, and attachment look like when humans form connections with nonhuman helpers, teachers, sex-workers, and companions? And what will happen to our deep-rooted assumptions about gender? Will the physical body that is our home soon be enhanced by biological and neural implants, keeping us fitter, younger, and connected? Is it time to join Elon Musk and leave Planet Earth?

With wit, compassion, and curiosity, Winterson tackles AI’s most fascinating talking points, from the algorithms that data-dossier your whole life to the weirdness of backing up your brain.

For years Jeanette Winterson has loved writing a new story at Christmastime, and here she brings together twelve of her brilliantly imaginative, funny, and bold tales.

For the Twelve Days of Christmas–a time of celebration, sharing, and giving–she offers these twelve plus one: a personal story of her own Christmas memories.

These tales open a portal into the spirit of the season, when time slows down and magic starts to happen. From trees with mysterious powers to a tinsel baby that talks, philosophical fairies to flying dogs, a haunted house to a disappearing train, Winterson’s innovative stories encompass the childlike and spooky wonder of Christmas, perfect for listening to by the fire with loved ones or while traveling home for the holidays.

Enjoy the season of peace and goodwill, mystery, and a little bit of magic courtesy of one of our most fearless and accomplished writers.

Since her astonishing debut at twenty-five with Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide critical and commercial success as “one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time” (Elle). Her new novel, Frankissstein, is an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love.

Lake Geneva, 1816. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls for lonely men everywhere. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead … but waiting to return to life.

What will happen when homo sapiens is no longer the smartest being on the planet? In fiercely intelligent prose, Jeanette Winterson shows us how much closer we are to that future than we realize. Funny and furious, bold and clear-sighted, Frankissstein is a love story about life itself.

The Winter’s Tale is one of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” It tells the story of a king whose jealousy results in the banishment of his baby daughter and the death of his beautiful wife. His daughter is found and brought up by a shepherd on the Bohemian coast, but through a series of extraordinary events, father and daughter, and eventually mother too, are reunited.

In The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson’s cover version of The Winter’s Tale, we move from London, a city reeling after the 2008 financial crisis, to a storm-ravaged American city called New Bohemia. Her story is one of childhood friendship, money, status, technology and the elliptical nature of time. Written with energy and wit, this is a story of the consuming power of jealousy on the one hand, and redemption and the enduring love of a lost child on the other.