Arborescences is the first book in the new "Abécédaire de l'imaginaire" collection. It includes three short stories: "Le nid" by Chi Hui (translated from Chinese to French), "Une fluctuation dans le vide" by Aiki Mira (translated from German to French) and "Marginalia" by luvan (originally in French), as well as illustrations by art students from the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR). Subsequent books will have thematic titles based on the letters of the alphabet.

Le nid by Chi Hui
The Tanla live on the distant planet Tantatula. They form a matriarchal society in which “tree-like” beings are raised in pots. When humans attempt to turn the planet into a hub for interstellar space traffic and the son of a high-ranking official disappears, the conflict between the Tanla and humans threatens to escalate. Who will prevail? The maladaptive and aggressive humans or the peaceful Tanla.

Une fluctuation dans le vide by Aiki Mira
The story is located in the subjectivity of a larva whose form and gender are not defined. This larva lives on a space station called Cosmo Park. Life there is precarious and strictly hierarchical. Bodies are commodities, sold, stolen, operated on or even given away. Some people voluntarily mutate their bodies. Others dream of living on planets where bodies grow like grass. But these planets seem inaccessible, until the arrival of the first spaceships which also transform.

Marginalia de luvan
In an epistolary story, a series of events taking place on the planet Keqin are recounted. Like the planet Tantatula in Chi Hui's short story, Keqin is colonized by humans. The events recounted reveal the difficulty of communicating through language, and a radically different reality. The absolute strangeness of bodies and relationships suggests the possibility of empathy and altruism, in the face of a central patriarchal power driven by a logic of exploitation and utilitarianism.