June's best new sci-fi book Sublimation gets haunting audio preview (exclusive)

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Published May 11, 2026, 12:57 PM EDT

Check out an exclusive preview of Sublimation’s creepy soundscape

People walk in opposite directions away from a border in cover art from Sublimation

Immigrating to a new country can be a traumatic experience, and Nebula Award-winner Isabel J. Kim makes the feeling that you leave part of yourself behind in your home very real in her upcoming novel Sublimation. The author of “Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole” follows two versions of main character Soyoung Rose Kang. Rose has lived in America since she was 10, only returning to Korea after the copy of herself that stayed behind calls her home for their grandfather’s funeral.

The story feels like a blend of two of Apple TV’s hit sci-fi shows: It’s got the split personalities of Severance but also has a lot in common with Dark Matter, which uses the multiverse to explore how people regret the big life decisions they made. In Kim’s world, some people who’ve immigrated regularly talk to their other selves in hopes they can eventually become one person again. Soyoung and Rose haven’t talked since separating, but now Soyoung hopes to steal Rose’s body and her life.

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The stories of the two women are told in print in parallel columns, showing how they both deal with the same issues and thoughts no matter the distance between them. The audiobook version narrated by Major Curda and Michelle H. Lee generates that effect with dynamic stereo voice mixing, alternating between which voice is at the foreground and which is murmuring in the background.

"Major Curda and Michelle H. Lee's performances were exactly how I had imagined my story and characters being voiced, and the immersive sound design elevated the audiobook into something cooler, weirder, and larger than the page," Kim told Polygon in an email statement.

Sublimation releases on June 2 and Macmillan Audio gave Polygon an exclusive preview of the audiobook.

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