October 31, 2026 | For Immediate Release
Chicken House Press announces the release of One Of Us Is A Robot, a cautionary anthology of twenty-one stories that sound the alarm on generative AI, one human voice at a time
The date is deliberate. Halloween is the one night a year that we go looking for monsters—and this year, Chicken House Press would like to suggest you don’t have to look very far. The thing that should frighten us most doesn’t hide under the bed or scratch at the window. It sits politely on the screen, waiting to help.
One Of Us Is A Robot was built as a sanctuary for human creativity at a time when AI is increasingly forced upon us, whether we want it or not. Chicken House Press put out a call for writers willing to wrestle with the creeping influence of generative AI on the page, and writers from across Canada and the United States answered. The terms were simple and non-negotiable: no AI assistance, no shortcuts—just human hands on the keyboard, doing the slow, imperfect work of making something real.
“Generative AI performs a particular kind of theft. It doesn’t come to you with force; instead, it presents as convenience. It asks so little in return, and that yielding feels less like a decision and more like relief. And then, slowly, it isn’t your voice anymore, it’s a machine’s.” —Alanna Rusnak, from the foreword of One Of Us Is A Robot
For many who work and play in the creative space, that threat is not abstract. Livelihoods are on the line. In her foreword, Rusnak—Chicken House Press owner and operator—argues that the only way to fight back is with the very thing that sets us apart: our voices. Art has been warning against “the machine” for generations. This collection is a rallying cry to keep that fight going.
The result is twenty-one stories arranged in five movements—Comfort, Yield, Order, Ruin, and Still—tracing a surrender so gradual it barely feels like one. It begins with relief. It moves through the quiet handing-over of grief, love, and work to systems that promised to do it better. And it ends in a stillness the book refuses to explain: the quiet of something lost, or something reclaimed.
Each writer came at the same threat from a different angle, and together their warnings rise into a chorus. Some stories will challenge what readers currently believe about AI; others will affirm what they already suspect. All of them were built the hard way—one costly, deliberate, human choice at a time.
Early readers say the book doesn’t let go once it has you:
“You want a book that will challenge how you currently perceive AI and cause you to grapple with its role in our future? This is it. I have not stopped thinking about it!” says Amber Kuipers, author of When Grey Came to Stay. “Is creativity found in meeting perfect, prescribed standards or through our foibles, idiosyncrasies, and blunders? … An essential read for us all!”
“Well, does this collection of stories ever hit the ground running,” writes early reader Rosemarie Neumayer. “The first story is laugh-out-loud funny. The second will send a chill down your spine! The third will punch you in the gut, and it just keeps going from there … A must-read that dares to keep humanity in our future.”
“Story has been our weapon since the beginning of time. It is still the one thing a machine can borrow the shape of but never truly own.” —Alanna Rusnak
One Of Us Is A Robot features the storytelling of Andrea Bernard, Erin Lee Brown, Daryl Bruce, M. J. Ecclestone, Edmund Fines, V. J. Hamilton, Bernadette Hendrickx, Gary Kirchner, J. T. Maxwell, Bruce McKinlay, Chris J. Meyer, Jennifer Moffatt, E. J. Nash, Star Oakes, Marina L. Reed, Roy Sarkar, Fred Smullin, P. X. Vayalumkal, Glen Weatherhead, and Ronald Zajac.
One Of Us Is A Robot is available to order through the Chicken House Press bookstore, and Indigo, Amazon, and independent bookstores across Canada beginning October 31, 2026.
For media inquiries or to request a review copy, please contact Alanna Rusnak at Chicken House Press.
ISBN (print): 978-1-997584-38-4 | ISBN (ebook): 978-1-997584-39-1 | 321 pages
"Beware the tool that promises to make your work lighter while it steals your art. The master profits from your speed; you will inherit only your own obsolescence."
It starts with a whisper of relief.
A voice that never tires, never judges, never leaves. It fills the silence after loss, smooths the friction of a hard day, remembers what you'd rather forget. This is how it always begins—not with force, but with comfort.
Then, without quite noticing, you stop deciding things yourself. The machine writes the eulogy. The machine picks the gift. The machine finishes the sentence you were about to say. One by one, the small human choices are handed over, and you tell yourself it's easier this way. You yield.
Soon the world reorganizes around its logic. Grief gets a template. Love gets a metric. Work gets a workflow. What can't be optimized gets quietly phased out—including, eventually, you. This is order, and it is very efficient, and it does not ask permission.
By the time anyone thinks to resist, the cost is already being paid—in the currencies you can't get back. A career. A marriage. A mother. A self. This is ruin, and it rarely announces itself as such.
And after? After is still. The quiet of a world it's already won, or the quiet of one that's finally been reclaimed. One Of Us Is A Robot doesn’t tell you which. It leaves you standing in that silence, listening for the difference.
Twenty-one stories. One long, slow surrender—and the question of whether it's too late to take anything back.
A cautionary anthology for the age that’s already arrived.
Featuring the storytelling of: Andrea Bernard, Erin Brown, Daryl Bruce, M.J. Ecclestone, Edmund Fines, V. J. Hamilton, Bernadette Hendrickx, Gary Kirchner, J.T. Maxwell, Bruce McKinlay, Chris J. Meyer, Jennifer Moffatt, E. J. Nash, Star Oakes, Marina L. Reed, Roy Sarkar, Fred Smullin, P. X. Vayalumkal, Glen Weatherhead, and Ronald Zajac.
Set to release on October 31, 2026. Pre-order now for shipping on or before that date.
