Literary allusions abound in this volume as Di Filippo recasts a classic Melville story of slave rebellion at sea--with aliens; "Ailoura" tells the Puss in Boots fairy tale as a space opera romp; "Observable Things" has Cotton Mather encountering with Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane; and "A Monument to After‑Thought Unveiled" has poet Robert Frost starting his career writing horror fiction for Weird Tales magazine, edited by H. P. Lovecraft. Emperor of Gondwanaland contains eighteen stories, including one published only in this collection.