Excerpts post-apocalyptic science fiction Read an Excerpt From Pedro the Vast by Simón Lopez Trujillo Humanity has encroached a step too far into the natural world, and a deadly fungus mounts its own resistance… By Simón López Trujillo | Published on January 14, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Pedro the Vast, a literary post-apocalyptic SF novel by Simón Lopez Trujillo (translated by Robin Myers), available now from Algonquin Books. In the disorienting, devastatingly tense world of López Trujillo, a eucalyptus farm worker named Pedro starts coughing. Several of his coworkers die of a strange fungal disease, which has jumped to humans for the first time, but Pedro, miraculously, awakes. His survival fascinates a foreign mycologist, as well as a local priest, who dubs his mysterious mutterings to be the words of a prophet. Meanwhile Pedro’s kids are left to fend for themselves: the young Cata, whose creepy art projects are getting harder and harder to decipher, and Patricio, who wasn’t ready to be thrust into the role of father. Their competing efforts to reckon with Pedro’s condition eventually meet in a horrifying climax that readers will never forget. “The mushroom Ganoderma lucidum is a naturally wood-degrading saprotrophic basidiomycete, but it demonstrates a series of highly useful pharmacological effects. This, given the scarcity of the species in natural environments, has fostered the artificial cultivation of its fruiting bodies in specialized greenhouses by means of trunks or sawdust in bags and plastic bottles. The mushroom is characterized by its reddish, generally kidney-shaped cap, supported by a svelte foot in a slightly tortuous position. Its mycelium feeds on the dead wood of broad-leafed trees and contains a high concentration of triterpenes and polysaccharides, both prized pharmacological components. Useful properties against hepatitis and hypertension in triterpenes have been documented; so have anti-tumoral effects in polysaccharides. The latter have sparked considerable research interest in the Ganoderma genus among contemporary medical mycologists, as well as in the commercialization of its derivations in the alternative oncological therapy market.” Giovanna spoke with the steady cadence of an experienced lecturer. The fifty-seat auditorium was full, and the slide sequence marked the pulse of her presentation. This was one of the keynote addresses Giovanna would deliver throughout the year at universities across the country, a means of compensating the state for the fellowship she’d received to study abroad. She hated these activities: They reactivated her fear of standing at the blackboard in elementary school. Her adult academic work had forced her to get used to it, but it still felt clumsy and tedious, and she operated on autopilot, just fulfilling her duty. At least academia allowed her to visit Concepción once in a while. She could see family, friends. Mechanically answer colleagues’ questions about her research for the book she was writing. Insist to her parents that she was fine on her own. That she’d gone on some dates, but nothing serious. English guys are boring, Mom. All they do is drink and talk about their work. “Therapeutic uses of this mushroom can be traced back thousands of years in classical Chinese medicine, which called it Lingzhi and employed it primarily to alleviate fatigue, asthma, and liver disorders.” She observed the audience’s faces as she spoke. Somewhere along the way, she’d learned to separate speech from thought, like someone who begins to disassociate the actions of their hands in learning to juggle. She quickly scanned some of the professors sitting in the first row. Middle-aged men with similar signs of degradation: baldness, paunches, facial creases, pinched expressions, shabby dress, poor hygiene, bad breath. One of their ilk had recently published a review that ridiculed her dissertation. She also focused on a student in the third row. Her blond side-shaved hair was drawn back with a bow, and she studied Giovanna intently, legs crossed, taking notes. Giovanna’s presentation concluded with an emphasis on how science, confronting an uncertain future, finds fertile ground in researching the fungus kingdom and its prodigious properties. She showed a sequence of slides on the use of mushrooms as fuel, plastic-degrading products, selective pest control, antidepressants, anticarcinogens, and producers of the most powerful antibacterial enzymes on record. Buy the Book Pedro the Vast Simón Lopez Trujillo Buy Book Pedro the Vast Simón Lopez Trujillo Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Half an hour later, Giovanna found herself in conversation by the refreshment table with a group of biology students. As if trying to mask her reticence, the note-taking girl now looked her right in the eye as Giovanna spoke. “The truth is, we know very little about fungi. Their life cycles are strange, and although they don’t look it, they’re more like us than like bacteria or the plant kingdom. Invasive, authoritarian creatures. Extremely intelligent. Let’s take Entomophthora muscae, for example, a parasitic fungus that infects the housefly. Contagion occurs when the fungal spores land and germinate on top of it, penetrating its exoskeleton. According to the research, the first thing the fungus does is advance into the fly’s brain and seize control of its movements. It settles in the neural area in charge of the feet and wings, forcing it to alight on some nearby surface and climb to its highest point. Eventually, the fungus drops the fly. Its wings don’t react. The insect hits the ground, paralyzed. Then the hyphae of the fungus start to digest its innards, and the fly dies. Tiny cracks open in its body and sporangia sprout: countless tiny spore-sacs ready to embark in search of new flies.” * * * They nestled toward the left. Rain streamed silently outside. If you paid attention, it was there, present. If you talked, you couldn’t hear it anymore. Giovanna curled her body closer to Andrea’s, pressed a hand to her chest, and asked her, innocent: “Is it possible to put a person under a microscope?” “How?” “Like a whole person. Can you imagine seeing all their cells moving around at the same time?” For a few seconds, neither said a word. Giovanna closed her eyes. Heard the rain. On a different night, she’d once confessed to someone that she felt, in moments like these, her thoughts slipping right out of her. She loved that. It was one of her favorite things. “I don’t know. Maybe a big enough lens could do it,” Andrea said. “Really?” “I don’t get it. What’s your point?” They spoke slowly, skin warm under their T-shirts. Giovanna brushed a hand across Andrea’s forehead. She opened and closed her eyes with every sound. Talking meant being awake. Soon, they’d sleep. There was no rush. They could say everything more easily, unguarded. She focused on her own pulse and the rain eased the weight of thinking. “There’s something I want to know,” Giovanna said. “What?” “What can you feel?” “Now?” “Yeah.” “The rain. Your voice behind me.” “What else?” “Heat in my stomach. Your hand on my chest. The edge of your knee against my thigh. Your nose at my neck. Your breathing.” “What else?” Giovanna said, unfolding her body above her. “Why do you ask?” “There’s something I want to know.” Their words spread like moss between them. “What?” Giovanna turned toward her and pulled her close. “If you can feel your own skin.” * * * “Yes?” “Giovanna Oddó?” “Speaking.” “I’m sorry to be calling so late, but it’s urgent. This is Dr. Martín Moreno.” The voice on the other end sounded as if it were underwater. Giovanna rubbed her eyes to hear better. “Could you come first thing to the Provincial Hospital of Curanilahue?” Giovanna set three alarms on her cell phone and went back to sleep. She drove to Curanilahue in the pre-dawn blue. The deserted highway helped her conjure hypotheses for the case. She remembered visiting another hospital to examine a baby girl with candidiasis so severe that her body was covered in red blotches and her tongue had gone white. How did they find me? she wondered, trying to recall whether her number appeared on any of the articles she’d published online. Then she passed two trucks ablaze. They looked like pachyderm corpses on the shoulder of the highway. When she reached the modest hospital, she found Dr. Moreno waiting outside, smoking and fidgeting. He greeted her and asked her to accompany him into a lab room. The young doctor occasionally passed a hand over his head, as if to make sure his hair was still in place, using the other to click files on an old computer. They took ages to open. “Here it is. This is what I need to show you,” he said at last, resolute, as an image slipped down the screen like a curtain. Giovanna, not understanding why they’d made her drive an hour and a half just to look at a file they could have emailed, leaned closer to the screen and focused in utter silence for several minutes. “Is this person alive?” she asked. “He was in a coma for over a month. The other infected individuals all died last week. We’ll go up to see him shortly.” Unable to sleep that night, Giovanna opened her laptop. She propped a couple of cushions and straightened her back. She decided to analyze Dr. Moreno’s information using more advanced software, hoping she’d get drowsy as the data rendered. But once the visualization was ready, the nagging voice in her head only grew louder. Giovanna stared intently at the white markings, perplexed by how they could organize themselves in such a way. Thinking there must be a file error, she executed the operation again while making herself a cup of tea. The scene was identical when she returned. Nothing was in its right place. What was supposed to be one thing seemed to respond to another. For a moment, she thought of texting Andrea, but she deleted the message before sending it. Captivated, she spent a couple hours analyzing the data. When it was very late, she set her alarm, switched off the light, and swallowed a sleeping pill. Excerpted from Pedro the Vast, copyright © 2026 by Simón Lopez Trujillo. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>Pedro the Vast</i> by Simón Lopez Trujillo appeared first on Reactor.