"In a dystopic future of unregulated gene editing, a woman named Emily wakes up on the wrong side of the universe as an octopus thanks to rogue "designer genes" run amok. One of thousands of clones generated from a genetic code sequenced from a lock of hair saved from the original Emily Dickinson, the ersatz Emily resembles an octopus but harbors the soul of a human poet and navigates her life in a lagoon as a bumbling "rogue soul" enamored of black spice cake, botanical monographs, and gingerbread recipes, while romanced by personified moonlight. In this near-future setting, geneticists ("stardust editors") have reverse-engineered an enzyme ("molecular scissors") from the octopus genome, and zygotes are gene-edited in flesh factories. Despite the advances made possible by this enzyme, the new technology causes some gene-edited subjects to exhibit the antisocial behaviors of octopuses in the wilderness. Bioexiled to live in a secret cosmic lagoon known as the octopodes, Emily receives a dystopic vision where the designer-gene citizens regress to autophagy and self-destruction. Ill-equipped to save the world from its doom, Emily returns to the octopodes saddened, dreaming of a mysterious genetic code that will repair the flaws caused by gene editing. The novel explores the risks and unintended consequences of unregulated gene editing through the lenses of alterity and xenophobia: If we dehumanize others who are made not only in our image - ultimately in the image of the universe's maker - we'll eventually destroy ourselves"--