Five prize-winning stories. Five worlds beyond what you thought you knew.

A benevolent alien intelligence arrives with a warning for humanity — abandon the nuclear brink, or face the consequences of ignoring it. Elsewhere, a different kind of visitor has darker plans: a hybridization program that could quietly rewrite what it means to be human. A young couple wakes from hypersleep into a dystopian world they never chose, in one of the collection's most haunting stories. Naval Intelligence agents race to stop treasure hunters from looting the drowned wealth of Lemuria, a lost continent beneath the waves. And in the collection's boldest reach, an ancient encounter — Hanuman crossing the sea and colliding with the golden mountain Mainaka — resurfaces in the present, when the same mountain draws the attention of men with far less noble intentions.

Each story stands on its own; together, they range from first-contact science fiction to naval-intelligence thriller to mythological adventure, unified by one question: what waits just beyond the world we think we know?

Beyond the Known World collects five prize-winning stories — three first-place, two second-place winners — originally published in Kannada, now translated into English by their author, Nagesh Kumar CS.