Jim C. Hines

An editor named Kerrie Hughes wanted me to write a short story that brought my fire-spider Smudge from my goblin books into the present-day world. I came up with libriomancy as a way to make that happen.

The leg system of the beach animals works because of a combination of certain lengths of tubes. Because of the proportion of lengths, the animals walk smoothly. You could say that this range of numbers is their genetic code.