From Publishers Weekly
A meticulous craftsman in the demanding short-story form, as well as a tactful scapel-wielding verteran of many a writers' workshop, Hugo-winner Kelly (Wildlife) delivers 15 tight, deceptively simple tales with complex, often delayed reverberations. The stories dwell on such typical themes as love, loss and loneliness. In an afterword full of genial and witty observations, Kelly explains how he recently forced himself out of his "comfort zone" and discovered a "radical freedom" in writing short-shorts like "Unique Visitors" and "Hubris," unsettling glimpses of the horrors of human frailty. Several stories here relate to Kelly's other writings, like the poignant novella "Glass Cloud," his "architect story" originally intended as the opening of his third novel, Look into the Sun. Some of Kelly's most appealing characters including Phillip Wing of "Glass Cloud" and Wynne Cage, protagonist of his "first true cyberpunk story," "The Prisoner of Chillon" are shoved willy-nilly by moira, the Greeks' name for circumstances beyond one's control, into face-offs with "shiny new cybertoys" that prove dangerous and irresistible. While some of his recent attempts at paying homage to Cordwainer Smith, like "Undone," tread uneasily close to the impenetrable, others, like "The Cruelest Month," a bitterly sentimental ghost story, surprise even the author himself perhaps an indication of how difficult it often is with art, as Yeats remarked, to tell the dancer from the dance.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
This collection of 14 stories--one never previously published--and an afterword begins and ends with time travel. In the opening story, "1016 to 1," a 12-year-old meets a time traveler trying to prevent the third world war from being the war that really does end all wars. The final story, "Undone," features a time-traveling revolutionary fighting utopians who believe that individuality leads to chaos; she has been trapped far in the future by an identity mine--so far that revolutionaries and utopians alike are long forgotten, and she is the last person who remembers the Three Universal Rights for which her people struggled. In between, Kelly flies all over the place, from a scene of alien romance in "Lovestory" to the remnants of a twenty-first-century mind some 800 years after its creation. The sheer variousness of the stories makes the collection work, and the afterword ties it up with a ribbon of Kelly's motivations and inspirations. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
The 16 stories in this collection run the gamut from cyber adventure and a ghostly haunting to chemically modified romance and a time travel mission to save the world. The Hugo Award winner, "10(to the 16th) to 1," tells the story of a boy in the 1960s who gets caught up in a spirited adventure that becomes a desperate attempt to prevent a nuclear holocaust. In "The Cruelest Month," a grieving mother is haunted both by the past and a ghost. "The Prisoner of Chillon" presents a radioactive Lake Geneva overrun with cyberpunks seeking fame and fortune through software piracy. By turns humorous and harrowing, this collection highlights the short fiction of a lauded author at his best.
About the Author
James Patrick Kelly, a two-time winner of the Hugo Award, is the author of Look into the Sun, Wildlife, and the story collection Think Like a Dinosaur. He lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire.
Strange but Not a Stranger FROM THE PUBLISHER
The 16 stories in this collection run the gamut from cyber adventure and a ghostly haunting to chemically modified romance and a time travel mission to save the world. The Hugo Award winner, "10(to the 16th) to 1," tells the story of a boy in the 1960s who gets caught up in a spirited adventure that becomes a desperate attempt to prevent a nuclear holocaust. In "The Cruelest Month," a grieving mother is haunted both by the past and a ghost. "The Prisoner of Chillon" presents a radioactive Lake Geneva overrun with cyberpunks seeking fame and fortune through software piracy. By turns humorous and harrowing, this collection highlights the short fiction of a lauded author at his best.
Author Biography: James Patrick Kelly, a two-time winner of the Hugo Award, is the author of Look into the Sun, Wildlife, and the story collection Think Like a Dinosaur. He lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A meticulous craftsman in the demanding short-story form, as well as a tactful scapel-wielding verteran of many a writers' workshop, Hugo-winner Kelly (Wildlife) delivers 15 tight, deceptively simple tales with complex, often delayed reverberations. The stories dwell on such typical themes as love, loss and loneliness. In an afterword full of genial and witty observations, Kelly explains how he recently forced himself out of his "comfort zone" and discovered a "radical freedom" in writing short-shorts like "Unique Visitors" and "Hubris," unsettling glimpses of the horrors of human frailty. Several stories here relate to Kelly's other writings, like the poignant novella "Glass Cloud," his "architect story" originally intended as the opening of his third novel, Look into the Sun. Some of Kelly's most appealing characters including Phillip Wing of "Glass Cloud" and Wynne Cage, protagonist of his "first true cyberpunk story," "The Prisoner of Chillon" are shoved willy-nilly by moira, the Greeks' name for circumstances beyond one's control, into face-offs with "shiny new cybertoys" that prove dangerous and irresistible. While some of his recent attempts at paying homage to Cordwainer Smith, like "Undone," tread uneasily close to the impenetrable, others, like "The Cruelest Month," a bitterly sentimental ghost story, surprise even the author himself perhaps an indication of how difficult it often is with art, as Yeats remarked, to tell the dancer from the dance. (Sept.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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