Description
“Impossible brilliance which puts us all to shame.”
Alfred Bester
A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR
There were butchers and thugs abroad in the land in those days, when this collection of stories was first published. Their minions were paid a penny for every correction they made on some unsuspecting author’s manuscript, and so they got their drinking money by amassing a lot of pennies. Like many young writers in those days, I didn’t know how much auctorial power I had, nor how easily one could snap an arm attached to a hand holding a red pencil. So I let it go. Over the years, these stories were published again and again—always in a screwed-up version. For this Preferred Text, I have restored the original copy, corrected all the adolescent mistakes that made me wince, and even rewritten where embarrassment was the alternative. These are the fables conceived by a younger me, but now they appear for the first time as me intended.
“…the foremost short story artist of our time.”
Newsday
Bluejay Books, 3rd American Edition
Contents:
Introduction: The Man on the Mushroom
Commuter’s Problem
Do-It-Yourself (with Joe L. Hensley)
The Silver Corridor
All the Sounds of Fear
Gnomebody
The Sky Is Burning
Mealtime
The Very Last Day of a Good Woman
Battlefield
Deal From the Bottom
The Wind Beyond the Mountain
Back to the Drawing Boards
Nothing for My Noon Meal
Hadj
Rain, Rain, Go Away
In Lonely Lands