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
Original cover price: $6.95.