Stories: All-New Tales - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0061230928 ISBN 13: 9780061230929

Publisher: William Morrow, 2010

Synopsis

"The joy of fiction is the joy of the imagination. . . ."

The best stories pull readers in and keep them turning the pages, eager to discover more—to find the answer to the question: "And then what happened?" The true hallmark of great literature is great imagination, and as Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio prove with this outstanding collection, when it comes to great fiction, all genres are equal.

Stories is a groundbreaking anthology that reinvigorates, expands, and redefines the limits of imaginative fiction and affords some of the best writers in the world—from Peter Straub and Chuck Palahniuk to Roddy Doyle and Diana Wynne Jones, Stewart O'Nan and Joyce Carol Oates to Walter Mosley and Jodi Picoult—the opportunity to work together, defend their craft, and realign misconceptions. Gaiman, a literary magician whose acclaimed work defies easy categorization and transcends all boundaries, and "master anthologist" (Booklist) Sarrantonio personally invited, read, and selected all the stories in this collection, and their standard for this "new literature of the imagination" is high. "We wanted to read stories that used a lightning-flash of magic as a way of showing us something we have already seen a thousand times as if we have never seen it at all."

Joe Hill boldly aligns theme and form in his disturbing tale of a man's descent into evil in "Devil on the Staircase." In "Catch and Release," Lawrence Block tells of a seasoned fisherman with a talent for catching a bite of another sort. Carolyn Parkhurst adds a dark twist to sibling rivalry in "Unwell." Joanne Harris weaves a tale of ancient gods in modern New York in "Wildfire in Manhattan." Vengeance is the heart of Richard Adams's "The Knife." Jeffery Deaver introduces a dedicated psychologist whose mission in life is to save people in "The Therapist." A chilling punishment befitting an unspeakable crime is at the dark heart of Neil Gaiman's novelette "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains."

As it transforms your view of the world, this brilliant and visionary volume—sure to become a classic—will ignite a new appreciation for the limitless realm of exceptional fiction.

About this title

About the Author

Neil Gaiman has written award-winning books for children and adults, including the Newbery Medal-winning novel The Graveyard Book and Coraline, Stardust, and Odd and the Frost Giants. His picture books include Instructions and Blueberry Girl, illustrated by Charles Vess; The Wolves in the Walls, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, and Crazy Hair, illustrated by Dave McKean; and The Dangerous Alphabet, illustrated by Gris Grimly. A baby giant panda once sat on his lap and ate bamboo in Chengdu, China.

Reviews

This collection of 27 never-before published stories from an impressive cast—Roddy Doyle, Joyce Carol Oates, and Stuart O'Nan, among others—sets out to shift genre paradigms. The overarching theme is fantastic fiction, or fiction of the imagination, with fantasy being used in the most broad-sweeping sense rather than signaling the familiar commercial staples of elves, ghouls, and robots. Consequently, the collection's offerings run a wide gamut. In Joe Hill's Devil on the Staircase, an Italian boy commits a crime of passion and subsequently meets an emissary of Satan. In Jodi Picoult's Weights and Measures, a young couple who have just lost their daughter struggle to hold their marriage together as they both start noticing strange changes taking place. Chuck Palahniuk's The Loser features a college kid on acid as a contestant on a game show, and in Kurt Andersen's Human Intelligence, a geologist meets an explorer from another planet who has been studying humans for the past 1,600 years. The range of voices and subjects practically guarantees something for any reader, but the overall quality is frustratingly variable: most stories are good, some aren't, and few are exceptional. (June)
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The editorial collaboration of fantasy superstar Gaiman and brilliant anthologist Sarrantonio seemingly ensures a most distinguished sf-fantasy-horror collection. Mainstream and mystery stars (Roddy Doyle, Jodi Picoult, Carolyn Parkhurst, Jeffery Deaver, Walter Mosley, Chuck Palahniuk) as well as big sf-fantasy-horror names, including all-ages luminaries Diana Wynne Jones and Richard Adams, all contribute. Yet most of these stories are tepid; a few are unreadably bad. Joe R. Lansdale's “The Stars Are Falling” proves absorbing, though (and because) its characters, plot, and setting strongly recall those of Robinson Jeffers' searing antiwar poem, “The Double Axe.” Gene Wolfe's space-exploration tale “Leif in the Wind” is a tersely worded treat, Joe Hill's “Devil on the Staircase” is cleverly shaped (literally: the paragraphs look like flights of stairs), and Michael Moorcock's memoirlike “Stories,” while neither sf, fantasy, or horror, is wonderfully affecting. And Elizabeth Hand's awe-inspiring “The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon,” in which three men and two teen boys replicate the flight of a pre–Wright brothers airplane, is as magical and beautiful a light fantasy as anyone has ever written. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061230928
• ISBN 13: 9780061230929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448
• Editor: Neil Gaiman, Al Sarrantonio