Travellers in Magic - Softcover

Goldstein, Lisa

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312863012 ISBN 13: 9780312863012

Publisher: Tor Books, 1997

Synopsis

A complete collection of a popular science fiction author's short works includes "Cassandra's Photographs," "Alfred," and others

About this title

Review:

The 15 deceptively plain short stories in this collection hum with the harmonics of Lisa Goldstein's novels. In "Tourists," Goldstein visits Amaz, where packs of tarotlike cards circulate and an American tourist is enmeshed in their predictions. A reporter interviewing a revolutionary leader learns that "Death is Different" in Amaz, and in "A Game of Cards," the oracular cards appear in America. Goldstein is fascinated by refugees, travelers, and explorers confronting alien cultures or surviving in exile. Sometimes her characters are subsumed, assimilated; sometimes they maintain an indigestible integrity in their foreign environment. It is always better to adapt to new circumstances, while honoring the past, in Goldstein's worlds, than to deny them. Rigidity is sterile death.

From Publishers Weekly:

This volume gathers all of Goldstein's short fiction to date, 14 stories published between 1984 and 1994 plus one ("Split Light") making its debut here. Ranging from science fiction ("Midnight News") to myths and fairy tales seen through a modern lens ("Ever After," "Rites of Spring") to historical fantasies ("Infinite Riches," "Split Light"), these tales are otherwise surprisingly unified: they're all told in Goldstein's plain, precise prose and simple but poetic imagery, and none venture off Earth, or even far from the everyday world. Goldstein (Summer King, Winter Fool) is more interested in parent-child relationships and her characters' struggles against self-imposed limitations than in genre spectacle. In "Cassandra's Photographs," a man gets a peek at his future that first thrills, then dismays and finally frees him. In "The Woman in the Painting," a shape-shifting alien becomes an artist's ideal model, mirroring how women often adapt themselves to other's expectations, losing themselves in the process. Goldstein is at her best in the stories that touch on themes of Jewish experience, such as the Holocaust: the touching ghost story "Alfred," the vivid and effective "A Traveller at Passover" and, perhaps best of all, "Breadcrumbs and Stones," which combines fairy tales and Holocaust memories in a tale of tragedy and hope.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0312863012
• ISBN 13: 9780312863012
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288