Jubilee - Hardcover

Dann, Jack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 076530676X ISBN 13: 9780765306760

Publisher: Tor Books, 2003

Synopsis

Jack Dann is the award–winning, bestselling author of some of the most distinguished work in modern science fiction and fantasy, including the classic novels The Man Who Melted and The Memory Cathedral. But Dann is also the author of some of the most memorable short fiction of the last twenty-five years. Here is a generous helping of some of his best work.

From “The Diamond Pit,” a cautionary tale of the corrupting effects of wealth, to the Nebula Award-winning “Da Vinci Rising,” to “Jubilee,” the haunting title story of this collection, this short collection fiction represents the most brilliant work in the fantastic to be seen in the last three decades. There are dark fables such as “The Black Horn,” which introduces a unicorn to modern-day Miami, and the nightnmarish visions of “A Quiet Revolution for Death.” But Jack Dann’s visions can be funny, too, in tales such as “Bad Medicine” and “Fairy Tale,” though the comedians and ordinary guys caught up in a world beyond their ken may not always think so. And in works such as “Tattoos” and “Kaddish,” Dann even addresses the ultimate human hope of redemption.

About this title

From the Author

I almost died when I was in my 20’s. I was in hospital and was given a 5% chance of survival. The days and weeks and months were a series of stop-motion slides of agonizing pain and ice-blue Demerol dreams, pain, bliss, pain, bliss, and during the Demerol highs, I would ask my nurse for ice; I would place my hand in the ice and dream of "The Blue Country," a place of ice mountains and constant blue twilight, my own metaphor for lonely peace and death.

After months of fighting for my life on a terminal ward where my friends died and the patients formed a secret club of those traversing the blue country, I began to recover. On my tray table beside the bed, I kept a copy of Ernest Hemmingway’s memoir of his youth in Paris, A Moveable Feast; and it became like a talisman for me. When I was too ill even to consider reading, I would put my hand on its cool covers...as if I could become a writer by osmoses. Later, I would read a passage or a page and enter Hemmingway’s life, enter what the French author Jean Dutourd called the life of art. I associated books with life, with the juice and joy of being alive, and I felt...I felt that I had, in a sense, died and come back. I’d been given a second chance. And somehow that gave me the courage to take chances, live on the edge, live my dreams. I wasn’t afraid of failure. For a while, I wasn’t afraid of anything!

Thirty years later and I’m still living the dream, writing, stretching, reaching for that elusive, perfect image, living fast and hard and hot, and sometimes—when I’m sitting in front of the CRT screen and reaching for those images—I’m not afraid of anything.

The stories that follow are living bits of my experience and memory...alchemical distillations of my fantasies, dreams, and nightmares. They are the fictional flesh of my musings.

Magicks...

And if I’ve done something right, some of their magic might come alive for you...become part of your experience and sense memory

From the Inside Flap

THE ESSENTIAL JACK DANN

Jack Dann is the award-winning, bestselling author of some of the most distinguished work in modern science fiction and fantasy, including the classic novels The Man who Melted and The Memory Cathedral. But Dann is also the author of some of the most memorable short fiction of the last twenty-five years. Here is a generous helping of some of his best work, from "The Diamond Pit," a cautionary tale of the corrupting effects of wealth, to the Nebula Award-winning "Da Vinci Rising." This collection showcases Dann's originality, range, and narrative power, and demonstrates why critics have compared his work to that of Jorge Luis Borges, Roald Dahl, J. G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick, and others. Simply, Jack Dann is a master storyteller.

PRAISE FOR JACK DANN'S STORIES

"A poet of the dark side of the human soul, perhaps the best we've seen since the vintage Bradbury of The October Country."
--GARDNER DOZOIS

"Jack Dann's stories are vivid, passionate, and eloquent."
--ROBERT SILVERBERG

"A reality magician . . . and just when you think he has inoculated you against surprise, he will surprise you again. He's that good."
--ROGER ZELAZNY

"The seventeen stories in this volume indicate why Dann has been a conspicuous figure in literary SF for more than a generation. . . . This is literary SF of the best sort."
--Booklist on Jubilee

About this edition

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 076530676X
• ISBN 13: 9780765306760
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448