Tripping the Tale Fantastic

From haunted Civil War battlefields to a severed ear discovered on a nightly run; from lab-grown dinosaurs to forest creatures that steal away children under the cover of night; from deadly bio-engineered fleas to a burning teenage desire for cybernetic amputations: Deaf and hard of hearing authors from around the world bring you this fun, though oftentimes disturbing, collection of short fiction.

"So often the future we imagine is homogenous: everyone has the same baseline abilities and there is a presumption that all five senses are the norm. This collection has stories of people accessing new technologies, and people living in worlds where to hear is to be abnormal. There are stories that explore the imposition of language values on the Deaf community and the harm committed in the name of 'help.' And there are stories in which we get to experience how others communicate. A thought-provoking collection." --Farah Mendlesohn, author of Rhetorics of Fantasy

"Even for someone like myself--a hearing person who has long been around the Deaf community--this anthology often gives insight into a series of deaf characters in a way perhaps no hearing writer ever could, from reading the innermost thoughts from a Deaf perspective in thriller/horror to science fiction and fantasy, and every genre in between, whether it's 'The Ear, ' which interestingly recalls the old radio drama Suspense or the more chilling 'In the Haunted Darkness, ' which puts into words the feelings of likely more than a few people, sadly. More importantly, those stories without a deaf character highlight the most crucial takeaway: a deaf writer can world-build and set scenes as well as anyone." --Dave Galanter, author of Troublesome Minds

Contributors include Kris Ashton, John Lee Clark, Michael R. Collings, Willy Conley, Bobby Cox, Daniel Crosby, Marsha Graham, Kristen Harmon, Lilah Katcher, David Langford, Raymond Luczak, A. M. Matte, Brighid Meredith, Kristen Ringman, Maverick Smith, Tonya Marie Stremlau, Jacob Waring, Joanne Yee, and Kelsey M. Young.

Christopher Jon Heuer is the author of two books. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of 19 books. His most recent titles include The Kinda Fella I Am: Stories and The Kiss of Walt Whitman Still on My Lips. His Deaf gay novel Men with Their Hands won first place in the Project: QueerLit Contest 2006. His work has been nominated seven times for a Pushcart Prize. A playwright, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

has been publishing and writing about SF since 1975. Novels include The Space Eater and The Leaky Establishment; there are many collections of magazine reviews and criticism. Langford's 29 Hugo awards span several categories: Fanzine and Semiprozine for the newsletter Ansible (1979-current), Short Story for "Different Kinds of Darkness" (2000) and Related Work for the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with John Clute and others). He has always had hearing problems.

Christopher Jon Heuer is the author of Bug: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution and All Your Parts Intact: Poems. His short stories and poetry have appeared in many anthologies and periodicals. He is a professor of English at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.