Synopses & Reviews
Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.
In The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.
Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.
Review
"Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer . . . passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying." Tamar Yellin, author, The Genizah at the House of Shepher
Review
"Reminiscent of Japanese surrealist author Haruki Murakami . . . VanderMeer's stories are provocative marvels." Sacramento Book Review
Review
"Jeff VanderMeer is an extraordinary writer . . . passionate, beautiful, complex, terrifying." Tamar Yellin, author, The Genizah at the House of Shepher
Review
"VanderMeer may be creating the dominant literature of the 21st century." Guardian
Review
"One of the most literary fantasy writers or fantastic literary writers we've got working these days, take your pick.” Ron Hogan, Mediabistros GalleyCat
Review
"A fine introduction to one of our very best contemporary practitioners of the fantastic." Publishers Weekly
Review
"VanderMeer proves again why he is so essential and why everybody should be reading him." Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Review
"These 15 elegantly crafted stories ably demonstrate VanderMeer's skill . . . calls to mind the works of Borges, Kafka, and Lem." Library Journal, Starred Review
Review
One of the things that sets VanderMeer apart is his embrace of technology and media. His online presence is considerable and includes a number of web sites, frequent blogging, a short film adaptation of his novel Shriek (including collaboration with pop rock band The Church), his Alien Baby photo project and even a project involving animation via Sony Playstation.” Wired.com
Review
"Jeff Vandermeer is not to be trusted. He hypnotizes with shiny objects, bizarrely beautiful shapes and phrases, then (more often than not) gently drifts you into very dark places. You won't know where you're going till you get there and then, of course, it's too late." Mike Mignola, creator, Hellboy
Review
"In the hands of a brilliant writer like Jeff VanderMeer, writing fantasy can be a means of serious artistic expression. . . . It is also playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly imaginative." Peter Straub, author, The Talisman
Review
"Fascinating . . . the harmonics between the stories cross all sorts of boundaries." Locus Magazine
Review
Elegantly crafted stories ably demonstrate VanderMeers skill at telling tales of wonder in language that enhances the reading experience”
Library Journal, starred review
One of our very best contemporary practitioners of the fantastic...superb prose, overwhelmingly odd situations, and fascinating, eccentric characters.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Jeff VanderMeer is not to be trusted. He hypnotizes with shiny objects, bizarrely beautiful shapes and phrases, then (more often than not) gently drifts you into very dark places. You wont know where youre going till you get there and then, of course, its too late.”
Mike Mignola, creator of Hellboy
"In the hands of a brilliant writer like Jeff VanderMeer, writing fantasy can be a means of serious artistic expression. . . . It is also playful, poignant, and utterly, wildly imaginative."
—Peter Straub, author, The Talisman
Cunningly crafted stories full of wonder and intelligence.... VanderMeer proves again why he is so essential and why everybody should be reading him.”
Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prizewinning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Vandermeers stories hit ones hindbrain slantwisethey offer no easy answers and no comfort. Rather they are hard, brilliant gems meant to cut and shinethese are some of the most beautiful, upsetting, and accomplished tales I have ever read.”
Catherynne M. Valente, author of The Orphans Tales
The Third Bear contains some of my favorite stories of recent years. Theres the meticulous workplace surrealism of The Situation, the remorseless multiworld cataclysms of The Goat Variations, the beautiful eldritch heartsickness of The Surgeons Tale. Jeff VanderMeer is one of the very best.”
Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
Annexing the weird half-lit spaces between genres, these stories lean sometimes into fantasy and SF, sometimes into metafiction, but are always deft and pleasurable reads. VanderMeer is one of the few writers out there able to coax something startling and necessary from anything...a very strong collection.”
Brian Evenson, author of Last Days
The stories in this collection are smart, gorgeous, allusive, and tricky. VanderMeer is a fantasist extraordinaire.”
Jack OConnell, author of The Resurrectionist
Jeff VanderMeers work is subversive and disquieting, possessed of an almost kinetic force in its impact upon the mind. Body horror gone viral, fairy tales wrapped in their own entrails, and metafictional murder; these and other images herein are sure to leave their mark and fester in the subconscious. Already a well-regarded fantasist, The Third Bear reveals VanderMeer at his most fearsome.”
Laird Barron, author of The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
One of the leading fantasists of this generation, Jeff VanderMeers new collection is a must-have for any discerning reader.”
Rick Klaw, editor of The Apes of Wrath
Reminiscent of Japanese surrealist author Haruki Murakami...VanderMeers stories are provocative marvels.”
Sacramento Book Review
...Crisp, elegant slightly detached prose and stories...much to admire and enjoy.”
Fantasy-Magazine.com
When you add all these [stories] together, what you have is a collection that the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson might have written if they really wanted to mess with the heads of small children.... Ten out of ten.”
Graemes Fantasy Book Review
Synopsis
"Cunningly crafted stories full of wonder and intelligence. VanderMeer proves again why he is so essential and why everybody should be reading him."
--Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao Featuring two tales of Mord, the bear immortalized in VanderMeer's bestseller, Borne
Compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka, contemporary fantasist Jeff VanderMeer (The Southern Reach Trilogy) continues to amaze with this surreal, innovative, and absurdist gathering of award-winning short fiction. Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.
In "The Situation," a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In "Three Days in a Border Town," a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; "Errata" follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including "The Quickening," in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.
Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers into a new literature of the imagination.
Synopsis
The award-winning short fiction in this collection highlights the voice of an inventive contemporary fantasist who has been compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka.
Synopsis
The award-winning short fictions in this collection highlight the voice of an inventive contemporary fantasist who has been compared by critics to Borges, Nabokov, and Kafka. In addition to highlights such as The Situation,” in which a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta ray to be used for educational purposes and Errata,” which follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world, this volume contains two never-before-published stories. Chimerical and hypnotic, this compilation leads readers through the postmodern into what is emerging into a new literature of the imagination.
About the Author
Jeff VanderMeer is a columnist, a publisher, the author of several books, including Booklife, City of Saints & Madmen, Finch, Shriek: An Afterword, and Veniss Underground. He is the editor of Fast Ships, Black Sails; The New Weird; Steampunk; and The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases. He is the founder and editor for Ministry of Whimsy Press and is a regular contributor to Barnes & Noble Review, the Huffington Post, the New York Times Book Review, Omnivoracious, the Washington Post Book World, and Wired. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.