Synopses & Reviews
These surreal, satiric stories pay a mesmerizing visit to the shadowy zone that lies between our everyday lives and a perilously tangible near-future.
In The Wall of America,” the Department of Homeland Security has put up a border wall between the United States and Canada. But the NEA has plans for the wall as well, turning it into the worlds largest art gallery. After the Rapture, working-class life for A Family of the Post-Apocalypse” is not as different as one might imagine, despite the occasional plague of biker-gang locusts. Between addiction and art is Ringtime,” where a criminal is trapped in a recursive compulsion to visit other peoples memories while he is forced to record his own for an eager audience. A Somali schoolgirl living in post-WWIII Minneapolis goes on a bloody crusade to rid her town of a familiar predator, one who might just be a monster, in White Man.”
Vivid, starkly imagined, and strikingly articulate, this disquieting collection is a journey that skillfully straddles the line between playful absurdity and pointed irony.
Review
"Diversely gifted . . . entirely original . . . joyously versatile . . . a unique talent." Newsweek
Review
"This collection of 19 later short pieces by author and poet Disch . . . lovingly tears into the realities and fantasies of American life. . . . These tales show Disch at his masterful, acerbic best." Publishers Weekly
Review
"A worthy volume from a writer who we really needed to be alive today, skewering hypocrisy and sometimes unearthing the sunny side of suffering." The Los Angeles Times
Review
"Vivid, starkly imagined, and strikingly articulate, this disquieting compilation is a journey that skillfully straddles the line between absurdity and irony." Book Buzz
Review
"These stories are usually humorous, thoughtful and in no way pessimistic. They are as good as any you will find this year, whether published as 'science fiction' or 'literature.'" Guardian (UK)
Review
"Novelist, poet, and critic, he has become a most significant literary presence." American Academy of Arts and Letters
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"One of the most remarkably talented writers around." The Washington Post Book World
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"When it comes to Thomas Disch, label makers scratch their heads. . . . This literary chameleon redefined science fiction with novels that have been compared to the best from Orwell to Huxley, wrote bestselling children's books about talking kitchen appliances, earned censure from the Catholic Church for an off-Broadway play, published light verse, twisted the pulp conventions of gothic fiction, experimented with interactive software, and demolished the American poetry establishment, UFO cults, and other sacred cows in brilliant critical essays." Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Review
"Darkly satirical stories that evoke laughs as they twist in the knife." Roanoke Times
Review
"One of the most remarkably talented writers around."
—The Washington Post Book World
...bitter and sharp...not to be missed.”
Locus
...darkly satirical stories that evoke laughs as they twist the knife.... No subject is sacred....”
Roanoke Times
The stories are rich, sardonic, despairing, and mischievous by turns, capable of being emotionally resonant and laugh-out-loud funny in the same breath.”
Sci Fi Magazine
...extraordinary wit and gusto....”
LA City Beat
Theres a certain sophistication in Thomas M. Dischs writing, especially with his tendency to combine dystopias with a light-hearted and almost playful tone.... [T]he stories come out fresh and unique.”
Bibliophile Stalker
A certain mordant joie de vivre compounded equally of hard-boiled and reluctant romanticism, Schadenfreude, self-knowledge, disdain, elitism, compassion, fatalism, ingenuity, and willed naiveté.”
Barnes&Noble.com
...a worthy volume from a writer who we really needed to be alive today, skewering hypocrisy and sometimes unearthing the sunny side of suffering.”
Los Angeles Times
...mesmerizing.... Vivid, starkly imagined, and strikingly articulate, this disquieting
compilation is a journey that skillfully straddles the line between absurdity and irony.”
Book Buzz
...this collection of 19 later short pieces by author and poet Disch (19402008) lovingly tears into the realities and fantasies of American life.... [T]hese tales show Disch at his masterful, acerbic best.”
Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Thomas M. Disch was a novelist, poet, and book critic. His work was featured in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Harpers, The Nation, and the Hudson Review of Books. Disch was a major figure of science fictions new-wave movement. His books included Camp Concentration, On Wings of Song, The Word of God, and The Brave Little Toaster. His nonfiction book about poetry, The Castle of Indolence, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1996. John Clute famously described Disch as perhaps the most respected, least trusted, most envied, and least read of all modern first-rank SF writers.”