A collection of twelve fantasy tales by the author of Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos and Cambio Bay includes the Nebula-winning story ""Forever Yours, Anna,"" the chilling ""The Scream,"" and ""The Look Alike.""
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Wilhelm ( Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos ) presents 12 lucid, haunting stories that combine science fiction with psychological suspense. Her characters often travel great distances--on highways and through time--to destinations which force them to confront essential truths about themselves and their relationships. In the powerful "The Great Doors of Silence," Cass Mercer drives to Phoenix for a family reunion, where her three-year-old nephew's bruises cause her to recall the abuse she and her siblings endured from their father. The theme of the journey recurs with an SF twist in "The Chosen," in which an expedition into the future reveals an eerily silent, forested world uncontaminated by humans; the bittersweet "Forever Yours, Anna" takes readers unexpectedly into the future after a graphologist falls in love with the letters of a woman he has never met. In the fantastic and oddly touching title story, a journalist nurses an otherworldly being back to health after finding it during a fierce storm. The only previously unpublished story here, "The Day of the Sharks," looks at a faltering marriage and the nightmarish situation behind a seemingly idyllic Florida vacation. A memorable collection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
This richly rewarding collection by the author of Death Qualified (1991), etc., easily transcends its science-fiction classification--focusing less on the vagaries of time and space than on the imaginations of characters struggling to come to terms with their fate. ``I know of no other writer who conveys so successfully the twin truths of our lives--that the world is at once so much better and so much worse than we imagine it to be,'' writes Karen Joy Fowler (Sarah Canary, 1991) in her foreword here. Wilhelm's refreshingly free use of fantasy to evoke her characters' emotional realities conveys, as well, a rich range and variety of truths between the extremes. In ``The Look Alike,'' a woman's grief over her stillborn child leads her to believe that a double has taken over her destiny; in the Nebula-winning ``Forever Yours, Anna,'' a divorced graphologist falls in love with a woman through her handwriting, only to realize, after an exhaustive search, that the woman exists only in the future; and in the title story, a small- town journalist becomes so captivated by an alien creature he discovers by the side of the road that he fails to realize that the creature does not love him in return. Double identities and time travel figure frequently in the fantasies of Wilhelm's brooding, solitary characters, yet instead of distracting from the quiet desperation at the bottom of their lives, this subjective rendering brings readers to a deeper, more moving and memorable, psychological truth. An aptly titled and unusually successful departure from traditional storytelling--these tales, all but one of which were first published in Redbook, Omni, and other magazines, may serve to expand Wilhelm's readership. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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More About the Author
Born in 1928, Kate Wilhelm the author of more than thirty novels including Where Late the Sweet Bird Sang and The Unbidden Truth. Her work has been adapted for TV and film and translated into twenty languages. She has been awarded the Prix Apollo, Kurd Lasswitz, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. In 2003, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Her short fiction appeared in landmark anthologies such as Again Dangerous Visions, Orbit, The Penguin Book of Modern Fantasy by Women, and The Norton Book of Science Fiction. A cofounder of the Clarion Writers' Workhops, she continues to host monthly writing workshops in Eugene, Oregon.
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some good stories, but not what I expected.,
By A Customer
This review is from: And the Angels Sing (Hardcover)
Many of these stories are mainstream & the occasional science fiction stories struck me as generally being mainstream at heart. Intriguingly these stories seemed like they were buy a mature woman for mature women, which is odd in the case of science fiction. Since I'm a 21 yr. old man I felt sort of left out & occasionally insulted. I liked some of the mainstream stories (I became a science fiction fan by accident & I wanted to like the "classics" ..actually I do like some "classic" short stories)to continue "Forever Yours Anna" was wonderful. It would be a shame if a few science fiction stories keep mature women who love "literature" from picking this up. If ,like me, you were wanting a science fiction collection seek elsewhere. (Elsewhere might mean Visions of Wonder which has "Forever Yours Anna" which is unquestionably sf.)
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