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Centuries Ago and Very Fast [Paperback]

Rebecca Ore (Author)

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Book Description

April 1, 2009
Centuries Ago and Very Fast is a collection of linked stories by Rebecca Ore, author of Gaia's Toys, Time's Child, Slow Funeral, and other well-received novels. The stories in this collection relate tales from the life of Vel, a gay immortal born in the Paleolithic who jumps time at will. We encounter him hunting mammoths, playing with reindeer tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms, negotiating each successive wave of invaders to keep his family and its land intact, living as the minor god of a spring, witnessing the hanging of mollies in seventeenth-century London as well as the Stonewall riots in twentieth-century New York City. Vel has had more lovers than he can remember and is sometimes tempted to flirt with death. Centuries Ago and Very Fast offers fascinating, often erotic glimpses of the life of a man who has just about seen it all.

The eminent novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany writes: ''Witty, vivid, and very thought provoking, these interwoven narratives of the most sophisticated of primitive lusts start with a gay caveman who happens to have been around over fourteen thousand years. Finishing an afternoon tryst with a Puerto Rican drag queen at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, he and his new friend wander back to Greenwich Village to end up smack in the Stonewall Riots of late June 69. Then we go hunting (and killing and dressing and eating and a few other things that might raise your eyebrow) a mammoth. But that s only the beginning. (Want to learn the right way to celebrate the winter solstice?) Ore's little book has intelligence and charm. Really, you ve just got to read this!''

And Pamela Sargent, author of The Shore of Women and the Venus Trilogy and editor of the Women of Wonder series, says: ''In Centuries Ago and Very Fast, Rebecca Ore reveals the gritty and often less admirable aspects of human life without flinching but also without cynicism. These earthy, lively, and compelling stories centered around a time-traveling immortal show inventiveness, combine cosmic scope with realistic detail, and will leave readers wanting more.''


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Review

I was struggling to think of something to which I could compare this slim but well written collection of very odd, related stories, and the closest I could come was R.A. Lafferty, although only if he was collaborating with Harlan Ellison. The common character is an immortal who was born in prehistory and is still around in the modern world. He has a series of encounters with typical and atypical characters, including rebellious college students, a drag queen, and others. The tone of the stories is a balancing act between the serious and the comic. One of the most difficult books to describe I've read recently, this should appeal to fans of literary SF, satire, and nifty prose, and it is almost certainly not going to be what you re expecting. 4/22/09 --Donald D'Ammassa, Critical Mass

In his 15,000 years, gay immortal Vel has seen it all, from mastodons roaming the Earth in the Pleistocene era to the Stonewall riots in 1969. He's had innumerable lovers, remaining young as they aged; he can trip through time, offering one boyfriend in the 20th century a handful of woolly mammoth fur snatched in a flash from thousands of years past. He witnesses those heroic homo riots after rambunctious sex with a Puerto Rican drag queen, he trysts with cavemen by flickering firelight and - the thread that ties together this hugely imaginative fable's 13 interconnected stories - he falls in love with mortal Thomas, who is cautiously permitted to learn the secrets of a man who has kept his family land intact for centuries. Ore, a mainstream science fiction novelist and short story writer with James Tiptree, Jr. and Philip K. Dick nominations to her credit, has crafted a time-travel tale incorporating ancient religious rites, a tender gay love story, snapshots of historical attitudes about homosexuality - and earthy queer erotica. --Richard Labonte, Bookmarks

About the Author

Rebecca Ore's fiction burst upon the world in 1988 with the publication of her celebrated Becoming Alien trilogy, the first two novels of which were nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Since then she s published a great deal of short fiction and numerous novels, including Gaia's Toys, Time's Child, Outlaw School, Slow Funeral, and the short fiction collection, Alien Bootlegger.

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