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Better Together
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This excellent collection brings together 14 of Baker's short stories about "The Company," three of them unpublished. Select humans have been plucked from various epochs and turned into enhanced, immortal, time-traveling cyborgs, programmed to do the shadowy bidding of the profit-loving Company. Unable to fight their own programming, the best of them try to fulfill the Company's directives while being kind to the mortal "sheep" they live among ("Noble Mold" and "Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu"). Their jobs and lives are complicated by warring Company factions ("Old Flat Top"), which certain mortals see as heavenly battles ("The Hotel at Harlan's Landing"). Also included are the first four tales about the mysterious, genetically enhanced Alec Checkerfield ("Smart Alec," "The Dust Enclosed Here," "Monster Story" and "The Likely Lad"), as well as two other stories ("The Literary Agent" and "The Wreck of the Gladstone") that obliquely pertain to his origins and influences. Baker shows greater range with these stories than she does in her novels (In the Garden of Eden, etc.), and has more fun with her characters, letting them play at being pirates, dig up mummies or interact with Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson. Though the collection brings up troubling ethical questions about the nature of the author's future history (since Alec is referred to as Adonai, does that mean he is God?), Baker masterfully handles characters and plots. These stories rank among the finest recent work in the field.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
What could be better than a new novel of the Company? A collection of the Company's mysterious, powerful operatives' highly entertaining adventures--that's what. Plucked from their lives in times ranging from neolithic California to the twenty-fourth century, those cybernetically enhanced agents are dispatched to later eras to discover (i.e., steal) rare plants, art treasures, and literary masterpieces. In "Old Flat Top," an enterprising Cro-Magnon boy finds the hermit atop a mountain much older and less peaceful than anyone suspected. In "The Literary Agent," casually hip Joseph negotiates with feverish Robert Louis Stevenson to develop an adventure flick to be produced hundreds of years later. Particularly appealing in several stories is young Alex, born, or at least delivered, to wealthy, dissolute parents in the highly regimented twenty-fourth century. His brain isn't quite like other children's, and his gift for rewiring computer systems is astonishing. His liberating encounter with the dispirited hologram of Shakespeare in "The Dust Enclosed Here" will satisfy every lover of the bard. Funny, poignant, thought-provoking, altogether excellent stories. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
This excellent collection brings together 14 of Baker's short stories about "The Company," three of them unpublished. Select humans have been plucked from various epochs and turned into enhanced, immortal, time-traveling cyborgs, programmed to do the shadowy bidding of the profit-loving Company. Unable to fight their own programming, the best of them try to fulfill the Company's directives while being kind to the mortal "sheep" they live among ("Noble Mold" and "Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu"). Their jobs and lives are complicated by warring Company factions ("Old Flat Top"), which certain mortals see as heavenly battles ("The Hotel at Harlan's Landing"). Also included are the first four tales about the mysterious, genetically enhanced Alec Checkerfield ("Smart Alec," "The Dust Enclosed Here," "Monster Story" and "The Likely Lad"), as well as two other stories ("The Literary Agent" and "The Wreck of the Gladstone") that obliquely pertain to his origins and influences. Baker shows greater range with these stories than she does in her novels (In the Garden of Eden, etc.), and has more fun with her characters, letting them play at being pirates, dig up mummies or interact with Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson. Though the collection brings up troubling ethical questions about the nature of the author's future history (since Alec is referred to as Adonai, does that mean he is God?), Baker masterfully handles characters and plots. These stories rank among the finest recent work in the field.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
What could be better than a new novel of the Company? A collection of the Company's mysterious, powerful operatives' highly entertaining adventures--that's what. Plucked from their lives in times ranging from neolithic California to the twenty-fourth century, those cybernetically enhanced agents are dispatched to later eras to discover (i.e., steal) rare plants, art treasures, and literary masterpieces. In "Old Flat Top," an enterprising Cro-Magnon boy finds the hermit atop a mountain much older and less peaceful than anyone suspected. In "The Literary Agent," casually hip Joseph negotiates with feverish Robert Louis Stevenson to develop an adventure flick to be produced hundreds of years later. Particularly appealing in several stories is young Alex, born, or at least delivered, to wealthy, dissolute parents in the highly regimented twenty-fourth century. His brain isn't quite like other children's, and his gift for rewiring computer systems is astonishing. His liberating encounter with the dispirited hologram of Shakespeare in "The Dust Enclosed Here" will satisfy every lover of the bard. Funny, poignant, thought-provoking, altogether excellent stories. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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