Michael Moorcock's unsettling, thought-provoking time-travel novella Behold the Man (1978), about a twentieth-century man who becomes Christ, inevitably and deservedly anchors this outstanding anthology of stories about Christ and Christ figures. With contributions from Dostoyevsky (the Grand Inquisitor story from The Brothers Karamazov), Babel, Borges, and Wilde ("The Selfish Giant," of course), however, Moorcock's tour de force can't automatically claim the highest literary reputation here. Many of the entries by Moorcock's fellow genre hands, such as Karen Joy Fowler's "Shimabara" (strictly speaking, a historical, nearly nonfictional tale), George Zebrowski's brainy "The Coming of Christ the Joker," Gene Wolfe's Sherlockian "The Detective of Dreams," and Mike Resnick's anthropological "The Pale, Thin God," match or exceed his in one way or another. The most parabolic selectionsthe Resnick, playwright Romulus Linney's "Early Marvels," even Walter Wangerin Jr.'s straightforward "Ragman"are appropriately some of the most colorful and ponderable in an altogether resonant, memorable offering. Most authors briefly remark on their handiworks, editor Bishop (himself a contributor) comments when authors don't, and a four-page list of more Christ fiction, novels as well as short stories, is appended. Olson, Ray
About the Author
Michael Bishop, editor of the Locus Award-winning anthology Light Years and Dark, co-editor with Ian Watson of the anthology Changes and editor of three consecutive volumes of the annual Nebula Award Stories, has won two Nebula Awards, a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, a Locus Award for best fantasy novel, and a Southeastern Science Fiction Award for best short fiction.
