Starwater Strains (2005)

Contents

• Introduction (2005)
• Viewpoint (Redshift, 2001)
• Rattler (Realms of Fantasy, 2004)
• In Glory like Their Star (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 2001)
• Calamity Warps (Realms of Fantasy, 2003)
• Graylord Man's Last Words (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, 2003)
• Shields of Mars (Mars Probes, 2002)
• From the Cradle (Shelf Life, 2002)
• Black Shoes (13 Horrors, 2003)
• Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon? (Moon Shots, 1999)
• Pulp Cover (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, 2004)
• Of Soil and Climate (Realms of Fantasy, 2004)
• The Dog of the Drops (3SF, 2002)
• Mute (2002 World Horror Convention Program Book, 2002)
• Petting Zoo (Dinosaur Fantastic II, 1997)
• Castaway (scifi.com, 2003)
• The Fat Magician (Such A Pretty Face, 2000)
• Hunter Lake (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2003)
• The Boy Who Hooked the Sun (Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, 1985)
• Try and Kill It (Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, 1996)
• Game in the Pope's Head (Ripper!, 1988)
• Empires of Foliage and Flower (Cheap Street chapbook, 1987)
• The Arimaspian Legacy (Winter Solstice chapbook from Cheap Street, 1987)
• The Seraph from Its Sepulcher (Sacred Visions, 1991)
• Lord of the Land (Cthulhu 2000, 1995)
• Golden City Far (Flights, 2004)

Editions

Tor hardcover, 2005. Jacket photographs by Joseph van Os.

Comments

Blurbs

• Tor hardcover
  • Jacket front flap
  "Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today. Let me repeat that: Gene Wolfe is the greatest writer in the English language alive today! I mean it. Shakespeare was a better stylist, Melville was more important to American letters, and Charles Dickens had a defter hand at creating characters. But among living writers, there is nobody who can even approach Gene Wolfe for brillaince of prose, clarity of thought, and depth in meaning."
  MICHAEL SWANWICK
  
  Gene Wolfe follows the recent, acclaimed, all-fantasy short-story collection, Innocents Aboard, and his magnificent fantasy series, The Wizard Knight, with a volume devoted primarily to his science fiction. The twenty-five stories here amply demonstrate his range, excellence, and mastery of the form that has traditionally been the heart of the field. Their diversity makes them otherwise impossible to characterize as a group, so a few tantalizing samples will have to suffice:
  
  "Viewpoint" takes on the unreality of so-called "reality" TV and imagines such a show done truly for real, with real guns, adn a real government clawing at the money.
  
  Wolfe has loved dinosaurs since he was a kid. In "Petting Zoo," he imagines the reunion of a man and an aged dinosaur who look back together on a day when they were much, much younger, and much freer.
  
  "Empires of Foliage and Flower" is a special treat, an addition to the classic Book Of The New Sun series first published only as a limited-edition chapbook.
  
  The volume closes with its newest story, "Golden City Far." It's about dreams, high school, and finding love, which Wolfe says "is about as good a recipe for a story as I've ever found." You're sure to agree.

"Gene Wolfe is the finest and most subtle short-story writer active in the field today."
--David Drake

• Jacket back flap

GENE WOLFE lives with his wife, Rosemary, in Barrington, Illinois.

• Jacket back cover

PRAISE FOR GENE WOLFE
WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD
FOR LIFE ACHIEVEMENT, AS WELL AS THE NEBULA AWARD (2),
THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD (2), THE JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD,
THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD, AND THE PRIX APOLLO

"If any writer from within genre fiction ever merited the designation Great Author, it is surely Wolfe [who] reads like Dickens, proust, Kipling, Chesterton, Borges and Nabokov rolled into one, and then spiced with all manner of fantastic influences, from H.G. Wells to Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft to Damon Knight ... Gene Wolfe has taken science fiction to its highest artistic pitch, transcending genre, creating a literary monument unlike any ohter. He is SF's premier novelist, and overall one of America's finest ... Modernist or postmodernist, formal allegorist or anatomist of the deepest complexities of the human soul, he is a wonder, yes, a genius." --The Washington Post Book World

"Gene Wolfe is as good a writer as there is today ... I feel a little bit like a contemporary attempting to tell people what's good about Mozart." -- Chicago Sun-Times

PRAISE FOR WOLFE'S PREVIOUS COLLECTION,
INNOCENTS ABOARD

"Wolfe, who has been publishing excellent stories since the 190s, is the Old Master ... and very much in his prime." -- Locus

"It is easy ... to appreciate Wolfe's versatility in choice of subjects, the depth of the knowledge he brings to bear on developing them, and the magisterial excellence of his prose. Short fiction doesn't often get better than this in the English language." -- Booklist

"Veteran Wolfe doesn't just write stories. He tells wondrously imaginateive tales that weave reality with dream and fit so comfortably -- or with intentional discomfort -- within the psyche that they surely must have dwelt there all along, with the other great fables and folktales, lore and legends that are part of our collective cultural unconscious. Wofe ranks with the finest writers of this or any other day." -- Publishers Weekly