Item Detail

From the spinetingling account of an intergalactic poacher's rite of passage to an erotic and ultimately uplifting modern fable of inner scars and otherworldly transformation, here is Haldeman at his very best - fifteen remarkable tales and "story poems", including four Hugo and Nebula Award winners, exhibiting a depth of feeling and an understanding of the human condition that is all too rare in the science fiction genre. Included is his Nebula and Hugo Award-winning novella The Hemingway Hoax - in which a scholar's seemingly harmless literary fraud ends up having catastrophic multidimensional repercussions.

Veteran sf writer Haldeman offers a novella, ten short stories, and four story poems originally published from 1986 to 1994, plus comments on the inspiration for each piece. The centerpiece is the Hugo and Nebula award-winning novella, Hemingway's Hoax, which shows that it can be deadly to replicate lost manuscripts. Throughout, the richly drawn characters are generally ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. A strong contender for sf collections, this will work in general short story collections as well. Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.

---

The title tale in this new collection from Haldeman (Worlds Apart) is a stunner; it won the 1995 Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for best short story. In it, two misfit geniuses, a neurosurgeon and a blind musician, revolutionize near-future society by discovering how blindness enhances the learning process. Perhaps this is a "crazy idea," as Haldeman labels it in an author's note, but it's inspired as well, as are most of the 15 selections here, all first published between 1986 and 1994. In fact, two other Hugo winners grace the book: "The Hemingway Hoax" builds the classic SF concept of multiple universes into a novella rich in characterization and insights into the creative process; "Graves" reflects-as does much of his work-Haldeman's Vietnam experience. Some of the pieces here are too short to have much impact, but the four story-poems are very effective, and "If I Had the Wings of an Angel" speaks eloquently to the young adult market. The introduction and notes that round out the collection say much about the process of turning ideas into stories-a transformation at which, apparently, Haldeman is still a master. (May) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.