Short Story Collections
Gravity's Angels is a showcase for a decade's worth of Swanwick's shorter fictions, from his first published short story, "The Feast of Saint Janis," to a descent past the edge of a flat Earth otherwise very like our own in "The Edge of the World," which won the 1990 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The stories collected here are luminous with the promise of his ambition, smart and allusive, dense with ideas and images, sacred and profane.
Often humorous, sometimes chilling, always entertaining, this collection of award-winning author Michael Swanwick’s short-short fiction is a work of masterfully sustained whimsy for adults. Cigar-Box Faust contains more than seventy fantastical stories in fewer than a hundred pages. The title piece is a five-minute condensation of a classic of Western literature, featuring a cigar-cutter as Mephistopheles; a box of matches in the roles of Helen of Troy, an Angel of the Lord, and the Light of Ontology; and a cigar as Faust himself. Although it has previously been performed live by the author, this is its first appearance in print. There is also an abecedary showcasing Swanwick’s bravura imagination with a separate story for every letter of the alphabet, another set of tales for every planet in the solar system, and a series of pieces that the author literally wrote in his sleep! To say nothing of a clutch of alternate autobiographies, a novella of decadence and corporate politics in a future Venice that has been boiled down to 416 words, Picasso and Philip K. Dick as existential heroes...and a rhyme for orange.
From pure fantasy to hard science fiction, this finely crafted offering by one of the greatest science fiction writers of his generation promises to stretch readers' minds far beyond ordinary limits. Nineteen tales from Michael Swanwick's best short fiction of the past decade are gathered here for the first time, including the 1999 Hugo Award-nominated "Radiant Doors" and "Wild Minds" and this year's winning story, "The Very Pulse of the Machine." The collection also features "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O," written especially for this volume.
A collection of stories by this multiple Hugo-Award winning author with illustrations by Lee Moyer. This book was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best collection
Moon Dogs is a sampling of Michael Swanwick's work, with seven stories, one play, six essays, and two speeches. Two of the stories, "Moon Dogs" and "Mickelrede," are new. Michael Swanwick has given readings of the title story to general acclaim, and the NESFA Press is proud to make it available. "Mickelrede" is one of his posthumous collaborations with Avram Davidson, and gives an intriguing look into the creative process. His other such collaboration, "Vergil Magus: King Without Country," is another chance for the reader to visit with the mage from The Phoenix and the Mirror. The range of his fiction work is represented with the short novel Griffin's Egg, and the award-winning play "The Dead." Among the essays here are the hard-to-find "The Death of the Magus: Two Myths" and "The Hagiography of Saint Dozois," and the bizarre tale of "Jane Swanwick and the Search for Identity." His discussions of the SF field, "A User's Guide to the Postmoderns" and "In the Tradition .," are witty and insightful surveys-so much so that the former has even been pirated in countries around the world. His collaboration with Jack Dann, "Ships" (in its first American publication), and two of his several collaborations with Gardner Dozois, "Ancestral Voices" and "The City of God," are further demonstrations of the range of his fiction.
The master of microfiction returns with eighteen short-short stories on dinosaur themes. Steely bureaucrats, genetically engineered Christmas toys, and beloved killer pets clash with immoral scientists, neighborhood bullies, and society ladies, with dangerous, sometimes poignant, and often wickedly funny consequences. Michael Crichton’s dinosaurs were never quite like this. As one canny old predator remarks, Herbivores! You gotta love ’em. They fall for the old theropod-in-a-rubber-tenontosaur-suit trick every time.” In this companion volume to Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures , Swanwick continues to delight. It is certain to charm anyone who is or ever wanted to be a paleontologistand to convince them that pursuing alternative careers is probably wise. This collection features the British Science Fiction Association Awardnominated Five British Dinosaurs” as well as humorous original illustrations by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.
Great literature has never been this much fun before. The reigning master of short fiction reinvents science fiction and fantasy in a dazzling new collection unlike anything you’ve ever read. Time-traveling dinosaurs wreak havoc on a placid Vermont town. An ogre is murdered in a locked room in Faerie. An uncanny bordello proves as dangerous as it is alluring. Language is stolen from the builders of Babel. Those strangely loveable Post-Utopian scoundrels and con men Darger and Surplus swindle their way through London, Paris, and Arcadia. The Dog Said Bow-Wow includes three Hugo Awardwinning stories and an original novelette of swashbuckling romance and adventure, The Skysailor’s Tale.” Ranging from the hardest of science fiction to the highest of fantasy, this irresistible collection amuses and enlightens as only Michael Swanwick can.
A collection of stories from the Hugo-winner features tales that run the gamut from space adventures to biochemical warfare.
The master of short science-fiction follows up his acclaimed collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow with feline grace, precision, and total impertinence. Michael Swanwick takes us on a whirlwind journey across the globe and across time and space, where magic and science exist in possibilities that are not of this world. These tales are intimate in their telling, galactic in their scope, and delightfully sesquipedalian in their verbiage. Join the caravan through Swanwick's worlds and into the playground of his mind. Discover a calculus problem that rocks the ages and robots who both nurture and kill. Meet a magical horse who protects the innocent, a confused but semi-repentant troll, a savvy teenager who takes on the Devil, and time travelers from the Mesozoic who party till the end of time...