Review
"Always brilliant, Swanwick shines in these quirky short pieces." -- Locus Online
"You have both hands full: felicities, surprises, bon-mots, witticisms, epiphanies, goodies of every description." -- Eileen Gunn, The Fantastic Metropolis
"[M]iniaturized, tightly compressed fictions that are alternately startling, funny and mysterious, and often possess the resonance of especially vivid dreams." -- Bill Sheehan, The Washington Post Book World
"You have both hands full: felicities, surprises, bon-mots, witticisms, epiphanies, goodies of every description." -- Eileen Gunn, The Fantastic Metropolis
"[M]iniaturized, tightly compressed fictions that are alternately startling, funny and mysterious, and often possess the resonance of especially vivid dreams." -- Bill Sheehan, The Washington Post Book World
Book Description
This collection of short-short fiction by Michael Swanwick contains more than 70 stories in fewer than 100 pages. Often humorous, sometimes chilling, always entertaining, these are prime examples of a recently resurrected literary form. 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, the Light of Ontology, and a cigar as Faust himself. Swanwick's bravura imagination has resulted in a separate story for every letter of the alphabet and another set of tales for every planet in the solar system. Additionally, there is 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.
