Review
"Nasty is one word I would not use to describe this collection of nine stories. Highly Recommended!" -- Manx Fiction
Book Description
But until now only those lucky readers who have run across one of this short stories in the occasional magazine or anthology have had a chance to know J. Neil Schulman as a writer of short fiction.
Nasty, Brutish and Short Stories collects seven of J. Neil Schulman’s published short stories for the first time, and adds to them two never-before-seen stories, including the first story he ever wrote.
The collection includes…
"The Repossessed"—the lead story in Carol Serling’s anthology, Adventures in the Twilight Zone — the story of a psychology professor whose dreams make him a repeated eyewitness to murder!
"The Musician," in which a reclusive violinist has to decide whether he’s a pawn in an elaborate conspiracy…or just going crazy!
"Day of Atonement," in which a terrorist conducts a solo operation in Jerusalem to save the Jews from their oppression by ... the Hebrews!
"When Freeman Shall Stand." where the last verse of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is sung with new meaning!
And five more stories!
For fans of J. Neil Schulman's award-winning novels, and his Twilight Zone episode "Profile in Silver," this is a collection not to be missed!
From the Publisher
"There Ain't No Mainstream"
by Brad Linaweaver
J. Neil Schulman, Victor Koman and I have know each other for many years. This collection of short stories is what one would expect of Neil, since he has the same problem that Victor Koman and I have.
J. Neil Schulman is a writer.
What this means is that he can write anything. That's what it means to be a writer.
By way of explanation, I will relate a personal experience because I know that any writer will understand. I'm a member of both the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Horror Writers Association. I've been on panels with horror writers who dismiss my opinion because I write science fiction stories and, no surprise, I've had science fiction writers do the same thing with me because I write horror stories.
As he points out in his introduction, this is not a very long collection. But the variety is worthy of an encyclopedia. No surprise when you're dealing with a writer.
Schulman does not make the mistake of some writers who are identified with a particular genre. He doesn't deny that he's written science fiction. Nor does he deny the other genres on display in Nasty, Brutish and Short Stories. If he ever produces a Gothic Romance, he won't deny that's what he's done. Let him produce a novel set in the old west with lots of horses and gun play, and he won't feel the need to fabricate an outre label.
But he understands right down to the marrow of his bones why someone who has written science fiction might want to deny it. That's because genre writers are treated abysmally by the publishing industry even in the best of times.
These are not the best of times.
It is perhaps worth noting that science fiction writers are treated the worst of all genre writers. That's because a writer who wants to say something about the future of mankind in these dangerous times will naturally want to talk about the big picture. Such a writer is not thinking that the bigger his thoughts, the smaller will be his pay!
There are real people in these stories. That limits Schulman's effectiveness in genre writing.
There are real ideas here. That rules out any hope of his being taken seriously by the literati who like real people in fiction only when those "real people" are bereft of ideas. Try finding anyone that empty in real life and you'll see the problem with most fiction that Gore Vidal accurately describes as "written to be taught."
The mind that produced this collection of stories is uncomfortable with the artificial barriers thrown up between commercial fiction and literature. No wonder he's so fond of The Catcher in the Rye.
Can you imagine how tolerant he is of the barriers thrown up between different areas of genre fiction, as in my example of SFWA vs. HWA?
I am proud to have played a role in two of these stories coming out through conventional New York publishers. Neil relates in his introduction how I bought his story "Day of Atonement" for the anthology I co-edited with Ed Kramer for Tor Books, Free Space.
The other case was my keeping after him to dig "The Repossessed" out of the trunk and give it another chance to see the light of print. I'd placed a story of mine with Carol Serling's Adventures in the Twilight Zone and it occurred to me that here was Neil Schulman, author of one of the best episodes of the new Twilight Zone television series, and shouldn't he at least submit a story to her book? I made certain that the TV credit was not forgotten when the story went in. Co-editor Richard Gilliam was impressed, another enthusiast for "Profile in Silver."
Carol Serling led off the collection with "The Repossessed." For me, this kind of makes up for the series not producing the other Schulman script, "Colorblind." (That script and the whole story of that true adventure in the Twilight Zone is told in Profile in Silver and Other Screenwritings, the book, also from Pulpless.Com.)
The only other story where I remember doing some cheerleading is "When Freemen Shall Stand"; but I played no part in its final publication in a nationally distributed magazine, Liberty.
As Neil says, I'm always trying to get him to write short stories.
Read this book and you'll see why. There is no bad story in here. A lot of these tales would have found a home in slick magazines for short fiction back when there was a mainstream.
But there aint no mainstream today.
And the genres are dying.
That's why the world needs more books like this one and a company known as Pulpless.Com!
From the Author
"[In a state of nature] No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651]
Okay, you got me.
This collection of short stories probably doesn’t have a lot to do with Hobbes’ musings, over three centuries ago, about the necessity for government so that we don’t all live in a state of nature, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It’s just a writer’s trick.
You see, this is a book of short stories. Short. Get it? I had to come up with a title. So, after playing around with titles having to do with strawberry short cake, short cuts, and short-sheeted beds, I remembered the quote from Hobbes.
On the other hand, some of these stories do have an anti-statist bent to them, and I do have a few acts of nastiness, brutality, and foreshortened lives within, so maybe I just can get away with this title after all, without being accused of cheating.
Putting together a collection of stories that go back to when I started writing is not without its embarrassments. It has a lot in common with going through an album of family photos.
But this collection contains some of what I consider my best work in any form.
About the Author
His third and brand-new novel is Escape From Heaven.
His first nonfiction book was Stopping Power: Why 70 Million Americans Own Guns, of which Charlton Heston said, "Mr. Schulman's book is the most cogent explanation of the gun issue I have yet read."
Schulman's next book, Self Control Not Gun Control, was his magnum opus on personal, political and spiritual power. He has been published in the Los Angeles Times and other national newspapers, as well as Reader's Digest, National Review, Reason, and other magazines. His books have been praised by Nobel laureate Milton Friedman, Anthony Burgess, Robert A. Heinlein, Colin Wilson, Walter Williams, and many other prominent individuals.
Schulman is a popular speaker on a variety of topics, and a frequent radio-talk-show guest. In 1992 he hosted and produced his own weekly radio program, broadcast on KPRO AM, Riverside, California. He was on ABC's World News Tonight as an expert on defensive use of firearms during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and in 1999 was interviewed twice on the Fox News Network for the fifth anniversary of the Brown-Goldman murders, regarding his alternative theories about the crime.
J. Neil Schulman is a pioneer in electronic publishing, having founded in 1987 the first of two companies to distribute books by bestselling authors for download.
