From Publishers Weekly
Canadian short story writer Murphy specializes in miniatures, close-up pictures of people coping with a crisis. Sometimes the problems come at them from outside, but usually they must confront an ecological disaster that is, however indirectly and passively, their own fault. The results, in this 11-story collection, are compelling if not exactly lighthearted. Closest to being humorous is the nautical "Day's Hunt," a rowdy but scathingly ironic tale in which harpooners chase mutant whales in a sea of liquefying garbage. The title story, on the other hand, imagines superpowerful insects preparing to desert Earth en masse because humans have polluted it so thoroughly. Our mistakes have changed the rules of the game, Murphy insists, so we must decide to understand and adapt—or perish. He still believes we may have a choice. If this sounds like environmentalist preaching, almost all the selections work as stories because they feature believable action in convincingly detailed settings; their message comes across successfully because we do sympathize with the characters' dilemmas and their struggles.
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Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
In over a decade of writing short fiction, Derryl Murphy has consistently and poignantly examined the human experience, in relation to other people and to the environment. There are eleven stories in this collection, ten of them gathered together for the first time and one making its debut in these pages, and all of them examine our experience with the world(s) around us, anticipating Dread and Disaster with every turn, even while Hope is sometimes allowed to win out. Come witness: the destruction of the Earth; an alien tourist and the death of a species; Earth at the end of time, coming back from a very long trip; a man and his father, lost in time; sailing on seas of garbage; an insect rebellion; a virtual future that creates an unrealistic past; water, politics, and a big machine; monkeywrenching taken to a new level; lessons in photography; and rebellion on a distant world. Eleven stories that take you into the future even as you wrestle with the present.
--This text refers to an alternate
Hardcover
edition.
