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5.0 out of 5 stars
An unbelievably good alternate worlds collection, May 1 2004
This is the finest work of original fiction that I have read in a decade or more. In fact, the whole time that I was reading this collection I kept asking myself how one writer could have come up with so many original, fresh ideas. Not only that, but the ideas are just so well fleshed out with humor, intelligence, and scholarship. The overall theme of the book is alternate timelines and realities. In fact, Rudy Rucker, the mathematician famed for his popular explorations of alternate dimensions and universes, is co-author of one of the component tales. I just couldn't get over the plausibility, or in the case of my favorite story "Campbell's World", the desirability of some of these alternate realities. Indeed, if you are like me you will be amazed that so many of your favorite writers and literary figures have been woven into them with such intricate knowledge and believability. First of all, the introduction is written from the perspective of a world where science fiction totally died out in the mid-60's. It really gets you to thinking what today's world might be like without the genre- or the imagination and belief in the future that fuels it. The first tale explores a world where Franz Kafka escaped his existential despair by becoming a costumed crime-fighter in 1920's Manhattan. The second deals with a world where Anne Frank escaped occupied Europe to replace Judy Garland in Hollywood after the latter's early and tragic death. The third chronicles Antoine Saint-Exupery's (the Little Prince) desperate flight from a plague depopulated northern hemisphere to bring H.G. Well's vision of Wings Over the World to actual life in colonial Kenya. The fourth demonstrates the natural outcome of a world where Robert Heinlein succeeds FDR as our first post-war president. The fifth, my favorite, is a deeply thoughtful and moving tale of a world where the shaman Joseph Campbell decided not to teach at Sarah Lawrence, but went on to run "Astounding Stories" instead. The sixth, written with Rudy Rucker, deals with a world where Burroughs, Kerouac, and Cassidy detect a profound imbalance in the dimensions and unite to rid the world of the H-Bomb and the monsters responsible for it. The seventh tells of a time traveler from a future where WWIII is fought with nuclear weapons - who exterminates Einstein only to see WWIII fought out with conventional weapons instead. The eight story tells of a hell-world where Rush Limbaugh is absolute dictator of the U.S. and Phillip K. Dick must cross over into an alternate reality to set things right. Finally, the ninth tale envisions Theodore Sturgeon as the head of an alien-worshipping cult in San Francisco- where aliens have become an all too real reality. I literally couldn't put this book down, and I haven't been able to get that worked up over a work of fiction in a long time.
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