The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Named as one of '50 Writers You Should Read Now' by The Guardian. A beautifully inventive short-story collection from award-winning author Nina Allan.
A collection of short stories from the award-winning author of The Rift and The Dollmaker, Nina Allan. This compilation brings together rarely seen tales spanning the vast breadth of Allan's writing career for the first time. It also includes a brand-new introduction and one never-before-published story. Locus has described Nina as 'a subversive writer… playing with both the familiar protocols of genre and with the nature of the reading experience itself.' This is a stunning collection from one of the most astute and innovative voices writing today.
For readers of China Mieville, Aliya Whiteley, Jeff Vandermeer and Carmen Maria Machado.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These 14 narration-heavy shorts from Allan (The Dollmaker) find ordinary people grappling with speculative situations both familiar and inventive. "Microcosmos" is a story of survival in inhospitable environments; "The Gift of Angels: An Introduction" probes the sacrifices of long-term spaceflight; "Marielena" hinges on time travel; and "Flying in the Face of God" delivers gruesome body horror. Some stories, including "Four Abstracts" and "The Science of Chance," cast doubt on the veracity of the speculative element, while others, like "Fairy Skulls," present it as incontrovertible fact. "A Princess of Mars: Svetlana Belkina and Tarkovsky's Lost Movie Aelita," meanwhile, takes the form of an interview and doubles as a love letter to Russian science-fiction. Isolation emerges as a recurring theme, exemplified in the heroine of "Neptune's Trident" as she slogs through life after society's collapse, and the protagonist of the title story as she searches for her father. Allan's character-driven, tangent-and-aside–laden style won't be for everyone, but her consistency is such that anyone who enjoys one of these stories will likely enjoy them all.
