Everything in All the Wrong Order: The Best of Chaz Brenchley
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
For more than thirty years, Chaz Brenchley has been one of Great Britain’s most distinguished—and uncategorizable—writers of speculative fiction. His award-winning short stories move with deceptive ease from one genre to another, offering an astonishingly varied array of sheer narrative pleasures. While much of his work may be unfamiliar to American readers, the appearance of this generous, career-spanning volume should do much to change all that.
The Best of Chaz Brenchley contains more than thirty stories from the author’s vast fictional archive, and each one of them is a polished, unexpected gem. Together, they encompass an impressive range of themes, subjects and settings, including: a drinking establishment frequented by the pilots who navigate the intricacies of n-space; a hazardous—and haunted—stretch of rocks off the British coastline known as the Silences; a post-World War I Europe still awash in grief and an abiding sense of loss; a terminal known as the Tower of Souls, from which earthbound humans can take flight; British colonialism both in 19th century Cairo and on Mars; and much, much more.
The stories gathered here are consistently readable, thoroughly imagined and written in a voice that is distinctive and instantly recognizable. But they never lose sight of the universal human concerns that lie at their center: guilt, loneliness, unfulfilled longings, and the inevitable threat of encroaching mortality. This magisterial collection offers all these things in generous measure, and the result is a book that readers have needed for a very long time, whether they know it or not. The Best of Chaz Brenchley is something truly special. Open it up at any point and find out for yourself.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These 32 superior stories from Lambda Award winner Brenchley (Bitter Waters) represent a tiny fraction of the gifted, prolific author's output, but nevertheless showcase his ability to craft impactful shorts. Even the flash fiction pieces, among them "White Tea for the Tiller Man" and "Quinquereme of Nineveh," pack considerable punch. Brenchley's radiant prose is one reason: "Another Chart of the Silences" begins: "Some people think that a breathless hush is the natural state of the universe, as darkness is: that sound is like light, a rebellion of angels, a thin and fierce and ultimately doomed attempt to hold back the crushing weight of utter stillness." The narrator of this standout entry pushes back against that belief, maintaining instead that white noise is a universal constant. What follows is a surprising encounter with a boy who's drawn into the narrator's efforts to chart the possibly haunted, shipwrecking rocks known as the Silences. The sea also figures in another of the more memorable tales, the fun "Keep the Aspidochelone Floating," which features Brenchley's recurring character Sailor Martin. Every entry enhances creative plots and plausible characterizations with outstanding writing. This sampler of Brenchley's work makes clear his mastery.