Strange Worlds
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
"Clayton's strong character writing carries the book…" — Publishers Weekly
In the future, the love of a young man's life is slowly dying. He would do almost anything to keep her alive…except that! — Amything
In Dog Man, it turns out that Oscar the tomcat was just misunderstood — with deadly consequences…
A love sick young man attempts to tap the power of an ancient religion to secure the affections of a girl on their class trip to Christland…
The dead come briefly back to life every year when the astral dimensions align in Day, or Two, of The Dead. A young man is mildly amused by it all until one man in particular insists on coming to his house…
A cynical young 'player', adrift in the modern, amoral age, meets God on a mountain top and his life is changed forever — but not in the way he'd ever imagined.
Clayton channels the spirits of Huxley, Orwell and Philip K. Dick in these and ten other intelligent, provocative and highly entertaining stories.
Customer Reviews
Good ideas but stories are too short
I picked this up for a Labor Day science fiction book sale (run by author Hans Schantz).
There are many very intriguing and fascinating ideas in this book. But the problem is that each story feels just a little too short to actually explore the ideas enough, or else cuts off before a satisfying ending. I suppose the purpose of many of these is to get the reader to think, which is better done with an unsatisfying or sudden ending, and it did succeed at that.
A common theme is a utopia at the expense of freedom and depth of character, which is all too realistic. Perhaps the only really unrealistic thing is that the author seems to grant that the utopias could actually succeed in all their goals of eliminating pain and suffering, where all real life endeavors have only caused more pain and suffering in the process of trying to eliminate it.
There was at least one pretty funny story about dealing with an obnoxious person and moving on from grudges in an unexpected way. That might be one of my favorites.
I was hoping for something more lively and fun, but as a thought-provoking collection of quite short stories it is worth a look, at least when on sale. Or if mild horror without a definite ending is your thing, pick it up anytime.