Long

Michael Blumlein was one of the most singular writers to be associated with the science fiction genre. Active from the 1980s until his death in 2019, he produced a body of work notable for its literary ambition, its urbanity, its depth and breadth of subject matter, and its sly deadpan humor.

A medical doctor and San Francisco native, Blumlein’s profession and locale deeply informed his fiction. The physician and the author were fascinated by the human body, mind, and spirit, and their always complex connections. These two perspectives on the same subject, clinical and compassionate, created a unique parallax.

He wrote several novels, but the short story and the novella were central to his art.

Long includes all of the longer stories and novellas Blumlein published in his lifetime. They come from the last decade of his long career, displaying his mature mastery of craft, generosity of spirit, and unbounded imagination. “California Burning” concerns a son’s attempt to come to terms with his father’s difficult, perhaps alien, legacy. “Longer” is a brilliant, penetrating short novel about an alien artifact that interrogates the nature of life, and how much is enough.

Also included are a previously unpublished one-act play, “No Fast Dancing,” and a brilliant, moving essay, “Thoreau’s Microscope,” in which the author confronts his own mortality.