The Progressive Apparatus And More Fantasticals
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Three times Aurora Award-nominated author Hugh A. D. Spencer collects more of his previously published short fiction in this fun collection. Featuring a series of interconnected stories about the Progressive Apparatus, a sometimes anti-muse, sometimes amoral high-tech firm, and a Galactic Super-culture that meddles in human life through heavy drugs and museum exhibits, this collection asks the big questions in science fiction.
Like what happens to those breakthrough scientific projects when the funders pull the plug? What if that crazy scifi religious cult is actually on to something? How can a heartless multi-galactic corporation be affected by a small act of rebellion, like driving a truck through their headquarters?
Stories in this collection
Five Stories About Alan
The Progressive Apparatus
...And the Retrograde Mentor
...Experience Denial Then Acceptance
The Heritage Drug Project
Sticky Wonder Stories
The Meaning of Steel
Ammonite City
Cult Stories
John, Paul, Xavier, Ironside and George (But Not Vincent)
Foreword by Candas Jane Dorsey, multiple award-winning author of Black Wine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Alienation is not just for extraterrestrials in this flippant and expectation-flipping collection of 10 surreal short stories from Spencer (Extreme Dentistry). Each of these pieces centers on artists and academics struggling to adapt to worlds being turned over to robots. The eponymous apparatus bedevils a writer into reinventing both his craft and his life in three linked stories, first "The Progressive Apparatus," then "... And the Retrograde Mentor," and fi nally "... Experience Denial Then Acceptance," which sees the writer's journey end with him becoming a foster father to a family of artists who rebel against robotic rule. A mega-corporation's plot to corner the market on irradiated steel for genetic engineering is thwarted by two "impact artists" in "The Meaning of Steel." "Ammonite City," one of the longer pieces, follows galactic agents attempting to replace a doomed planet Earth with a digital recreation for their alien museum, though their software is a bit wonky. And a cult researcher and his Trekkie-turned-federal-agent ex-girlfriend face off against a religion founded by a sci-fi writer in "Cult Stories." Spencer may not believe in the power of technology to save the world, but he allows humor and humanity to cushion the blow.
