Product Description
In this issue: Mouthpiece by Edward Wellen; A Game of Vlet by Joanna Russ; In Rubble, Pleading by Michael Bishop; A Delightful Comedic Premise by Barry N. Malzberg; The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn by Vonda N. McIntyre; Shoes by Raylyn Moore; The Graveyard Blues by Dennis Etchison; A Star is Born by Joseph Green; Science: The Dance of the Luminaries by Isaac Asimov. ... Read more

Product Description
Would it Kill You to Smile?When second-rate ventriloquist Skipper Keats dies of a heart attack at his comedy club, Skipper's son Will learns of the bizarre codicil to his father's will: Skipper has requested that he be buried with Dapper O'Dell, his favorite dummy.But after the funeral, and after Dapper visits Will in a dream, Will realizes that the grave is not, after all, the appropriate resting-place for this very valuable piece of teakwood.Will's surreptitious exhuming of the coffin reveals a new surprise: someone has beaten him to it.The dummy is gone, and the mystery is afoot.Muskrat CourageIn the aftermath of his father's death, Will Keats' life finally seems to be settling down to some semblance of normalcy again in his new home with Adrienne and her bright lively, eight-year-old daughter Olivia.Then Olivia disappears, and a trail of muddy boot prints indicates she didn't leave on her own.The trail leads to the door of Adrienne's disreputable ex-husband, Byron, Olivia's father.Byron has an alibi and an unlimited reserve of jealousy and hatred for Will.Olivia's kidnapping only fuels the simmering fire between them.But as the police and FBI investigations grow colder with the oncoming winter, it appears to Will that his only hope of ever seeing Olivia again lies in cooperating with Byron and his shady underworld connections. ... Read more

Product Description
Features a long novella by Michael Bishop; seven other short stories. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent as a collection of theological SF stories
I respectfully disagree with the previous reviewer regarding the utility of this book.While it is not on the same level as "A Canticle for Leibowitz" it does address the concept of God/Deity/Cosmos in a SciFi setting much more closely than most sci-fi writers do.So, yes, each story may not be a Hugo or Nebula award winner, but taken together they certainly fulfill the title's description of "close encounters" with the deity.Did I come away awakened in a spiritual sense? No, but this is science fiction and not Dietrich Bonhoeffer, so it is important to recognize this as fiction with a religious bent to it.In that form, it is a great collection, which I recommend to anyone interested in the genre.

Theological science fiction
Quite a few very unimpressive stories of theological sci fi.If you are interested in this subject, an anthology of exciting stories is that of Perpetual Light edited by Ryan or Wandering Stars edited by Dann.A theological sci fi novel that is well written is Robert Sawyer's Calculating God.If you like Bishop's idea of a verbal dog but in a far more exciting story, read Olaf Stapledon's short novel Sirius.If you prefer an anthology of such stories, read Sirius the Dog Star edited by Greenberg and Potter.Bishop's stories ramble on and on, often with unrelated tangents, and characteristically with boring endings. ... Read more

Product Description
Critic Xavier Thaxton detests popular culture. But when a wildly improbable plunge into a pool of toxic waste gives him an allergy to High Art and transforms him into (of all things) a costumed superhero, he is forced to reconsider his values--and his life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

almost too good
Over the course of his career, Michael Bishop has turned out a series of solid, memorable novels, one after another, many among the very best works sf has to offer.Though always amusing and stylish, Bishop's novels, perhaps as a result of their bittersweet story lines and dependence on strong character development, have failed to catch on with a larger audience.

Count Geiger's Blues offers, at first glance, anything but what we've become accustomed to in Bishop's work, tackling, of all things, the world of superhero comic books.Count Geiger's Blues, however, bears closer resemblance to Alan Moore and Dave Gribbons' innovative Watchmen series than to superman.

In the end, this spoof and loving embrace of the superhero genre proves too well written, too intellectual, and too sensitive to its characters to grant Bishop the audience that has eluded him for so long.

Enemies of decency (and good comic books) beware
As an author, Michael Bishop is hard to classify.His novels manage to attain that nebulous position between SF and fantasy, maintaining enough realism for the reader to truly believe that his novels could happen in the "real world".Most of the time his novels function on more than one level, telling both the story and conveying another layer of meaning above that . . . "Brittle Innings" was both a poignant look back at the golden days of baseball and a comment on what truly makes a monster.In this book, things are a little farther out, but not by much.In a fictional town, Xavier Thaxton writes for the Fine Arts section of the local newspaper.His disdain for popular culture is unmatched and he takes every opportunity he can to slam "low" art and elevate the fine arts, opera and classical music and nice paintings and what not.Then one day a bunch of things happen to him at once.His nephew, a "retro-punk" whose hatred for fine art equals his uncle's dislike of pop culture, comes to live with him . . . and Xavier takes a dip in water tainted by radioactivity and finds that he can no longer stand the presence of fine art without being exposed to an equal amount of pop culture.Eventually he finds that events are steering him to become that perfect embodiment of pop culture . . . the superhero.Bishop wonderfully deconstructs the superhero concept, from his weird origin (with a perfectly realistic eventual outcome) to taking the idea of "doing good" to absurd extremes, as Xavier tries to get bars to show seminars on how to respect women, and in fact there's very little superheroesque action involved in the story itself so those purely interested in strangely dressed people beating each other up should go to their local store and find an Image comic (or watch wrestling, I guess).Those wanted dense, rapid storytelling should look elsewhere too, or at least discover new reserves of patience . . . in comics there's a term called "decompressed storytelling" and that certainly applies here, Bishop takes his sweet time developing all of this and the concept of Xavier as superhero doesn't even appear until the book is half over.This isn't a bad thing but there are points where you're wondering where this is all going.The general tone of the book is satire and lightheartedness, definitely not in the "grim and gritty" Dark Knight Returns/Watchmen style of comics, although Bishop knows how to contrast utterly real moments(like the fate of everyone else who gets exposed to the radiation) and he manages to ground the book in a tangible sense of reality and not make it seem like some weird cartoon.Not all the characters really come across as three-dimensional, Xavier is really the only person to truly feel real, his girlfriend Bari is fun but never really comes alive and while his nephew "the Mick" has his moments, his annoying line of supercool hipper-than-thou speak reminds me of old Justice League comics with Snapper Carr.Which is probably the point.But Bishop manages to make this all somehow effortlessly entertaining, and you need to know nothing about superheroes to enjoy the book, just an appreciation that the line between "high art" and pop culture isn't as well defined as you might think.And if the ending doesn't tear your heart out then you might as well be dead.A book that will surprise you with its depth and well worth searching out.

Bishop deconstructs deconstruction
This one jumped off the shelf and into my hands. I'm a Bishop fan from years back--having read and loved books like Ancient of Days, No Enemy But Time, The Secret Ascension (aka Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas), and Unicorn Mountain--and I hadn't even known that he had a new book coming out.

Not only that, but a book that really piqued my interest. Bishop's doing his own version of Watchmen here--what if a "superhero" really existed in our world. But the operative word on the title page is that this is a comedy. For all his realism, Bishop is actually writing in the tradition of James Branch Cabell and Thorne Smith, warping our reality to actually satirize it.

It has confirmed my expectations. Xavier Thaxton is the Fine Arts editor at the local newspaper--a man who hates popular culture. But slowly he finds that popular culture is what he needs, and what he is becoming. The conclusion is a statement about "art," that most nebulous of terms.

Tells a good story while poking fun at art, journalism, etc.
Bishop takes a cast of highly improbably characters who are suspiciously like people you know and tells a wonderfully entertaining and human story about the nature of heroism and duty.Along the way he skewers art, art critics, comic books, journalism, rock/alternative music, teenage angst, and almost anything else that wanders by.It's damned hard to write a satire without turning the characters into caricatures, but Bishop keeps all his people three-dimensional and (mostly) likeable even at their worst. I'm most impressed with what Bishop does with Geiger himself. Geiger starts as a character rich in artistic depth but one- dimensional as a person.He ends up as a one-dimensional comic book character who's much deeper as a person.An impressive inversion, and an impressive work to pull off. ... Read more