Greetings and Other Stories
by Terry Bisson
ISBN: 1892391244
Published: 2005
Available Format(s): Hardcover
You’re about to face off with an Ashcroft van, break out from an assisted-dying facility, witness a volunteer crucifixion, endure a Neanderthal eviction, and journey to the end of time on a porch glider. Each of these ten blazingly satiric short stories will leave you exhausted, outraged, and eager for the next ride. Often compared to Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Lethem, and James Morrow, Terry Bisson spins out radically irreverent tales.
“In Bisson’s third story collection, the veteran satirist’s prodigious wit and inventiveness demonstrate why some of his peers regard him as a national treasure…. Bisson’s distinctive minimalist style leaves plenty of room for disarming social satire that keeps one amused and pleasantly provoked.”
—Booklist
“Bisson fans are bound to savor this strong story collection from the Hugo and Nebula Award winner, but it should be particularly revelatory to new readers in search of crisp black comedy and satire. The lighthearted ‘I Saw the Light’ turns the classic alien contact story (with props from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001) upside down, while the terse ‘Openclose’ offers a glimpse into one future sponsored by the Office of Homeland Security. Capital punishment and religious education feed a surreal media circus in ‘The Old Rugged Cross.’ In the title story, legally ordered assisted suicide is supposed to help maintain world population, but no one—from suicides to the accidentally maimed and the hacked-up victims of genocide—can find peace while stuck waiting at ‘Death’s Door.’ The haunting ‘Scout’s Honor’ and the gently elegiac ‘Almost Home’ balance the bleak chills. The volume closes with the striking ‘Dear Abbey,’ about a desperate attempt to save the Earth from ecological disaster by traveling to the end of time.”
—Publishers Weekly
“One of SF’s leading innovators.”
—Booklist
“Every word he writes is worth reading, even though a lot of them are the same ones.”
—John Crowley
Terry Bisson is the author of Talking Man, Fire on the Mountain, The Pickup Artist, and Any Day Now. He has won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire awards. He is best known for his short fiction, which has been collected in Bears Discover Fire, In the Upper Room, Greetings, and TVA Baby. Terry is the editor of the Outspoken Authors Series published by PM Press. In conjunction with Tachyon Publications, Bisson hosts the monthly SF in SF reading series in San Francisco.
Praise for Terry Bisson
“Terry Bisson can charm your toes off.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Bisson’s prose is a wonder of seemingly effortless control and precision; he is one of science fiction’s most promising short-story practitioners, proving that in the genre, the short story remains a powerful, viable, and evocative form.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Generously endowed with sharp wit, dead-on dialogue, and the storytelling gifts of a born raconteur.”
—Science Fiction Weekly
Praise for Numbers Don’t Lie
“This slim volume is essential reading for the author’s fans and for fans of speculative fiction laced with considerable humor.”
—Library Journal
“A leisurely Golden Age tall tale enriched by the wonderful gibberish of mathematical physics. All fun and pure pleasure.”
—Rudy Rucker
“Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Prof. Haskel Van Manderpootz and J. U. Geisy’s Dr. Xenophon Xerxes Zapt, add the name of Wilson Wu, the hero of Bisson’s hilarious collection of three related stories filled with puns and inscrutable mathematical formulas…. Fans of the late Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will relish this irreverent but never smart-alecky spoof.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Resplendently outrageous! Transcendently silly! Immensely fun!”
—Amy Thomson
Visit the Terry Bisson website.
Almost Home
Come Dance With Me
Dear Abbey
Death’s Door
Greetings
I Saw the Light
Openclose
Scout’s Honor
Super 8
The Old Rugged Cross
Afterword
