Getting Home

by F.M. Busby

Collected for the first time, the short stories of F. M. Busby...Time travel, reincarnation, and out-of-body experiences, an unusual invention, extraterrestrials, unicorns, immortality, and the future are just some of the adventures in these short story tales by the author of the Rissa Kerguelen saga and Zelda M'Tana. Robert A. Heinlein in part dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Busby, and in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Busby's wife Elinor.
Contents:
Introduction. (Getting Home) • essay by F. M. Busby
A Gun for Grandfather (1957) / short story by F. M. Busby
Of Mice and Otis (1972) / short story by F. M. Busby
The Puiss of Krrlik (1972) / short story by F. M. Busby
The Absence of Tom Leone (1987) / short story by F. M. Busby
Proof (1972) / short story by F. M. Busby
The Real World (1972) / short story by F. M. Busby
Tell Me All About Yourself (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
Once Upon a Unicorn (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
Road Map (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
If This Is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy (1974) / novelette by F. M. Busby
Three Tinks on the House (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
The Learning of Eeshta [Demu] (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
I'm Going to Get You (1974) / short story by F. M. Busby
2000½ - A Spaced Oddity (1973) / short story by F. M. Busby
Time of Need (1974) / short story by F. M. Busby
Retroflex (1974) / short story by F. M. Busby
Misconception (1975) / short story by F. M. Busby
The Signing of Tulip (1975) / short story by F. M. Busby
Advantage (1975) / short story by F. M. Busby
Getting Home (1974) / novelette by F. M. Busby

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Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies

195 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published August 1, 1987

About the author

Francis Marion Busby

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._M._B...

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Recently I reviewed the nearly forgotten F. M Busby's 1973 science fiction novel 'Cage a Man' (this collection of short stories includes what may be a 'lost chapter' from that book) and produced a decidedly mixed review. This short story collection is better.

'Cage A Man' was a peculiar mixture of violent and even potent recreation of extreme experience in an alien world and somewhat standard issue space opera pulp. The first half was dominated by the visceral and the sensitive and the second half by the formulaic.

Not having read his other novels, I do not know whether it is right that Busby was better at the short story format than the extended novel but it sure looks that way so far. This collection is not helped by having a very weak 'go back and shoot grandad' time travel story from 1957 at the start.

However, the rest of the collection is more mature - 19 stories from 1972 to 1975 which may vary in quality but which can be very good on occasions. There is little space opera here. Even the 'lost chapter' of 'Cage A Man' is essentially a psychological tale. The cover of the book is misleading.

If there is a dominant theme it is a concern with consciousness, thought experiments in the philosophy of mind. He explores with more success than most what it might be like to be an alien life form through its eyes and not that of the silent human in each story (three stories).

There are other capable stories about time and consciousness. Some of his explorations are as difficult to grasp as a philosophy text although narratively readable. He is interested in psychedelics and there is a repeated 'silent' background of polyamory and free love.

We have a sensitive love story about people who live their lives shooting back and forwards through their life span with their chronology disrupted. In another tale a man finds he is born as a woman with memories of the past intact: it is perhaps a happy tale of the 'eternal return'.

A student in the well written title story (although the twist at the end is hackneyed) takes a drug only to find that he exists outside his body and must find his way back to it through a tortuous process of jumping from person to person, engineering himself to sleep as near to them as possible.

The skill he shows in inventing alien minds is applied to describing the personalities of the people the student is forced to inhabit - most notably with a kindly homosexual in an unsympathetic male society. Busby might have been a fine novelist if he could have sustained his imagination.

There is some dystopianism in another tale with a future California that is uncannily close to the California of today although restrictions on people are down to the fear of population explosion more than need for Net Zero. Either way, diesel is on the way out and violent crime is on the way in.

There are oddities. A witty, cynical parody of Kubrick's '2001' movie. A rather silly rant against God. Busby does not like God very much - he gets two short strikes at Him or Her. There are two 'aliens ex machina' tales, one darkly humorous.

The sexual violence and rage of 'Cage A Man' is also present. 'Tell Me All About Yourself' about misogynistic necrophilia probably could not be published today. The desperate survivalist dog-like rape of a human by aliens in 'Misconception' will shock most people.

Overall, Busby is not a great of science fiction but when he is good he is very good both as a transgressive writer and as an explorer of consciousness, especially alien. His interest in science fiction as thought experiment was deliberate and his occasional 1970s male rage is the real thing.

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories ranging from competent to very good. Mr Busby has a readable style and presents his ideas in an interesting manner. There’s a lot of what feels like filler or ideas that outstay their welcome or that have been done earlier. Good fun reading, though.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be a very uneven collection of short stories. Some were wonderful, as I had expected from his longer work. Others I will be glad not to read again.

[Beth Friedman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm actually reading an ebook collection of Busby's short fiction that I found online. But I suspect there's a close overlap with this book, which is very much out of print. It's the closest I'm going to find on Goodreads if I want to list it.

As with most collections, this was a very mixed bag. It was ordered chronologically, which (sadly) meant that one of the weakest stories ended up being the final one.

I particularly liked "If This is Winnetka, You Must Be Judy," which played (much earlier) with many of the themes of The Time Traveler's Wife.