Antiquities and Tangibles: and Other Stories

by Tim Pratt

The third collection by Hugo Award-winning author Tim Pratt -- whose previous collection Hart & Boot and Other Stories was a World Fantasy Award finalist -- gathers 23 of his best recent works of SF and Fantasy. Stories include Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award nominee "Her Voice in a Bottle," Bram Stoker Award finalist "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft" (with Nick Mamatas), and three new stories appearing here for first time: contemporary fantasy novelette "The Fairy Library," SF short story "The Haunted Mech Suit," and a new story set in the author's popular Marla Mason urban fantasy series, "Cages." With illustrations by acclaimed artists Kat Beyer and Bradley K. McDevitt.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2012

About the author

Also writes as T.A. Pratt and T. Aaron Payton

Reviews

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

First-rate collection, My 6 favorite stories are in the lede, in order of my rating. All the rest are listed with a bit of description, a rating, and a story link if available.
Tim Pratt is a remarkable writer. Even unpromising ideas turn to gold in his hands. Sometimes. And the Kindle copy is all of $3. Such a deal!

■ "Antiquities and Tangibles," novelette, 2011. One woman’s quest for happiness, with the help of the proprietor of a truly capacious antique shop. It's a remarkable journey: “Eventually they just started trying things at random: a ring that made her invisible, a cloak that let her transform into a bat, a whistle that let her summon winds, a seashell necklace that enabled her to swim to any depth in the sea, with no need for air or worry about pressure. That one almost worked. She stayed gone for nearly two years, but when she returned, she said the sea was full of wonders, but it was cold and dark and there was no one to talk to, essentially the Arcadian wood all over again, only with squid instead of squirrels.”
And the ending is just right, too. Pretty nearly a perfect story, I think, and I recommend it most highly. 6 stars!
Story link: https://subterraneanpress.com/magazin...
■ "The Fairy Library," novelette, 2013. https://apex-magazine.com/the-fairy-l...
Opening line: "Once upon a time there was a woman who fell in love with a book."
An out-of-work librarian gets a job offer from a very unusual private library. Complications, and a most unusual romance, ensue. 4.5 stars, highly recommended story.
■ "Artifice and Intelligence," short story, 2013. http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/ar...
A rarity for me, a first rate gamer story. Ghosts in the machine, a marsh spirit, a Consortium that includes the ghosts of Rasputin, John Wilkes Booth, Attila the Hun, Ted Bundy and other Bad Guys. And Saraswati, the newly-sentient network of Indian tech support call centers, who is easily bored. Very entertaining stuff: 4.5 stars. I have a couple of sweet highlights on my Kindle page.
■ " From Around Here," novelette, 2007. The god of a Pacific island, who became nomadic when his island subsided, arrives in a neighborhood in Oakland and senses a lurking evil he means to fix. Graphic horror but good: 4+ stars, recommended reading. Not online, but I put a couple of highlights on my Kindle page. A reason to buy a copy.
■ "Restless in My Hand," (2007) short story. A man inherits a magical axe. A story of love and loss and family and magic. Worked for me: 4+ stars, recommended reading. Really, you'd be silly not to pay $3 for stories like these! There is a podcast online (no text): https://podcastle.org/2009/12/29/podc...
■ "Another End of the Empire,"(2009) short story. The Dark Lord Magresh figures out how to deal with the Sibyl's prophecy of doom: Kindness and good management! Works. Charming story with a happy ending. 4 stars!
■ "The Crawlspace of the World" (2006), short story. Horror-fantasy of lost love and a deal with a dragon. Grim ending. Not really my sort of thing, but very well done. 4 stars. Not online, so another reason to buy it.

The rest of the stories follow. ToC and story details: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?...

• "The River Boy" • (2008) • short story. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prat...
Vignette, dedicated to his son River. 3 stars, worth reading.
• "The Secret Beach" • (2011) • short story. https://www.fantasy-magazine.com/fm/f... Tropical beach fantasy that turns violent. 3.5 stars.
• "Luminous" (2011), short story: https://dailysciencefiction.com/hithe...
"My wife and I were one of the great husband-and-wife burglar teams." See my Kindle hightlight. 4 stars!
• "Fiddle" • (2010) • vignette: https://dailysciencefiction.com/scien... Nero fiddles. Clever time-travel short-short, 3.5 stars.
• "Troublesolving" • (2009) • novelette. Odd sort-of time travel story, didn't work for me. 2 stars. Not online?
• "A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness" • (2009) • short story. Kinky sex with an android, from its perspective. 2.5 stars, too odd for me. http://futurismic.com/2009/04/01/new-...
• "On a Blade of Grass" • (2008) • short story. Parasitism in space-war! It's been done a lot better, 2.5 stars. https://escapepod.org/2011/01/20/ep27...
• "The Haunted Mech Suit" • short story. 2 stars, gamer-tech mecha gets hacked. Not online, no loss.
• "Unexpected Outcomes" • (2009) • short story. 9/11 as an oddball simulation. Or is it? 3 stars. Podcast (no text): https://escapepod.org/2010/07/29/ep25...
• "Her Voice in a Bottle" • (2009) • short story. An elusive girl in Santa Cruz, and a blue glass bottle she left him. 3+ stars, pretty good. Not online.
• "Gingerbread" • (2007) • short story. Oddball vignette, 2.5 stars. No longer online.
• "Right Turns" • (2012) • short story. Good story about a house with a labyrinth, about love and forgetting. 3.5 stars. Podcast (no text): https://podcastle.org/2013/10/25/podc...
• "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft" • (2008) • short story. Good, creepy Lovecraft story. Not really my sort of thing, but you might like it. Podcast (no text): https://pseudopod.org/2009/12/11/pseu...
• "The Frozen One" • (2008) • short story. A parable about courage and fighting back. Good story: 3.5 stars. Not online.
• "Cages" (2013)• short story. Grim little story about a chaos witch-head and her frenemy sorcerer. 3 stars, I guess. Original here.

My Kindle notes and highlights: https://www.goodreads.com/notes/20619...

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short story collections are usually only as good as their weakest story. Well, I either liked or loved every story in here. I'm going to be very dull and give my rating for each story in the volume.

The River Boy - 4
The Secret Beach - 4.5
Luminous - 5
Artifice & Intelligence - 4.5
Fiddle - 4
Troublesolving - 5
A Programmataic Approach to Perfect Happiness - 4.5
On a Blade of Grass - 5 (this was the only one I'd read before and it's as brilliant now as it was the first time)
The Haunted Mech Suit - 4
Scientific Romance - 5
Unexpected Outcomes - 4.5
Her Voice in a Bottle - 4
The Fairy Library - 5
Gingerbread - 4
Right Turns - 4.5
Antiquities & Tangibles - 5
The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft - 4.5
From Around Here - 5
The Crawlspace of the World - 5
The Frozen One - 5
Cages - 4.5
Restless in my Hand - 5
Another End of the Empire - 5

It's almost impossible to pick my favorite so here's my top 3: Another End of the Empire, From Around Here and The Fairy Library.

Awesome book. Read it.

[Tyrannosaurus regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

While a few of these were a little self-referential for my taste, in general I was completely engrossed by this collection, and kept reading story after story even after telling myself I was just going to read one.

Also, I was a contributor to the kickstarter to get this published, and it's always a tiny delight to see my name—spelled correctly no less, which is all too rare—in support of a delightful project like this one.

[John Devenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable collection of fantasy and science fiction short stories. As in any collection some stories appeal more than others but here there are very few if any stories that I didn't enjoy.
My favourites included: The River Boy , The Secret Beach, the title story, From Around Here and a new Marla Mason story entitled Cages.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection. Haven't been keeping up with the short fiction world, so it's wonderful to have Tim's more recent works gathered up. Loved the new stories as well.

[Lynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tim's stories are always fantastic. This collection is no exception to that rule. If you aren't reading Tim Pratt, you should be.

[Andrew Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow

Been a LONG time since I've seen an author cover such a wide range of fiction so well. Everything is well written, engaging, and covered from Space Opera, to Lovecraftian, Grand Fantasy to Urban Fantasy, the Wishes Granted Shop to Superhero, and the reinvented fairy tale!

[Jim Andrew Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best short story collections I’ve ever read. Every story in the book is a gem.

[Malapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uno de los grandes méritos de Tim Pratt es hacer que el lector suspenda su incredulidad y acepte como parte del relato las premisas más increíbles. Y entonces da una vuelta de tuerca más.

Como en todas las colecciones el nivel es desigual y hay relatos mejores y peores (¿cómo es posible que Goodreads no tenga ningún atajo de teclado para escribir esta frase?). "From Around Here", "The Crawlspace of the Word" o "Another End of the Empire" son auténticas joyas ("Antiquities and Tangibles" que da título al libro, estando muy bien, me parece que está estirada demasiado). Pero hay algunos otros que aunque se leen muy bien no dejan apenas huella (de hecho repasando el índice he tenido que leer el principio de un par de ellos porque no conseguía recordarlos).

Mi problema con esta colección, y la principal razón por la que no tiene la quinta estrella, es que llegó un momento en que noté que los relatos, aunque seguían sorprendiéndome, ya no me causaban el mismo efecto. Las ideas no se repiten, pero de alguna forma llega el momento en que empiezas a asumir o integrar el "toque Pratt" y pierde su magia. Cuando me di cuenta de lo que estaba sucediendo decidí aparcarlo durante unos meses, después de los cuales la lectura volvió a ser tan interesante como al principio.

A pesar de esto un libro muy recomendable, y que me ha dejado con ganas de más Pratt.

[An Owomoyela · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm used to Tim Pratt's stuff being pleasant and easy to read, and this was no exception. It made a great book for the commute to and from the city every day, with smooth, well-drawn situations and clever executions. A couple stories that particularly stood out, for me, were "From Around Here" (the story of a being with a symbiotic relationship to *place*, which I just find to be a really neat trope to work with); "Another End of the Empire" (a case of an evil warlord trying to avert a prophecy about a child destined to "take over [his] empire, overthrow [his] ways and means, and send [him] from the halls of [his] palace forever." Being a genre-savvy sort, the Dark Lord chooses a decidedly nontypical way of preventing this eventuality, with decidedly nontypical results); and the titular "Antiquities and Tangibles" (a story of magical artifacts, and the different ways owning them can go wrong and right, but also about happiness, and human connection, and satisfaction, and the search for all these things).

[Fernando Hugo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I´d say it may work for Tim Pratt's fans, to explore his short-fiction more exhaustively. For me, the ones I find more interesting are Right Turns and The Crawlspace of the World, which I found variations on a similar topic, but achieving to transfer to the everyday life (and regular emotions we can all relate to) a fantastic element, both original (to a certain degree, of course) and disturbing. Also, Her Voice in a Bottle, maybe the most personal short-story.

[James Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pratt excels at deft world-creation and poignant thrusts to the heart, and never falls back on the expected solution to a narrative problem. I was at different times reminded of Wells, John Collier, Borges, Avram Davidson, and many others... all good reminders. I especially like "The Secret Beach" and "The Frozen One" in this collection, but all readers will have their own favorites.

[Marcheto Marcheto · Rating 5 out of 5]

En realidad 4.5 estrellas.
Brilliant collection of stories. "Troublesolving", "A Programmatic Approach...", "Unexpected Outcomes", "Right Turns", "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft", "From Around Here", "The Crawlspace of the World", "Another End of the Empire" are among my favorite ones.

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gran recopilación de relatos de fantasía moderna. Siempre es un placer culpable leer a Pratt. Es como tomar una limonada sentado en una silla playera mientras observas trabajar a algunas personas bajo el sol.

[Les · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic collection of stories. They vary quite a bit in length, from a few pages to 50 and 90. Each of them is interesting in its own way and the writing is compelling in every one.