The Pastime Machine: A Literary Turducken

by Lester Smith, Tim Ryan (Editor)

Stuff the Odyssey inside Inferno inside The Time Machine. Baste in mythology. Deep-fry in irreverent Byronic verse. Savor and share.

106 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 27, 2017

About the author

Elissa Malcohn has been published in Amazing Stories, Asimov's, Hugo Award winner Electric Velocipede, Hugo nominee Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly, IPPY Silver Medalist Riffing on Strings, Tales of the Unanticipated, Bram Stoker Award winner Unspeakable Horror, and elsewhere. Her story "Hermit Crabs" (Electric Velocipede #14) appears in the recommended reading list in The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Edition.

She was a John W. Campbell Award finalist in 1985 for best new science fiction writer of the year, reached preliminary ballot for a Nebula Award in 1989, and is a four-time Rhysling Award nominee for best speculative poetry of the year.

Covenant, the first volume of her Deviations series, was released by Aisling Press in 2007. See this blog entry for publication changes.

Covenant is now available as a free download (ISBN 978-0-9819764-0-2), in formats compatible with Kindle and other e-book readers, Palm and other PDAs, HTML for reading on a browser, and PDF (Acrobat Reader) reflowed to fit different-sized screens. In May 2009 Elissa released Volume 2, Appetite (ISBN 978-0-9819764-1-9).

Downloads are available at The Deviations Series website, Smashwords, and in even more formats at Manybooks.net.

Thanks to Rachel Baker for this review of both volumes at the Old Musty Books website, and to hosts Mark Eller (Chronicles)and Cyrus A. Webb (Conversations LIVE!) for having me on their shows. You can listen to the Chronicles interview here (click here for a transcript with accompanying photos and links) and to the Conversations LIVE! interview here (links-inclusive transcript here).

Elissa's novelette "Flotsam" and poem "Derivative Work" appear in the Oct./Nov. 2009 Asimov's. Work is forthcoming in the Dybbuk Press anthology She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (expected 2010), and elsewhere. Publication details here.

Elissa is also a participant in Operation E-Book Drop and keeps a Facebook fan page here."

Reviews

[DivaDiane SM · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection was nominated for the 2019 Elgin Award. Rating and review to follow.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

The description pretty much tells it all, plus there are nods to Lovecraft, Scientology, and even Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. A wonderful collection of sonnets that was laugh-out-loud funny at times and still manages to leave me thinking about religion's influence on humanity over the centuries. A little book well worth reading.