What do you think?
Rate this book
The Visible Man
A collection of 12 short stories:
The Visible Man
Flash Point
Horse of Air
The Last Day of July
Machines of Loving Grace
A Dream at Noonday
A Kingdom by the Sea
The Man Who Waved Hello
The Storm
Where No Sun Shines
A Special Kind of Morning
Chains of the Sea
The Visible Man
Flash Point
Horse of Air
The Last Day of July
Machines of Loving Grace
A Dream at Noonday
A Kingdom by the Sea
The Man Who Waved Hello
The Storm
Where No Sun Shines
A Special Kind of Morning
Chains of the Sea
- GenresScience FictionFiction
312 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1977
3 people are currently reading
67 people want to read
About the author
Gardner Dozois
646 books362 followersGardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
Wikipedia entry: Gardner Dozois
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...
Wikipedia entry: Gardner Dozois
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 27, 2019
Had enough of Orwell's perpetual optimism?
Fed up with Dostoevsky's joie de vivre?
Tired of Kafka's inspirational blatherings?
Ready to puke over Malzberg's maundering sentimentality?
Then THIS is the book for you!
Fed up with Dostoevsky's joie de vivre?
Tired of Kafka's inspirational blatherings?
Ready to puke over Malzberg's maundering sentimentality?
Then THIS is the book for you!
July 7, 2024
Years ago, I loved the collections of short stories that Dozois organized and edited. I never really sought them out, but I would snap them up whenever one came across my path. This collection, if nothing else, provided context as to why he was so good in that role. Namely, he was better at a taxonomic identification of the elements that made a good sci-fi short story than at producing it himself.
Minor spoiler ahead.
The works in this collection mostly fall into the mold of a main character engaging in excruciating amounts of navel gazing against some traditional sci-fi backdrop. There are a couple examples of the silly twists one expects from the era (like the titular story), but mostly you have a character whose internal, self-centered monologue is the main point, and this recipe is not really my cup of tea.
The one exception is "A Special Kind of Morning", which definitely follows this mold, but there's also fantastic world-building and the naval gazing serves a purpose larger than angst for its own sake. This story is maybe even good enough to have made it worth slogging through the other stories.
Minor note, the favorite quote below is the second time I have come across that particular phrase. The other is, of course, The Correspondents' fantastic 2013 song of the same name.
my favorite quote: "The boy lay trembling with fear and delight."
Minor spoiler ahead.
The works in this collection mostly fall into the mold of a main character engaging in excruciating amounts of navel gazing against some traditional sci-fi backdrop. There are a couple examples of the silly twists one expects from the era (like the titular story), but mostly you have a character whose internal, self-centered monologue is the main point, and this recipe is not really my cup of tea.
The one exception is "A Special Kind of Morning", which definitely follows this mold, but there's also fantastic world-building and the naval gazing serves a purpose larger than angst for its own sake. This story is maybe even good enough to have made it worth slogging through the other stories.
Minor note, the favorite quote below is the second time I have come across that particular phrase. The other is, of course, The Correspondents' fantastic 2013 song of the same name.
my favorite quote: "The boy lay trembling with fear and delight."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews