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Talking Man
A road novel leading to the city at the end of time, one you can drive to in a '62 Chrysler New Yorker.
Having dreamt this world into being, the wizard called 'Talking Man' falls in love with what he has made and retires there. He lives in a house trailer on a Kentucky hillside close by his junkyard, and he only uses magic on the rare occasions he can't fix a car the other way. He'd be there still if his jealous co-dreamer Dgene hadn't decided to undo his creation and return this world to nothingness. When Talking Man lights out to stop her, his daughter Crystal and chance-acquaintance William Williams give chase into a West that changes around them. The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways.
A World Fantasy Award nominee
"A genuinely fresh imagination at work!"
—Michael Moorcock
"Any novel that encompasses John Deere tractors, tobacco planting in the South, wizards at the end of Time, a six-mile wide Mississippi Canyon, singing magic, and a '62 Chrysler racing to the North Pole is covering an awful lot of ground ... Bisson covers that ground as if it were the most natural thing in this world, or any other."
—Guy Gavriel Kay
"The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways. A novel of the New South with a liberal does of the Old ... fantastic and gothic, charming, literate ... teasingly allusive and very entertaining!"
—Publishers Weekly
"An action-filled romp through a surreal landscape of ever-changing America."
—Los Angeles Times
"Bisson has dumped magic into non-urban America, and writes about it all with brilliance and poetry."
—Asimov's
About the Author: Best known for his short stories "macs," "They're Made out of Meat" and "Bears Discover Fire," Terry Bisson has won every major award in SF, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon and Locus awards, and France's Gran Prix de l'Imaginaire. He lives in California.
Having dreamt this world into being, the wizard called 'Talking Man' falls in love with what he has made and retires there. He lives in a house trailer on a Kentucky hillside close by his junkyard, and he only uses magic on the rare occasions he can't fix a car the other way. He'd be there still if his jealous co-dreamer Dgene hadn't decided to undo his creation and return this world to nothingness. When Talking Man lights out to stop her, his daughter Crystal and chance-acquaintance William Williams give chase into a West that changes around them. The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways.
A World Fantasy Award nominee
"A genuinely fresh imagination at work!"
—Michael Moorcock
"Any novel that encompasses John Deere tractors, tobacco planting in the South, wizards at the end of Time, a six-mile wide Mississippi Canyon, singing magic, and a '62 Chrysler racing to the North Pole is covering an awful lot of ground ... Bisson covers that ground as if it were the most natural thing in this world, or any other."
—Guy Gavriel Kay
"The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways. A novel of the New South with a liberal does of the Old ... fantastic and gothic, charming, literate ... teasingly allusive and very entertaining!"
—Publishers Weekly
"An action-filled romp through a surreal landscape of ever-changing America."
—Los Angeles Times
"Bisson has dumped magic into non-urban America, and writes about it all with brilliance and poetry."
—Asimov's
About the Author: Best known for his short stories "macs," "They're Made out of Meat" and "Bears Discover Fire," Terry Bisson has won every major award in SF, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon and Locus awards, and France's Gran Prix de l'Imaginaire. He lives in California.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1986
7 people are currently reading
288 people want to read
About the author
Terry Bisson
214 books177 followersTerry Ballantine Bisson was an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories, including "Bears Discover Fire" (1990), which which won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as They're Made Out of Meat (1991), which has been adapted for video often.
Adapted from Wikipedia.
Adapted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 4, 2022
This was fun and imaginative and very well written, but I'm not really sure what it all meant. It's an aggressively non-urban fantasy quest novel, a road trip story, and is peopled with interesting though not especially sympathetic or likable characters. They go places and do stuff and chase things, some of which are quite commonplace and many of which are decidedly not. Reality seems to fade in and out without explanation. There are pleasantly mythic overtones, but nothing became clear. I'm not sure whether or not the good guys won...
May 30, 2016
I really wanted to love Talking Man. I wanted to love it because 1) Terry Bisson is a terrific guy and, though this is the first of his books I've read in its entirety, I've loved his short stories in the past, 2) Michael Swanwick piqued my curiosity about it many years ago when he praised it in his seminal essay "In the Tradition...", and 3) Bisson is participating here in a project I find truly compelling and undervalued: injecting a strong dose of magic into a gritty contemporary American setting. This practice has led to work both magnificent (John Crowley's Little, Big, Sean Stewart's Galveston) and middling (Steven Sherrill's The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break). Talking Man belongs to the latter category. There are some arresting images, some strong sentences--Bisson is masterful at describing landscapes, especially when they dash past the driver's side window--but on the whole it's a barren, half-hearted, and ultimately forgettable novel.
December 20, 2008
The creator of the universe may also be a bad-tempered old whiskey-swilling car mechanic, and his worst enemy may be his ex-wife (in a Chevrolet, but not really). A road trip across the American Myth to the cold heart of the world. My only complaint is that there wasn't more of it--if you're going to work on the level of myth, you need to be prepared for that grand and complicated scale. Somewhere between this and American Gods would be absolutely perfect. But closer to this.
December 2, 2021
Just delightful. It's a sprawling high-fantasy trilogy in under two hundred pages, and set in America (a couple of different Americas, actually). It uses roads and cars as well as Borgel or Nine Princes in Amber. It has a sense of place and a sense of scale. It's an astoundingly controlled book. There are obvious parallels with American Gods, but that book is so long and aspires to be so universal that I find it loses its way. Also, in Talking Man, Bisson’s protagonist is slightly more of a person.
From my admittedly limited experience of Appalachia, he gets it just about right. The concept of a junkyard wizard and a quest across America-as-the-universe is so incredibly perfect that it's hard to imagine, once you've read this book, that it could be done any other way, or be done wrong, but of course it is, all the time. Orson Scott Card's similarly theological alternate-Americana (which I actually like a great deal) goes on too long, and gets, well, a bit Orson Scott Card. And that's just it. This book encapsulates, for me, what I like about Terry Bisson books: well-told, laid-back, slightly corny, occasionally beautiful, precisely atmospheric.
From my admittedly limited experience of Appalachia, he gets it just about right. The concept of a junkyard wizard and a quest across America-as-the-universe is so incredibly perfect that it's hard to imagine, once you've read this book, that it could be done any other way, or be done wrong, but of course it is, all the time. Orson Scott Card's similarly theological alternate-Americana (which I actually like a great deal) goes on too long, and gets, well, a bit Orson Scott Card. And that's just it. This book encapsulates, for me, what I like about Terry Bisson books: well-told, laid-back, slightly corny, occasionally beautiful, precisely atmospheric.
March 21, 2018
Talking Man is perhaps the best fantasy book I have read. Well, what can "best" mean? Probably "that I am most glad to have read." Whereas some books are so gripping that I cannot put them down in order to sooth some discomfort from, say, a bad chair or crick in my neck, Talking Man made me so comfortable there was no discomfort to distract me, no willpower required to stay seated. Moving forward with perfect ease, a traveler (or reader) may travel far simply for the pleasure of movement.
I have much to say about this short book, and too little time as I write, at present, so please forgive my careless grammar and mixed tenses.
It is the hybrid structure of this tale, myth told in a manner similar to many American road movies and the effortless, affable character of the narration which led me so easily. There are plenty of reviews mentioning the whimsy and broad imagination of the book, the easy language of the South and authenticity of it's Americana and so forth, so I'd like to think about the structure of this tale.
Myths and novels ... "Talking Man" is both those things. To contrast, "The Hobbit" is a great example of the heroic journey, a fact Tolkien expresses self-consciously, text-within-the-text reference style, in Bilbo's book about his adventure, "There and Back Again." Tolkien was an expert craftsman, and master artificer, and wrote a most perfect there and back again novel length myth and fairytale. "Talking Man," is a novel, not a fairytale tho' it is mythical. It encompasses more than one character's or one group's journey so it is not a geometrically perfect fairytale or myth; it is an excellent short novel. It isn't as the masterful as the greater novels in the Western Cannon of literature and its craft is not a perfect as Tolkien's but it is still "the best fantasy book I have read." The five stars it earns are for my subjective reading experience.
At the start, we a have a very nice, homey setting and an interesting, partial history, which is disturbed-the way many stories begin. The more comfortable and homey the initial setting is, the more motivated I am to read about how the characters restore it's balance once it has been disturbed. So the idyllic, comfy, friendly, quirky home of our characters is upset. Because they are so lovable, this perturbed me. powerfully. I wanted them safe and happy I had to read until I knew they were! The charms of quirky mystery such as magical engine repair, promised secrets to be revealed as the heroine's journey unrolled.
Crystal pulls a friend along as she chases her father the god/wizard, who in turn is chased by terrible Dgene, his archetypal antagonist, whom he created in a long gone era of the universe. The question of what, why and hows, of origins are a mystery which in addition to my sympathy with the characters, magnetically drew me along with the characters in various cars across an incredible, changing, magical American dreamscape.
The constant change in the landscape is reflected in the transformation of the characters and unfolding of their relationships. As the landscape is revealed, history and mystery are revealed to our protagonist, Crystal, who motors up along her father's tail stream, then to her friend-become-lover, William Williams, who's pulled along in HER tail stream. And finally these revelations drew the me along as in a tailstream. In my reading, I found myself invested in them all, every character, even in (oppositionally to) Dgene, the antagonist.
I have much to say about this short book, and too little time as I write, at present, so please forgive my careless grammar and mixed tenses.
It is the hybrid structure of this tale, myth told in a manner similar to many American road movies and the effortless, affable character of the narration which led me so easily. There are plenty of reviews mentioning the whimsy and broad imagination of the book, the easy language of the South and authenticity of it's Americana and so forth, so I'd like to think about the structure of this tale.
Myths and novels ... "Talking Man" is both those things. To contrast, "The Hobbit" is a great example of the heroic journey, a fact Tolkien expresses self-consciously, text-within-the-text reference style, in Bilbo's book about his adventure, "There and Back Again." Tolkien was an expert craftsman, and master artificer, and wrote a most perfect there and back again novel length myth and fairytale. "Talking Man," is a novel, not a fairytale tho' it is mythical. It encompasses more than one character's or one group's journey so it is not a geometrically perfect fairytale or myth; it is an excellent short novel. It isn't as the masterful as the greater novels in the Western Cannon of literature and its craft is not a perfect as Tolkien's but it is still "the best fantasy book I have read." The five stars it earns are for my subjective reading experience.
At the start, we a have a very nice, homey setting and an interesting, partial history, which is disturbed-the way many stories begin. The more comfortable and homey the initial setting is, the more motivated I am to read about how the characters restore it's balance once it has been disturbed. So the idyllic, comfy, friendly, quirky home of our characters is upset. Because they are so lovable, this perturbed me. powerfully. I wanted them safe and happy I had to read until I knew they were! The charms of quirky mystery such as magical engine repair, promised secrets to be revealed as the heroine's journey unrolled.
Crystal pulls a friend along as she chases her father the god/wizard, who in turn is chased by terrible Dgene, his archetypal antagonist, whom he created in a long gone era of the universe. The question of what, why and hows, of origins are a mystery which in addition to my sympathy with the characters, magnetically drew me along with the characters in various cars across an incredible, changing, magical American dreamscape.
The constant change in the landscape is reflected in the transformation of the characters and unfolding of their relationships. As the landscape is revealed, history and mystery are revealed to our protagonist, Crystal, who motors up along her father's tail stream, then to her friend-become-lover, William Williams, who's pulled along in HER tail stream. And finally these revelations drew the me along as in a tailstream. In my reading, I found myself invested in them all, every character, even in (oppositionally to) Dgene, the antagonist.
December 29, 2024
A surprise find in a used book store and a surprisingly captivating story about saving the world. Proof that fantasy novels don’t need a thousand pages of world-building to work on the page. Just get in the car and go.
June 5, 2020
The great American fantasy/road trip/love story/apocalyptic/adventure/car chase novel.
December 9, 2008
A beautiful and strange story, unlike anything else I've read. Bisson introduces with equal aplomb the sound of an old John Deere A tractor (Boom chunk chunk chunk boom chunk chunk) and the sight of the six-mile wide Mississippi River Canyon, with fishermen dragging out 1700 year-old catfish as big as a house. In the best possible sense, a book full of magic.
July 12, 2024
“There are two ways to tell a wizard. One is by the blue light that plays around his tires when he is heading north on wet pavement under the northern lights, his headlights pointed toward the top of the world that so many talk about but so few have actually went. The other is by his singing.”
William would of never get mix up with the end of the world if he didn’t drove down 65, nor have a rock hit his windshield. Which set him up to meet Talking Man, a hillbilly wizard.
The world blends the everyday with the magical. Things just happen but, are not over the top fantastical or out of place. The writing is poetic for this short book. Making this book enjoyable and fun to read.
The sitting start out in Kentucky and gives a southern vibe throughout the book. Reminds me of the MHI series.
The descriptions of the US is done nicely and make you feel like your in the backseat of the car watching the landscape speed by and eating nothing but junk food. Which is common on long road trips.
I like the characters, William, Crystal, and even Talking Man. The little bits of humor spread throughout brings more connection to each of the characters.
I will be reading more books by Terry Bisson. Weirdly enough I have another book by this author. Ether I got rid of it or its deeply imbedded in one of my bookshelves.
Find more book reviews on Snapdragon Alcove
William would of never get mix up with the end of the world if he didn’t drove down 65, nor have a rock hit his windshield. Which set him up to meet Talking Man, a hillbilly wizard.
The world blends the everyday with the magical. Things just happen but, are not over the top fantastical or out of place. The writing is poetic for this short book. Making this book enjoyable and fun to read.
The sitting start out in Kentucky and gives a southern vibe throughout the book. Reminds me of the MHI series.
The descriptions of the US is done nicely and make you feel like your in the backseat of the car watching the landscape speed by and eating nothing but junk food. Which is common on long road trips.
I like the characters, William, Crystal, and even Talking Man. The little bits of humor spread throughout brings more connection to each of the characters.
I will be reading more books by Terry Bisson. Weirdly enough I have another book by this author. Ether I got rid of it or its deeply imbedded in one of my bookshelves.
Find more book reviews on Snapdragon Alcove
February 3, 2019
This was entertaining, light fantasy. I found the characters engaging, the scene-setting skillful, and the plot functional. I do not know how true the characters and setting would ring to someone from tobacco country.
To me, the main weakness and the main point of interest was the plot. I thought Bisson did a good job of giving us an insight into the motivations and foibles of forces of nature / gods / what have you without making them too accessible. They were always half-there, half-understood, and rarely seen. For that purpose, framing the plot as a who-done-it chase worked well, and the race across alternate / possible realities was fun.
That said, too much of the story felt arbitrary to me. It never gained the feeling of inevitability or truth-telling that I find in stories like Gaiman's The Ocean at The End of the Lane, which featured similar themes and characters.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and will keep an eye out for more by him.
To me, the main weakness and the main point of interest was the plot. I thought Bisson did a good job of giving us an insight into the motivations and foibles of forces of nature / gods / what have you without making them too accessible. They were always half-there, half-understood, and rarely seen. For that purpose, framing the plot as a who-done-it chase worked well, and the race across alternate / possible realities was fun.
That said, too much of the story felt arbitrary to me. It never gained the feeling of inevitability or truth-telling that I find in stories like Gaiman's The Ocean at The End of the Lane, which featured similar themes and characters.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book and will keep an eye out for more by him.
February 21, 2024
One of those one of a kind weird books, neither fantasy nor sci fi but a little magical. The book is one long dream or hallucination. It’s after the end of the world. It’s about openings to alternate universe portals. And cars. Lots of old cars. Somewhere in the weird universe occupied by The Etched City and The Crystal World.
February 25, 2022
Simpatična knjiga, onako road stil sa dozom sf/f
January 17, 2024
Magical Americana
This is a slow and gorgeous story, pure Americana, rich with magic and wonder, powered by rich imagination and invention, humour, and big old cars.
This is a slow and gorgeous story, pure Americana, rich with magic and wonder, powered by rich imagination and invention, humour, and big old cars.
June 28, 2016
After reading a wonderful story by Terry Bisson, "Scout's Honor," I decided to check out his work. I loved his recent book "Any Day Now," which featured an alternate history of the sixties and a protagonist who was a mechanic. Bisson's an auto mechanic, among other things. Then I read "The Pickup Artist," which was okay, funny. Today I read the short novel in question, and it contained some of the same things from the other two novels. Road trips, for one. Both "Any Day Now" and this book contain alternate versions of America. And auto mechanics. Hmm. But "Talking Man" was boring as hell. It's nearly all one long car ride with two characters who, though having just met, hardly ever say more than three words to each other. Imagine a road trip with no talking. Boring. Who are these two people? We aren't shown. It's in very limited third person, and there's no view into their heads. So if neither is talking and the author ain't saying much either, there's no reason to care about these two. The title character, for some reason, never talks at all! He's a wizard, and a car mechanic, and the story is about two teenagers driving all the way from Kentucky to New Mexico for, really, no reason, other than that Talking Man has gone there, and they are trying to find him. Why? We don't know until the end. From New Mexico (which morphs into Mexico, while everything else slowly changes, too, though why is never explained) they head to...um, the North Pole. Which is now no longer a polar ice cap, but is instead a bunch of empty identical blockhouses with nobody home. Why are they there? No idea. The final magical confrontation between Talking Man and his former sorceress girlfriend gone bad (again, no explanation given for why she's turned evil) is, to say the least, disappointingly dull and leaves nearly everything unanswered.
The two teenagers are trailer trash from the south, the girl smokes a lot and the book seems to be filled with her lighting cigarettes and the two of them switching places, while driving, which I suppose is meant to convey some sense of urgency. Yawn. Our male teen seems to be romantically inclined, due to the presence on the girl's chest of boobs. They eat nothing but junk food...I mean, really, it was hard to find any reason to care for these two. Give us some back story, some emotional content. Something. Bisson seems more interested in automobiles than his characters, as we are given blow by blow descriptions of auto repairs, including exact wrench sizes. This gets really silly when the car breaks down conveniently near a crashed airplane which has a part that can fix the car. Are you kidding me? Two pages of car maintenance ensues, with Talking Man magically installing the part with some magical saliva. OMG.
This was Bisson's second book, and dates from the mid-80's. I suppose that, back then, it was somewhat cutting edge to have a fantasy without dragons and knights, but, instead, a humming cracker who can make cars lift off the ground, ala Yoda. Urban fantasy came soon after, and now it seems there's nothing to recommend a book like this that conflates "fantasy" with "weird stuff happening for no freaking reason" and characters with less appeal than a Shell No-Pest Strip. Ugh.
The two teenagers are trailer trash from the south, the girl smokes a lot and the book seems to be filled with her lighting cigarettes and the two of them switching places, while driving, which I suppose is meant to convey some sense of urgency. Yawn. Our male teen seems to be romantically inclined, due to the presence on the girl's chest of boobs. They eat nothing but junk food...I mean, really, it was hard to find any reason to care for these two. Give us some back story, some emotional content. Something. Bisson seems more interested in automobiles than his characters, as we are given blow by blow descriptions of auto repairs, including exact wrench sizes. This gets really silly when the car breaks down conveniently near a crashed airplane which has a part that can fix the car. Are you kidding me? Two pages of car maintenance ensues, with Talking Man magically installing the part with some magical saliva. OMG.
This was Bisson's second book, and dates from the mid-80's. I suppose that, back then, it was somewhat cutting edge to have a fantasy without dragons and knights, but, instead, a humming cracker who can make cars lift off the ground, ala Yoda. Urban fantasy came soon after, and now it seems there's nothing to recommend a book like this that conflates "fantasy" with "weird stuff happening for no freaking reason" and characters with less appeal than a Shell No-Pest Strip. Ugh.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 25, 2015
It's too tiresomely personal and difficult to go into. I never grasped what it tried to hint, and I do not certainly wonder it.
February 5, 2019
Just started and what a wild ride.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews