Everywhere

by Ian R. MacLeod

“MacLeod is a brilliant writer.” —Tim Powers

“Ian MacLeod writes like an angel. He strings together ideally chosen words into sentences that are variously lush, sparse, subtle, bold, joyous, mournful, comic and tragic.” —Paul Di Filippo

Welcome to the first half of the collected worlds of one of fiction’s great myth-makers. Blending naturalistic settings with real—and unreal—histories, dark presents, strange pasts and star-flung futures, Ian R. MacLeod’s multi award-winning stories defy easy classification, but are always vividly elegant, compelling, and filled with wonder.

In Grownups, a young boy discovers the strange facts of life in a very different—yet also alarmingly recognizable—world, whilst New Light on the Drake Equation focusses on one man’s quest to prove there is still a chance of intelligent life existing beyond Earth, and in Ephemera a very strange librarian has final charge of all the world’s knowledge and culture, and The Master Miller’s Tale tells of obsessive love as a bucolic past dissolves into the magics of industry, iron and steam.

Nothing in MacLeod’s visions is ever quite what it seems, yet they remain deeply real and involving. If you haven’t read MacLeod before, you can expect to be moved and surprised. If you have, then you need no further introduction other than to say that Everywhere—and its companion volume Nowhere, which features many of his best shorter stories—represent a generous and wide-ranging summary of his work, along with many insights into the creative process which are provided by the fresh introductions and afterwords.

Praise for Ian R. MacLeod
“Ian R. MacLeod is rapidly becoming one of the contemporary stars of the genre.” —Brian Aldiss
“MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens and Tolkien.” —G. P. Taylor
“I have no idea what he looks like, but I picture an angle with polychrome wings, dirty hands and a well-chewed pencil.” —Gene Wolfe
“...in many ways the mature culmination of the New Wave’s aggressive appropriation of literary tropes and techniques and the skillful integration of them into subtle, penetrating fiction that, like all true and dangerous art, can pierce and transform the reader.” —Jack Dann
“Stands beside the achievements of China Mieville.” —Jeff VanderMeer
“There are moments when you see a life entire... in a moment. And you smile, because you recognize that smell of the world, that capsule of living.” —John Clute
“Ian R. MacLeod is one hell of a writer—literary, inventive, always surprising. Pay attention: this guy is important.” —Michael Swanwick

Contents:
Papa (1993)
Grownups (1992)
New Light on the Drake Equation (2001)
Breathmoss (2002)
The Master Miller's Tale (2007)
Frost on Glass (2015)
Ephemera (2018)

Genres: Short Stories

426 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 29, 2019

About the author

Ian R. MacLeod is the acclaimed writer of challenging and innovative speculative and fantastic fiction. His most recent novel, Wake Up and Dream, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, while his previous works have won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the World Fantasy Award, and have been translated into many languages. His short story, “Snodgrass,” was developed for television in the United Kingdom as part of the Sky Arts series Playhouse Presents. MacLeod grew up in the West Midlands region of England, studied law, and spent time working and dreaming in the civil service before moving on to teaching and house-husbandry. He lives with his wife in the riverside town of Bewdley.

Reviews

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three and a half stars

This book collects seven long stories and I liked and was impressed by most of them. Even the ones that worked less well for me were well written and of some interest.

I would however point out that it appears that these stories have not been copy edited for publication in this collection. There are a lot of skipped and missing words and many typos of the kind a spellchker can't catch. It got rather tedious to come across them continually.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something rich, deep and strange in MacLeod's novellas which make them so wonderfully engaging. Whether the concept us life with a simple twist which changes the whole world as in "Grownups" or a fantasy version of the Industrial Revolution as presented in "The Master Miller's Tale".

[Dalibor Dado Ivanovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uz priče koje sam pročitao prije (Breathmoss i New Light on the Drake Equation) odlične su mi i Grownups, Papa, onako pravo dirljive priče.
A i cijela zbirka je u stvari izvrsna.

Bacam se na drugu...Nowhere

[Dorothy Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous collection of novellas. The writing in this book is so wonderful, it's a shame the ebook didn't have a better copy editor. Dropped words, mistakes like "colleges" instead of "colleagues" not only detract from the work but often disrupt the flow of the story.
But read this book in some form if you haven't. You won't be sorry.

[Blarg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up after greatly enjoying one of the authors science fiction short stories. This collection was not what I was looking for. The stories had very little Science Fiction in them. To the extent that there was a robot or other interesting technology it was often in passing and not the type of“what if “exploration that I wanted to read.

It is also very difficult for me to understand how something like this could have so many dumb typo and grammar errors.