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The Adventurists: Stories
"Flawless. . . . Readers of John Crowley, Ray Bradbury, and Sally Rooney alike will find a home."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she's become
the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There's the historic house,
where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An
ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your
co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel
under your old high school, and couldn't resist going to see where it
led.
Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes
into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half
hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them.
You might want to get out of the way.
Butner's allusive and
elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life--where there are
no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a
tree might talk to just one person, where Death's Fool is not to be
ignored.
Remember the girl you once knew, the theater kid? Now she's become
the Queen, and you might need to rescue her. There's the historic house,
where someone once saw a ghost and you almost fell in love. An
ornithopter hangs in the lobby of your corporate workplace: your
co-worker thinks he might be able to operate it. Once you found a tunnel
under your old high school, and couldn't resist going to see where it
led.
Sometimes a door will open into a new world, sometimes
into the past. Putting on a costume might be the restart you are half
hoping for. There are things buried here. You might want to save them.
You might want to get out of the way.
Butner's allusive and
elusive stories reach into the uncanny corners of life--where there are
no job losses, just HCAPs (Head Count Allocation Procedures), where a
tree might talk to just one person, where Death's Fool is not to be
ignored.
315 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 22, 2022
21 people are currently reading
246 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
October 17, 2022
Spotted this on the Small Beer website; I didn't know the author but it seemed pretty tempting. Outside of Kathryn Harlan's Fruiting Bodies: Stories, I can't say I've been terribly excited with the short fiction I've read this year. I have to say The Adventurists is very promising so far.
The characters of "Adventure" appear to be in my irony-steeped generation or similar, dealing with aging, and impending departure and death of old friends. Butner is refreshingly unsentimental, and the low-key narrative is packed with wit and charm. As in many Small Beer Press books, there's no shortage of uncanny and magical situations, though nothing supernatural seems to be going on here.
"Holderhaven" interweaves dark Southern family history/abuse, architectural curiosities (ok, I'm a sucker for these), and teenage friendships and affairs. Rudy's explorations in the old house are intriguing, and the awkward romantic sparring involving Bill and Ella are hilarious. Butner is so good at this kind of sly, understated story-telling that I find very attractive.
The narrator of "Scenes from the Renaissance" works through an old romantic obsession. It's ludicrous, bittersweet, smells bad, but he manages a satisfactory outcome. I've been there too, but my journey wasn't that funny.
The events and reminiscences in "Horses Blow Up Dog City" are triggered by the death of a celebrity puppeteer (named Grover, obviously another puppet reference, haha). Being a puppet-obsessive myself, this was easy for me to love. But it's really a beautiful meditation on friendship, death, and nostalgia, with a dizzying explosion of nutty twisted technology constantly in the background. Belgian hackers who hijack "tangle box" broadcasts, toy robots controlled by magnetic tapes, a roll-up video poster, the list goes on. And another quiet and melancholic final page that doesn't resolve any of the complexities.
The next few stories have old friends exploring weird buildings and quirky situations. Not sure the endings all work for me, but they are light and entertaining enough. I really like "Pete and Earl", with the conversations about elder care (increasingly on my mind in recent years). The narrative turns on a few words or a phrase here and there, and the revelations are made quietly and all the more effective.
If I'd read a synopsis of "The Ornithopter", I'd probably go WTF? and skip it. But it's all about voice and atmosphere, and somehow Butner gets it all to work.
"Stronghold" is like an ironic, detached noir. The narrator is a cold, inscrutable character with dubious taste (Brubeck is a favorite! ha), who discovers the dead body of a strange woman in his luxurious house. Cops (of the cartoon noir variety) are called, strange things happen. Little inconsistencies and weird details keep us on our toes, suggesting that things are not what they seem (see also "Pete and Earl"). The ending is messy, open-ended, and somehow satisfying.
"Give Up" is my kind of science fiction. The author doesn't dwell on the nonsense details of the technology. Instead, we just experience it, glitches and all, through the narrator, interwoven with his memories and struggles with aging. "Chemistry Set" is a fairly straightforward tale about childhood experiences and memory, but there's an awkward charm that I find engaging.
The protagonist of "Under Green" returns to her hometown to recover from some dubious life choices. She becomes obsessed with the house she grew up in, and resumes conversations with a tree (!) from her childhood. The climatic violent events, followed by the open-ended and quietly redemptive close, would seem shaky at best, but somehow the author's understated approach pulls everything together.
The collection ends with "Sunnyside", a light-hearted romp involving a virtual reality wake that's heavy on the technical glitches, obnoxious celebrities who are liable to violent (virtual) outbursts, and late 70s/early 80s music. I'm not sure it all works, but it's a fun ride. The virtual wake for Jimmy Jackson ends:
Looking over the negative reviews, this was probably not what a lot of readers expected from Small Beer. I'm not sure I understand the complaints about (say) bakeries appearing in different stories. It's not like what we talk about, when we talk about bakeries, is really just bakeries.
The characters of "Adventure" appear to be in my irony-steeped generation or similar, dealing with aging, and impending departure and death of old friends. Butner is refreshingly unsentimental, and the low-key narrative is packed with wit and charm. As in many Small Beer Press books, there's no shortage of uncanny and magical situations, though nothing supernatural seems to be going on here.
"Holderhaven" interweaves dark Southern family history/abuse, architectural curiosities (ok, I'm a sucker for these), and teenage friendships and affairs. Rudy's explorations in the old house are intriguing, and the awkward romantic sparring involving Bill and Ella are hilarious. Butner is so good at this kind of sly, understated story-telling that I find very attractive.
The narrator of "Scenes from the Renaissance" works through an old romantic obsession. It's ludicrous, bittersweet, smells bad, but he manages a satisfactory outcome. I've been there too, but my journey wasn't that funny.
The events and reminiscences in "Horses Blow Up Dog City" are triggered by the death of a celebrity puppeteer (named Grover, obviously another puppet reference, haha). Being a puppet-obsessive myself, this was easy for me to love. But it's really a beautiful meditation on friendship, death, and nostalgia, with a dizzying explosion of nutty twisted technology constantly in the background. Belgian hackers who hijack "tangle box" broadcasts, toy robots controlled by magnetic tapes, a roll-up video poster, the list goes on. And another quiet and melancholic final page that doesn't resolve any of the complexities.
The next few stories have old friends exploring weird buildings and quirky situations. Not sure the endings all work for me, but they are light and entertaining enough. I really like "Pete and Earl", with the conversations about elder care (increasingly on my mind in recent years). The narrative turns on a few words or a phrase here and there, and the revelations are made quietly and all the more effective.
If I'd read a synopsis of "The Ornithopter", I'd probably go WTF? and skip it. But it's all about voice and atmosphere, and somehow Butner gets it all to work.
"Stronghold" is like an ironic, detached noir. The narrator is a cold, inscrutable character with dubious taste (Brubeck is a favorite! ha), who discovers the dead body of a strange woman in his luxurious house. Cops (of the cartoon noir variety) are called, strange things happen. Little inconsistencies and weird details keep us on our toes, suggesting that things are not what they seem (see also "Pete and Earl"). The ending is messy, open-ended, and somehow satisfying.
"Give Up" is my kind of science fiction. The author doesn't dwell on the nonsense details of the technology. Instead, we just experience it, glitches and all, through the narrator, interwoven with his memories and struggles with aging. "Chemistry Set" is a fairly straightforward tale about childhood experiences and memory, but there's an awkward charm that I find engaging.
The protagonist of "Under Green" returns to her hometown to recover from some dubious life choices. She becomes obsessed with the house she grew up in, and resumes conversations with a tree (!) from her childhood. The climatic violent events, followed by the open-ended and quietly redemptive close, would seem shaky at best, but somehow the author's understated approach pulls everything together.
The collection ends with "Sunnyside", a light-hearted romp involving a virtual reality wake that's heavy on the technical glitches, obnoxious celebrities who are liable to violent (virtual) outbursts, and late 70s/early 80s music. I'm not sure it all works, but it's a fun ride. The virtual wake for Jimmy Jackson ends:
It was their song. It was "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand. The encrypted energies of three distorted guitar chords crunching behind French gibberish, instantly familiar.
"Well, we've got about three minutes," she said.
Inside the Boat, something that looked like Jimmy Jackson danced, flailing around with his back to the window, his elbows and knees as mobile as a marionette. It started raining again, heavier this time. Outside, on the back terrace, Stephen and Viv began dancing too.
Looking over the negative reviews, this was probably not what a lot of readers expected from Small Beer. I'm not sure I understand the complaints about (say) bakeries appearing in different stories. It's not like what we talk about, when we talk about bakeries, is really just bakeries.
March 24, 2023
From the very beginning of this strange collection, I was enchanted.
There's an adorable awkwardness, and confident frailty, to many of Butner's characters here, and even when I began a story with one eyebrow raised or feeling a bit skeptical of where things were going, the turns and choices and progressions in nearly every story pulled me in to the individual world and reality...to the extent that I simply wanted the collection to keep right on going. The way Butner interweaves his own versions of reality and fantasy with characters who seem so real that we could know them is truly something wonderful, and it's easy to see why some of these stories were published in top magazines. But importantly, even the stories which were unpublished prior to this collection stand up to the standards set by others.
In the end, I'm left anxious to read more of his work, because even though some of these stories didn't quite make me fall in love with them like others did, even those that left me less than entralled showed such creativity and life that I didn't mind having read them. Some of my favorites from the collection are: "Scenes from the Renaissance", "Ash City Stomp", "Circa", "Delta Function", "Give Up", and "Sunnyside".
Absolutely recommended for lovers of weird fiction and SFF in short form.
There's an adorable awkwardness, and confident frailty, to many of Butner's characters here, and even when I began a story with one eyebrow raised or feeling a bit skeptical of where things were going, the turns and choices and progressions in nearly every story pulled me in to the individual world and reality...to the extent that I simply wanted the collection to keep right on going. The way Butner interweaves his own versions of reality and fantasy with characters who seem so real that we could know them is truly something wonderful, and it's easy to see why some of these stories were published in top magazines. But importantly, even the stories which were unpublished prior to this collection stand up to the standards set by others.
In the end, I'm left anxious to read more of his work, because even though some of these stories didn't quite make me fall in love with them like others did, even those that left me less than entralled showed such creativity and life that I didn't mind having read them. Some of my favorites from the collection are: "Scenes from the Renaissance", "Ash City Stomp", "Circa", "Delta Function", "Give Up", and "Sunnyside".
Absolutely recommended for lovers of weird fiction and SFF in short form.
March 20, 2022
From Small Beer Press and edited by the great Kelly Link, (which was all I needed to recommend this book of short stories to me). From the first page I was smiling at the turns of phrase. Here we have a sort of low-key punk nostalgia. A visit between old friends with a haunting jester... or is it Death's Fool? Another visit between old friends where one has to shut their eyes during the car ride so as not to see all those haunts that are now gone. Many middle-age folk who are visiting old friends and old towns with some sci-fi/fantasy elements sprinkled in there. These stories are labeled as "sci-fi/fantasy" but they stay in mostly realistic territory most of the time, while some might have a bit of sci-fi/fantasy twist to them. 'Horses Blow Up Dog City' reminds me of the film 'Until the End of the World' by Wim Wenders (a favorite) -- in the respect that both story and film are from the 90s that envision technology slightly in the future and are somehow eerily accurate. I will say that the blurb comparing this book to Sally Rooney is misleading and not helping Butner's book at all. I may have only read 'Normal People' but I really do not see how these books are similar other than that they both contain words. I'm afraid many people who pick up this book will expect a Rooney book and this is not that at all. I will say that I tend to pass on Rooney's books but I'm a fan of Butner's writing! (In my opinion, Butner is much better. As far as I know, Rooney's characters aren't old enough for this much change or nostalgia.) About one third of these stories have been published in other places and ten of the stories are published in this collection for the first time. I would say I very much enjoyed all of these stories except for maybe one story -- I didn't really understand the point. A couple stories I wish had a tiny bit more detail. Otherwise, a VERY solid collection. Usually I would list favorites, but it would be all of the stories minus the one. I just knew this collection had a certain sparkle when I heard about it. I do love a fun short story collection. Aging punks, this one's for you!
March 25, 2022
I was unfamiliar with Richard Butner, but he's got the right publisher (Small Beer Press, owned by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant) and his marketing material namechecks John Crowley and Ray Bradbury. So I thought I'd try this story collection.
Butner writes stories that inject elements of fantasy or 'weirdness' into quotidian life to elevate the tension and plot. The author he most reminds me of is Jeffrey Ford (another Small Beer Press author) in that there are some standard jumping-off points they both use. With Ford, it's an old man and woman sitting on the porch drinking wine (something that may have a lot of basis in reality). With Butner, it's a protagonist who slips, stumbles or otherwise falls down and sustains an injury, and then enters an altered reality.
Another standard element is revisiting the childhood home, or what used to be the place of home (sometimes just the hometown). Houses are important in Butner's work – sometimes they're haunted, sometimes they hold secrets. There is a strong sense of place in his work, even if it's a Renaissance fair.
I can't claim to understand every story – some just mixed strange elements to no discernible resolution, but maybe that's the point – he's evoking a sense of “feeling very strange”, as the title of a slipstream anthology had it. He's very good at character and dialogue though, so it's easy to slip into that world he creates.
Welcome to Butner World – it's different than the one you know.
Butner writes stories that inject elements of fantasy or 'weirdness' into quotidian life to elevate the tension and plot. The author he most reminds me of is Jeffrey Ford (another Small Beer Press author) in that there are some standard jumping-off points they both use. With Ford, it's an old man and woman sitting on the porch drinking wine (something that may have a lot of basis in reality). With Butner, it's a protagonist who slips, stumbles or otherwise falls down and sustains an injury, and then enters an altered reality.
Another standard element is revisiting the childhood home, or what used to be the place of home (sometimes just the hometown). Houses are important in Butner's work – sometimes they're haunted, sometimes they hold secrets. There is a strong sense of place in his work, even if it's a Renaissance fair.
I can't claim to understand every story – some just mixed strange elements to no discernible resolution, but maybe that's the point – he's evoking a sense of “feeling very strange”, as the title of a slipstream anthology had it. He's very good at character and dialogue though, so it's easy to slip into that world he creates.
Welcome to Butner World – it's different than the one you know.
April 21, 2022
I saw this on display at my local library while walking around with my kid (he loves books), and I picked it up on a whim. I should read a short story collection every once-in-a-while, I rarely read something with a copyright date of the current year, and, well, I liked the artwork, as well as the title. And the stories do seem to be somewhat unified by the theme of "adventure", though not really in the traditional fantasy sense; the stories are all about something unusual that happens to people who are trying to figure something out in their lives, and the little dose of magical realism can put things in perspective for them, though it's never entirely clear what. And that's the good and the bad of short stories, you never have time to flesh everything out, instead you're only getting the hints of something and having to fill in the rest for yourself, bringing something of your own reading into it.
September 6, 2022
A collection of shorts with virtually identical plots and characters, in most of these not much happened, one or two friends meet after not seeing each other for many years, some strange event happens. The event could be fantasy or SF light, not that has any effect on the characters.
A boring read, if I just read one or two I would be happier, less time wasted rereading the same story with minor varients.
A boring read, if I just read one or two I would be happier, less time wasted rereading the same story with minor varients.
August 30, 2022
The Adventurists by Richard Butner is a gorgeously mesmerizing compilation of short science fiction and fantasy stories that contain and reflect back the entire spectrum of human emotions, sometimes from one extreme to the other, without leaving the reader with that nagging sense of psychological whiplash that so often accompanies similar compilations in the genre. Butner creates immersive tales with beautifully descriptive detail and an almost dream-like sense of fantastical logic where the limitations of reality simply cease to exist for the duration of one story, only to have those same limitations flipped completely on their head for the next. If you enjoy short stories by the likes of fantasy author Neil Gaiman or science fiction giant Ray Bradbury, then you’ll love this collection. Whether you like stories about lost friends reunited, unrequited love, second chances, or the transformative power of both grief and hope, there’s something here for you. Mostly surreal and often touching, these stories make wonderful and quick reads for late-night dreamers and back seat readers on their way to destinations unknown.
November 9, 2023
Butner’s tales present as normies, even pedestrian to start. That’s where he gets you. Then things get weird. Sometimes without you really knowing how or why. It’s a sleight of hand, a barely noticeable ripple in the fabric. And then you feel the shift and then you’re on high alert. These short stories play with ideas of nostalgia and memory, perhaps the distortions we do not even realize we generate as time passes along. Several stories have a knee-injury triggering a shift in temporal placement - a shock into the past or alternate reality. A suggestion of the body’s agency as a seat for perception and forming the world around us. There’s an uncanniness but it’s not creepy. Perhaps, even more strangely, they are very matter of fact. The writing style offers ease and lightness, but the stories refuse forgetting. I’m certain that when I return to re-read this I’ll conjure new impressions. My favorite story was The Ornithopter - set in a slowly, inexplicably, vacating company’s main office in a nondescript office park. I have so many questions, desires for the story to expand to novella length, or a screenplay that toys with jump scares but never delivers that easy release.
February 29, 2024
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for ambitious and weird writing.
This was an unsettling, strange collection of short stories. Some were excellent, many were thought provoking, and a few didn't land for me at all. Overall this book was not to my taste. I respect the writing but don't think I'd read another whole collection by this writer.
Highlights for me included "Adventure," "Holderhaven," and the utterly bizarre "The Ornithopter." I was thoroughly creeped out by the extremely strange story "Scenes from the Renaissance."
This was an unsettling, strange collection of short stories. Some were excellent, many were thought provoking, and a few didn't land for me at all. Overall this book was not to my taste. I respect the writing but don't think I'd read another whole collection by this writer.
Highlights for me included "Adventure," "Holderhaven," and the utterly bizarre "The Ornithopter." I was thoroughly creeped out by the extremely strange story "Scenes from the Renaissance."
August 6, 2023
I enjoyed the writing style in these stories, but my mind is absolutely boggled by the repetitiveness in this collection. There are so many stories about someone returning to their home town, or going to see an old friend, that it might have helped to set expectations by calling the collection something like “Revisiting the Past.” I liked the individual stories, but I was less enamored with the experience of reading too many similar stories.
June 3, 2022
A lovely set of short stories, using magical realism to grapple with getting older and being middle aged. It’s probably the fact that I am getting older and am middle aged, but the stories hit me just right, with melancholy about what has been lost, but never despairing. That’s a tough balance to maintain, and Butner does in almost all the stories.
July 4, 2022
This is the sort of story I usually like, varied tales of ordinary people encountering moments of strangeness in their lives, but ultimately I failed to connect with any of them on an emotional level, and by the time I reached the last one the twists at the end had started to feel rote. The prose is competent.
January 4, 2023
a book dedicated to nostalgia and remembering things you forgot from your childhood/hometown. some stories were straight up depressing but most just remind you that the past is always a part of who you are.
March 27, 2025
Pretty standard short story collection, with some good ones, some boring ones, and some that were somewhere in the middle. There were some great ideas in the stories, but the stories felt very similar to each other.
April 24, 2022
From Death’s Jester to escaping a dead-end job by stealing an ornithopter, these stories will be sticking with me for a long time. Kind of low-key slipstream Gen-X Americana. I loved it.
May 8, 2022
Meh. Essentially the same story over and over. The bakery was owned by retired ballerinas in one story and Greek acrobats in another. Or some such.
July 7, 2022
Brilliant, surprising short stories. Love how most of them twist emotionally at the end with a gut punch
July 21, 2022
Riffing on nostalgia.
December 30, 2022
I loved this book of slipstream/urban fantasy short stories. I kept recognizing myself in bits of it. The stories are meditations on middle age, told in a way that is magical, joyful, heartbreaking.
February 17, 2023
These short stories are like dreams, for me. They're a little odd and full of unusual details, like the woman who runs backwards in one. Gentle and strange, for the most part.
They are very much to my taste, and I liked them very much.
They are very much to my taste, and I liked them very much.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews