Episodes EXPORT

by Christopher Priest

A magicianâ€s trick turns to horror, an online scam sells time travel, and a man dreams he is a serial killer. These eleven stories, with a commentary by the author, span four decades and genres including gothic horror, sci-fi and contemporary satire.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction, Horror, Collections, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy

Paperback

First published July 11, 2019

About the author

Christopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.

He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.

He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.

He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.

As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

Are you a writer? If so, you will surely resonate with the above photo of a writer's desk awaiting the presence of the writer. In this case, the desk belongs to none other than Christopher Priest. We can picture the British author walking in, taking a seat, turning on his computer and preparing himself to launch into his next work in progress - hardly a new experience since he's been writing, mostly fiction, for over fifty year with many essays, short stories and seventeen published novels to his credit.

This collection of short stories is unique. Not only do we have the short stories themselves, eleven in number, but each story has a Before and After wherein Christopher Priest shares with the reader how the story came to be written and then informal reflections on the process of writing the story along with it's publishing history and what, if anything, the story gave rise to.

Recognizing this distinctive format, prior to the stories, I'll focus on the Before and After sections (and also First, the book's preface), linking my comments with the author's own words.

"The fantastic itself is still largely unappreciated beyond a small but consistently intelligent readership." Writing fiction with fantastical elements, that is, expanding out from what is conventionally termed "realistic fiction," has placed Christopher Priest in the category of science fiction and associated with authors such as Brian Aldiss and Michael Moorcock rather than Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Zadie Smith. This is less than ideal since such pigeonholing has tended to cut him off from a larger readership.

Christopher Priest goes on to explain how the fantastic is not a clearly defined genre such as detective stories, romances or Westerns; no, the fantastic is "indefinable and free of boundaries, with no restrictions on place or time - it can be located in the realistic here and now if needs be, but also anywhere in the world or universe, real or imagined, past, present or future."

"I usually say of the new wave that I was of it but not in it." A number of Christopher Priest's stories were published by Michael Moorcock, but the author is quick to point out he was determined to find his own path in writing rather than adhering to the British new wave philosophy and regimen of drawing inspiration from things like funky poetry, rock music, modern painting and hip films.

"I have gone into this unhappy story in some detail because on the whole readers are unaware of many of the unnecessary tensions created behind the scenes by people like him, and the time and energy they can waste - not just theirs, but other people's." Christopher Priest relates how American editor Harlan Ellison demanded he cut off writing his novel-in-progress and immediately write a "taboo-busting" short story for his "landmark" anthology. The British author wrote back to Ellison and said "no" but Harlan refused to take "no" for an answer and pounded away again and again until he received a short story.

This Ellison episode is one of a number of instances Christopher Priest relates regarding the frequently curious circumstances surrounding the creation of each of his eleven short stories - dealing with the likes of magazine editors, BBC radio people, even a main clearing bank in the UK. This to underscore being a writer entails much more than writing - publishing one's work requires large quantities of time, effort, and not infrequently, frustration and stress. And what became of Harlan Ellison and his "landmark" anthology? Never published! As Christopher Priest tells it, his story An Infinite Summer did eventually publish in a magazine and later became the lead story for one of his short story collections.

By the way, I read elsewhere that back when he was an undergrad at Ohio State University, a professor told Harlan his writing wasn't any good. Harlan punched the professor in the face and was immediately expelled. In the years thereafter, every time Harlan had a story or book published, he sent a copy to that prof.

"I have lived my whole life with books, and the worst hell for me would be incarceration in a cell without a shelf of paperbacks, renewed from time to time. I do not see myself as a collector, but as an accumulator, a gatherer of books." This simple statement speaks volumes of what it means to be a writer of literary fiction - a love of books and a lifetime dedication to reading books.

Here are a few snips from the opening scene of one of my favorite stories in Episodes, a story Christopher Priest wrote in the first person but I've taken the liberty to switch to second person and compress a bit:

fuouristic.com.uk
There you are at your computer, all set to read your email. However, before you do so, you need to delete all those pesky bits of spam. Damn! When will people learn, you're not the type of person to be sucked into sales pitches or other silly garbage.

Tap, delete, tap, delete, tap, delete - ten times over. You stop. There it is again, every day for two weeks running - a most curious email. No doubt it carries a deadly virus that would infect everything on your computer. But, oh, that irresistible caption: Lowest price Time Machine 4U?. You think: 'I'll be damned. They want to sell me a time machine.' The temptation is simply too great - you take a quick peek.

Wow! This email is addressed to you personally. The sender even spelled your name right. The email is from an outfit calling themselves futouristic.com.uk and the email contains the image of their alleged time machine.

These crackpots insist their offer is genuine and their time machine will actually work. 'Buy now and you can watch great historical battles, be present at your own birth or make yourself RICH - legally!' Rich, really? Fantastic! You position the arrow on the screen and click. At that exact moment your doorbell rings.

You'll have to read for yourself to find out what happens next and next and next. Echoes of both H.G. Wells and The Twilight Zone.

----------

Fans of Christopher Priest will recognize the themes in these stories echo themes from the author's novels - to list several linked with one novel in particular: invisibility (The Glamour), stage magic and illusion (The Prestige), bending of time (The Space Machine), horrific transformation (The Dream Archipelago), romantic love (The Adjacent). And, as noted, there's the bonus of the Before and After sections. So worth your time.


British author Christopher Priest, born 1943

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really horrible things in here (as the author almost apologetically admits) including the highlight, 'I, Haruspex', which is (this is hard to describe, I'll give it a go) about a chap reluctantly tasked with keeping unspeakable hell-fauna from entering 'this realm' via a weird aperture behind a wall in his large country pile (which also features a solitary member of staff who - apart from providing apparently nuisance sexual intrigue - cooks up broths featuring cancer-pellets delivered by a rather agitated woman; as he eats and breaks up the pellets, time reverses, which keeps things on Earth relatively tranquil). As well as being the one man keeping hell at bay he's also spotted a German warplane trapped pre-crash in a part of his garden. Creepily, there's a man in the cockpit trying to attract his attention. Should he let the man out? (No! But he does, of course.) It's testament to the skill of the author that such potential cobblers ends up riveting.

Added bonus: all these stories are bookended by often cautionary preambles regarding their genesis and inspiration, and brief little authorly codas about the place a piece was published, the limbo the piece endured before publication, anecdotal vignettes, that sort of thing, all of which are fascinating.

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3.5) Episodes collects eleven stories which originally date from between 1972 and 2017. All of them have been previously published, but many appeared either in magazines or out-of-print anthologies, and have therefore been difficult to find until now.

At first, I wondered whether this was a bad place to start with Christopher Priest's short fiction. This is, after all, a selection of relatively obscure pieces, not a set of stories designed to be read together. But in the end, I enjoyed it quite a bit: if the quality is uneven, the variety (in style, length, subject etc.) makes the book consistently surprising. 'The Ament', 'Palely Loitering' and 'I, Haruspex' are among the standouts.

In 'The Head and the Hand', the narrator serves a 'master' who at first appears to be disabled; we soon learn there is a more disturbing reason for his damaged physical state. The master, Todd, has been offered a vast sum of money to return to the stage, and the narrator, as his assistant, will need to be involved. A squeamish tale which reminded me of a more explicit version of Robert Aickman's 'The Swords'.

I'm afraid my opinion of 'A Dying Fall' was negatively affected by its introduction, which explains that it was written in response to a challenge. With that in mind, I couldn't help thinking that the inclusion of Belgium as a (partial) setting didn't feel germane. The story – about the images that flash through a man's mind as he is pushed in front of a train – is well-written but didn't stay with me.

'I, Haruspex' opens with a sinister man receiving a packet of mysterious 'pellets' from 'the Trust'. It unfolds into a long and detailed story, almost a novella, involving some fantastical conceits: a portal to hell, a warplane from the future suspended mid-crash. This story is absolutely horrible but I was completely engrossed. When I finished it, looking up from the book was like walking out of a cinema into dazzling daylight.

After that, 'Palely Loitering' felt like a palate-cleanser. This is a gently romantic tale with a speculative twist: in the world of this story, there is a river that enables time travel; by jumping across it, a boy called Mykle can leap 32 years into the future (and back again). He becomes infatuated with a girl he sees there, whom he calls Estyll, and this fixation persists throughout his life. Teenage Mykle's hysterical declarations of love provide touches of humour (as does the fact that his obsession with Estyll – if that is even her real name – is an ouroboros, created and encouraged solely by him, though he never seems to realise this). In its own way, this story is just as riveting as 'I, Haruspex', just a lot more pleasant.

In an 'An Infinite Summer' we are introduced to Thomas James Lloyd, who mysteriously looks 25 but is in fact almost 60, and is wary of people he calls 'freezers'. There are similarities to 'Palely Loitering': in both stories, young love is frozen in place by means of some speculative device, in such a way that the protagonist is unable to fully move on. The two stories make a satisfying pair, relatively peaceful amid some of the more disturbing subjects.

At the beginning of 'The Ament', the narrator awakes from a dream of murder. Though it's only a dream, he takes pleasure in it, and as the story progresses, Andrew Welbeck continues to be an offputting character, disgusting or unnerving many who encounter him. He also maintains an odd engagement as the male subject of a scientific study which requires him (along with a female counterpart) to be photographed naked on a weekly basis. This story is irresistibly strange, with the use of alternating first and third person narratives developing Welbeck's character brilliantly, and I adored the sting in its tail – overall, probably my favourite.

'The Invisible Men' is a political satire. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure I entirely understood this and I also found it the least memorable.

'The Stooge' is the worst story in the book by some distance.

'futouristic.co.uk' begins with a man named Mitchell Frogle clicking on a link in a suspicious email. It promises to give him access to a real time machine. As a salesman later explains, the device is extremely expensive, but that's no problem – Frogle will be provided with next week's lottery numbers and can simply use his winnings to make the payment... This is more light-hearted and amusing than the others, and I enjoyed it as a fluffy interlude.

Inspired by George Orwell, 'Shooting an Episode' depicts a future society in which most citizens are addicted to a mixed reality game: they play via handheld devices or headsets, but the principal characters are real people, essentially reality TV stars. The narrator works for one of the networks producing content for the game and is ordered outside (a risky place, verging on lawless) to record a scene. While intriguing, this introduces too much story-specific technology and language; I ended up focusing mostly on that and not what was happening.

'The Sorting Out' is a nightmarish story of suspense. Having recently ended a relationship with a controlling and aggressive man, Melvina comes home one night to find her house has been broken into. In a moment of weakness, she calls her ex. The ensuing conversations are enough to imbue the story with a terrible sense of dread, but there's also the fact that the intruder inexplicably seems to have moved and reordered Melvina's collection of books. Unsettling – yet it ends on a hopeful note.

TinyLetter

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Llevo unos días con el libro leído y pensando si le daba tres o cuatro estrellas. Me ha gustado bastante más de lo que esperaba después de la decepción que me supuso The Gradual. Sin embargo, hay dos o tres relatos flojos, uno de ellos particularmente malo. Y eso cuando apenas hay una decena de cuentos, dos ya publicados previamente, y todos relativamente extensos juega en contra de la valoración final. Sin embargo me he decantado por el cuatro por dos motivos. Primero, es un acierto la recuperación de las que me parecen las dos mejores narraciones breves de Priest ajenas al Archipiélago del Sueño, "Vagabundeos pálidos" y "Un verano infinito". Glosan como ninguno la fecunda tierra entre la ciencia ficción de inspiración wellsiana y el fantástico de naturaleza más ambigua de donde surgieron novelas como El mundo invertido, La afirmación o El glamour. Y después, entre el resto, hay piezas de mucho empaque como uno de sus primeros relatos, el perverso "The Head and the Hand", plagado de temas a pesar de su sencillez; su enésima vuelta a la reconstrucción de la memoria, esta vez desde la irrupción de la demencia, de "The Ament"; su ballardiana "Shooting an Episode"; o el macabro, y muy loco "I, Haruspex".

Los dos últimos, además, son la mejor muestra de cómo aborda Priest la ficción breve. Encargos de muy diversa índole donde le piden A y devuelve P; una narración genuina inconfundiblemente suya. Es particularmente gracioso el último, solicitado por una empresa de software interesada en crear un juego Lovecraftiano y necesitada de un texto que aportara una nueva óptica a esa narrativa. Como reconoce en la presentación, de Lovecraft prácticamente no tenía ni puta idea, así que devuelve una historia siniestra y a ratos demencial sobre la labor de un sacerdote que mantiene a ralla a demonios de otra dimensión. Esto, que es una de toda la vida, gana entidad gracias a elementos wellsianos (una máquina que le ayuda en su labor, un desplazamiento temporal) y otros espeluznantes, como el alimento que le ayuda a conservar sus poderes. Si a esto le añades que el protagonista se llama James Owsley (guiño, guiño), y piensas en lo que le ocurre al final, es imposible pensar en un toque más personal. Supongo que para estupefacción del mecenas que recibió el cuento una vez terminado.

Sí que decepcionan un poco los textos de acompañamiento. Hay tres o cuatro con mucha sustancia, pero la mayoría se reducen a dar un par de notas sobre la escritura, la naturaleza de cada encargo y cómo aparecen ciertos temas. Ya que se había puesto a incorporar este tipo de visión al libro, se prestaba para algo de más alcance.

[Alec Chillingworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Features some classic time-bending Priest, Victorian drama, and a real mean streak. The short stories span over something like fifty years, and really shouldn’t go together, but they’re all tied together nicely with Priest’s musings.

The step into cosmic, Lovecraftian horror is an undoubted highlight, as are the instances when it gets proper gory for no reason. Even the ‘Priest by numbers’ stuff is better than 99% of other sci-fi writers.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of the late author’s shorter work culled from throughout his career. Each story is prefaced by a ‘Before’ section saying how it came to be written and an ‘After’ section describing how the writing went and where the story was published. Priest’s writing is always controlled and well executed. In general it tends towards a feeling of unease, as if something is lurking below the surface or what has seemed to be reality morphs into something else but here I was surprised by how much of the contents leaned towards horror.
The Head and the Hand. A man who had become famous through allowing himself to be mutilated is persuaded out of retirement for a final cut.
A Dying Fall relates the thoughts that flash through a man’s mind as he is falling in front of a subway train. They are of travelling on a motorway in Belgium and of the training course in parachute jumping/sky diving he took there.
I, Haruspex is, I assume, in the mould of H P Lovecraft. (Priest’s ‘Before’word says it was solicited by a games company wanting something based on that author’s Cthulhu Mythos but he had no familiarity with that at all - similarly I have not. The company, while paying, never used the story and Priest later found a home for it elsewhere.) Effective in its own way it is told in an old-fashioned language of stilted particularity that, for a first person narration, is curiously distanced (not to mention distancing) and overladen with exclamation marks. After consuming his special meals, narrator James Owsley, descendant of a long line of haruspices, can halt or reverse time for a while. Off the Great Hall of his home, Beckon Abbey, lies a hagioscope over a pit which loathsome things are seeking to escape. In a nearby bog a German bomber plane is held in slow suspension as it crashes after being shot down, even though this is 1936. Someone, not a member of its crew, waves to him from the impending wreck and a voice speaks in his head.
Like the author’s novel The Space Machine, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spa...) written as an hommage to H G Wells, Palely Loitering, a tale of time travel and thwarted love, bears the influence of Edwardian fiction. Despite including space travel (the McGuffin here - called the Flux Channel - was built to help launch a starship on its way,) the story has a resolutely antique feel to it. Its atmosphere of picnics and bandstands, its social and family dynamics were distinctly retro even in the 1979 in which it was first published. After the starship left, three bridges were built across the Flux Channel. The one leading straight across is the ‘Today’ bridge, two others, built at slight angles to the Channel, lead respectively to ‘Yesterday’ or ‘Tomorrow’. Our narrator as a boy one day leapt off the end of the ‘Tomorrow’ bridge and found himself thirty-four years in the future, where a young woman is pointed out to him by a man who says she is waiting for her sweetheart. The reader can from then fill in the gaps but Priest’s execution of the story is impressive.
An Infinite Summer again bears Edwardian hallmarks - but then part of it is set in 1903 where Thomas Lloyd is on the point of proposing to his intended, Sarah, when he is frozen by a camera-like device wielded by someone from the future. The frozen tableaux which result from these capturings can not be seen by contemporary passers-by but only by the unfrozen and the travellers from the future. The effect on Thomas wears off only in 1935 when he is free to move around again but has to wait more years for Sarah to unfreeze. In 1940 he, and Sarah’s image, are caught in the aftermath of the shooting down of a German bomber. The image of one of the bomber’s German crew held in suspension above a river after being captured by a freezer is unforgettable. I note the similarities here between this incident and the one in I Haruspex.
The Ament* is the tale of a man who was once part of a project to film two children, one male and one female, every week, to document changes during their growth and beyond, but who in his adulthood has dreams of committing murder. But are they dreams? The story is told in two alternating voices, his and a third person viewpoint.
The Invisible Men are those (not all men) who are detailed by their USian masters to spy on a British Prime Minister who feels he has to resign due to a financial scandal. (His statement that, “It’s British tradition for a public figure to resign his position if caught in the wrong,” seems altogether quaint now, 50 years after first publication.) His observations of his surroundings on a clandestine meeting on the Norfolk coast with his USian partner - a co-leader of a UK seemingly on the brink of becoming the 51st State - imbue the tale with a sense of foreboding.
The Stooge is employed by a stage illusionist to fake amazement at his tricks on being ‘randomly’ picked from his audience. The story’s title becomes doubly apposite.
In futouristic.co.uk a man responds to an email offering to sell him a time machine. It doesn’t work. For him.
Shooting an Episode presents the ultimate in reality TV, though it’s more like reality streaming. For its subjects no holds are barred. The trouble comes when our narrator has to go in amongst the participants to clean up their mess.
In The Sorting Out Melvina comes home late one night to find her door lying open having been forced. With increasing fear she moves through all her rooms, wondering if the man she has recently dumped has something to do with it, but a phone call reveals he is an hour away. Yet various of her books have been misplaced, their dust covers placed upside down, their normal, random arrangement systematised. One has been glued to a curtain.
In its ‘After’word Priest describes the gathering of books (which is what most readers do) as a kind of quiet madness. Well, all obsessions are. At least it’s a harmless madness.
*Amentia is the condition of feeble-mindedness or other general mental deficiency.

[Sue Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn’t work for me. Not the same quality as the novels.

[Krystelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of sci-fi/horror, Episodes pulls none of the stops in nearly all of its stories. While I found some more contrite than others (such as the VR one), I very much enjoyed the rest, especially when the authors puts his pen to eldritch horrors. The mental image of a German warplane only just suspended before the moment of a crash Simmons up an old memory in me that I can’t place of a story read long ago. This collection shines most brilliantly considering that many of these were unpublished or had not seen the light of day in many years.

[Amilcar · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

The before and after comment on each of the stories were quite interesting, but most of the stories themselves weren't great. Not a strong collection, in my opinion.

My favourite stories were:
- The Head and the Hand
- Palely Loitering

[Peter Dixon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I love Christopher Priest, but this one didn't do it for me!

[MichaelK · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories spanning Priest's career, from the 1970s to the 2010s.

Each story has a brief introduction and afterword which gives background to how the story came about, where/when it was first published, and describes anything that happened with the story post-publication. These sections are like DVD extras that go 'Behind the Scenes' or explore the story's legacy - literary bonus content. I would love if more collections and anthologies did this.

Fans of Priest's work will find much to enjoy here.

[BiblioPhil · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories are patchy - Palely Loitering the best - but the Before and After pieces on their writing and publication make this worth reading for Priest fans.

[Matthew Lloyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty early on in this collection, in one of the many introductions and afterwords to the stories collected here, Christopher Priest notes that while every novel he has written has been "self-generating", the short stories are usually - and entirely in the case of this collection - written on some external stimulus: "an invitation, or a suggestion, or even a kind of challenge." As I read the collection, I found myself misremembering this statement as an admission that Priest was more of a novelist than a short story writer, and observation that rang true for me. While several of these stories maintained a good, generally horrific atmosphere, I rarely felt that the stories had the kind of depth I found in the two of his novels I have read, but they also seemed to require more depth than the short story format allows for me. The exceptions were probably the opening story, "The Head and the Hand", and the closer, "The Sorting Out", each of which worked rather well, I thought.

I will say, though, that the decision to have introductions and afterwords for each story was excellent. Providing context to the writing of the stories, the changing conditions of the science fiction publishing industry, trends, figures, and Priest's insights on them were all interesting to me as someone who is fascinated by the history of science fiction.

[Pedro Marroquín · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un gran autor mostrando su buen quehacer en esta serie de relatos, dónde hay de todo: relatos líricos, relatos desagradables llenos de visceras, y un paseo por cómo ha evolucionado su escritura. Y además cada relato tiene un prólogo y un epílogo en el que habla de cómo nació el relato y su publicación. Imprescindible si te gusta este escritor. A+

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Episodes is the latest release from Christopher Priest, a collection of short stories.

Surprisingly the first three were horror stories, something the author doesn't usually venture into in the novels I've read, but they were good - I, Haruspex especially (and it's truly horrific - look up Haruspex if you're not sure what it means!)

Most of the remaining stories delve into subjects I'm more familiar with from the author - a mix time travel and speculative fiction, and they are all decent reads.

Probably a favourite is Palely Loitering, where in Flux Channel Park exists a flux channel that allows time travel, and the park has a Tomorrow bridge and a Yesterday bridge that visitors can use. Young boy Mykle discovers a way of jumping 32 years in the future and meets a woman he realises later is his future love. There's a lot to like in this story; the idyllic English countryside setting, the mystery surrounding the woman, the issues with meeting a future self. I didn't realise until after that the story was a Hugo nominee and BAFTA winner.

The collection also has 'Before' and 'After' - notes from the author on how each story came about, and then thoughts on the completed story and how it was received. I always like reading author's comments in short story collections, so this was a great addition.

So overall a very good, varied collection of stories; fans of the author will like it (others should too)

[Mark Nuzzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Episodes by Christopher Priest and Swarm by Frank Schatzing were both in my suitcase while I was in Florida last week, in a hotel for three days, during hurricane Milton. I was denied the watching of the Europa Clipper launch on October 11th, which is what I flew down there for. Instead, I witnessed how a community in Titusville came together during the storm. It was a life experience, and will stay with me. Many conversations with fellow rocket launch aficionados like myself and many with those effected by the hurricane in unfortunate ways.

Back to the books. I finished the shorter one (Episodes) and am still working on the 900 page behemoth (Swarm). Both novels now have an etching of nostalgia in me, from where and when I read them.

Christopher Priest and legerdemain are synonomous. Many of the short stories made use of his sleight of hand like in Inverted World and The Prestige. Really had to pay attention...a few had me held rapt.

A few...I, Haruspex and The Head and the Hand were, were both very grim and leaning towards horror. Unexpected...but enthralling.

I give it four stars. Priest is a master storyteller.

[Donald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather a mixed bag of short stories, not by any means an anthology, as there's less than a dozen included, and he has written enough to fill two previous volumes. Aside from two or three, these are mostly modern writings, not really a career spanning book, honestly, it feels a bit like a contract deadline came up and this was a speedy way to resolve it. There is a bit of commentary about each story included before and after, which perhaps is more interesting than some of the stories themselves...

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

futouristic.co.uk
Literature is a time travel tontine lottery during lockdown and this is its most complexly rich exposé from 2009 in the most disarmingly simplistic of prose styles. No mean feat. Whatever the evidence, this is NO co-vivid dream as you will discover should you dare click on the waking reality of the link in the title!

The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of my observations at the time of the review.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good collection of short stories from Christopher Priest, some of which I have already read. One of the highlights of this book was that Priest provides extensive notes for each story.

My favorite story is probably "I, Haruspex" due to the meta nature of the story which might fly by most readers. Do an internet search for "James Owsley comics" and you will uncover some of the deeper meaning to the story (it makes the title even more great!). It's amusing that Priest makes no reference to this in the notes for "Haruspex", but he alludes to it obliquely in the notes for "The Stooge."

[Ptjerónimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uma antologia de contos sem aparente conexão entre si. Inclui:

- "The Head and the Hand" (1971);
- "A Dying Fall" (2006);
- "I, Haruspex" (1998);
- "Palely Loitering"(1979);
- "An Infinite Summer" (1974);
- "The Ament"(1985);
- "The Invisible Men" (1974);
- "The Stooge" (2010);
- "Futoristic.co.uk" (2009);
- "Shooting an Episode" (2017);
- "The Sorting Out"(2008).

De uma forma geral, todos eles são muito sombrios e nem sempre totalmente conseguidos.

[Stefan Grieve · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short story collection where there is only really one stand out story to me, the delightful and clever 'Paley Loitering' (although that has an issue if you think too deeply about it) and maybe 'The Head and the Hand' (if only for how effectively grisly it is, I had my hand over my mouth at the final moments.)

The other stories are ok, and some, as it says in the author's notes, are grim. Maybe too grim. Regarding the author's notes, I found it interesting and helpful that there is an intro and outro for each story, which is about them.

[Rob Lloyd-jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Won't be everyone's cup of tea with some disturbing stories to say the least. However, quite stimulating and it's interesting to get an insight as to how short stories are commissioned (each chapter is given a 'before' and 'after' it was wrote). A good introduction to the author's writing and would be keen to seek other books but these short stories on their own do not have enough closure. Still an enjoyable read.

[Mark Cofta · Rating 4 out of 5]

While these eleven stories didn't impress me as much as Priest's novels have, I enjoyed reading them and especially appreciated his notes before and after each story about how they came to be and their publishing histories. The stories certainly model what's most fascinating about Priest's novels: the sense of unease, of reality not being what it appears to be, formality of language obscuring a chaotic world.

[Andrew McClarnon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The classic CP cocktail, where a haunting, disquieting content is delivered in smooth, silky, almost cosy form. For the most part I am left baffled by each story, but with a vivid impression that will haunt my memory until one day I'll be back again to reconfirm my bafflement. I appreciated the short before and after essays that helped place the story in CP's life and work.

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 cracking stories and a few duds thrown in.

[Anthony Gerace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Parochial, outdated and patronisingly annotated (oh wow, time travel *~isn’t~* possible?). Absolute shit.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great selection of his short stories. A good introduction to his work.

[Kim Gray · Rating 2 out of 5]

maybe a 2.5. In general I like short stories mixed with sci/fi or horror. This collection was just ok for. More misses than hits in the general set.

[Timothy]

(4/11 read#)

11 stories:

# The Head and the Hand (1972)
# A Dying Fall (2006)
I, Haruspex (1998)
# Palely Loitering (1979)
# An Infinite Summer (1976)
The Ament (1985)
The Invisible Men (1974)
The Stooge (2010)
futouristic.co.uk (2009)
Shooting an Episode (2017)
The Sorting Out (2008)