Heat of Fusion and Other Stories

by John M. Ford

Overview

Twenty-two works of fantasy, science fiction, and poetry, gifts from the talent that Robert Jordan calls "the best writer in America, bar none."

John M. Ford is an astonishingly versatile writer. He has written award-winning fantasy novels (The Dragon Waiting, winner of the 1984 World Fantasy Award), award-winning fantasy role-playing games (The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues), New York Times bestselling Star Trek novels (the classic The Final Reflection and How Much for Just the Planet), and the only poem to ever win the World Fantasy Award for best short fiction ("Winter Solstice, Camelot Station"). He is as at home writing sonnets as he is writing short stories or novels.

Heat of Fusion and Other Stories collects stories and poems written over the course of two decades. It includes award winners and award nominees, as well as some rarities, amusements, and astonishments.

Here are short stories such as "Chromatic Aberration," "Preflash," "Erase/Record/Play," and the title story, "Heat of Fusion," that take us from the near past to the near future, and on into worlds of wonder. And there are poems—-the award-winner "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station," plus the amazing "Cosmology: A User's Manual," the rare "The Man in the Golden Mask," and the moving "110 Stories," which has never been published in book form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312869397
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/01/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

John M. Ford is the author of eight novels and dozens of short stories. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he is currently at work on a novel, Aspects, a fantasy with steam engines.

Table of Contents

	The Persecutor's Tale	9
	20 Questers	23
	The Hemstitch Notebooks	35
	Third Thoughts	43
	Chromatic Aberration	49
	Cosmology: A User's Manual	85
	The Man in the Golden Mask	89
	Preflash	103
	Letter from Elsinore	125
	In the Days of the Comet	131
	Windows on an Empty Throne	135
	Erase/Record/Play: A Drama for Print	143
	Winter Solstice, Camelot Station	193
	Heat of Fusion	201
	The Lost Dialogue: A Reconstruction from Irrecoverable Sources	219
	Janus: Sonnet	231
	Shared World	233
	Shelter from the Storm	239
	SF Cliches: A Sonnet Cycle	297
	Dateline: Colonus	305
	Dark Sea	321
	Tales from the Original Gothic	341
	110 Stories	361

Editorial Reviews

"These twenty-three stories and poems reaffirm Ford's position as one of SF's most versatile craftsmen…An excellent collection." —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

These 23 stories and poems reaffirm Ford's position as one of SF's most versatile craftsmen. They range in tone from the playful "The Hemstitch Notebooks," with its musings on the perils of men shopping, to the stunningly serious "Chromatic Aberration," in which Ford invents new colors of the future while pondering the end of the ancient world. He also ponders death with Gene Wolfe elegance ("The Persecutor's Tale") and a dark wit worthy of Philip K. Dick ("Heat of Fusion" and "Preflash"). He deals admirably with a harrowing haunted house in "Tales from the Original Gothic," and brings life to the weary werewolf theme in "Shelter from the Storm." The misses are few: the too tongue-in-cheek "Erase/Record/Play: A Drama for Print" and the self-indulgent poems "The Lost Dialogue: A Reconstruction from Irrecoverable Sources" and "The Man in the Golden Mask." The best poems include the breathless science exercise "Cosmology: A User's Manual"; "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station," the only poem to win a World Fantasy Award for best short fiction; and the delightful "SF Clich s: A Sonnet Cycle," which reminds those in pursuit of immortality that "You do not want to live, who do not live." A 9/11-themed poem, "110 Stories," provides a fine closure to an excellent collection. (Mar. 25) Forecast: Aficionados who've been waiting for Ford's best short fiction to be collected under one cover will snap this one up, though hard SF and traditional fantasy fans will likely find his sensibility too edgy, too aloof, for their tastes. Ford is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning alternative history The Dragon Waiting (1983), as well as bestselling Star Trek novels. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly