The passengers riding the train remember nothing of their lives from before they were put aboard. They have no idea where the train is going. In fact, they argue whether the landscape they see through the windows is real or just their imagination. They discuss the nature of the Engineer who drives this train, believing him omniscient and almighty. And they wonder what will happen to them when some day, unexpectedly, a Conductor tells them, "Your ticket has expired," and throws them off the train, out into whatever exists outside, or perhaps into nonexistence. And then one day a woman is put...

Une patineuse aveugle et veuve. Un compere. Un arbre qui aime Shakespeare. Un train de fret. Neige sur des yeux imperturbables. Virevoltant. Tachyons. Cerfs-volants. Un etranger qui n'est pas. * * * La culpabilite conduit une patineuse veuve retraitee depuis la mort de son mari au village ou elle a ete elevee, sans l'esprit pour vivre encore. Mais l'oubli ne la prend pas; elle commence a entendre dire des histoires chuchotees de murs et de planchers - bois de fongus pris d'une espece d'arbre longtemps rendu eteint par l'humanite. Un compere echappe de prison d'une facon ou d'une autre par une...

Una patinadora ciega y enviudada. Un vendedor ambulante. Un Arbol quien ama a Shakespeare. Un tren de mercancias. Nieve que se cae en ojos inparpadeos. Estepicursores. Taquiones. Cometas. Un forastero quien no es. * * * La culpa conduce a un patinador ciega y jubilada sobre la muerte de su marido para volver al pueblo donde ella fue levantada, esperando morir. Pero el olvido no la tomara; ella comienza a oir historias susurrada a ella de las paredes y los pisos de madera de hongo - una especie de arboles hace mucho dieron extinto por la humanidad. Un vendedor ambulante, sobre el corredor de...

Behold the ordinary world from the wrong side and nightmares and visions appear. These are strange, unquiet short fictions from the author of RATS LIVE ON NO EVIL STAR and THE CIRCLE OF LIFE. A stripper loves a swinging lightbulb. An explorer encounters the Face of God. The accidental inventor of streaking. Children dig a hole to China. After his death a father's storytelling talent is discovered. A couple find the way to have a perfect relationship. A soldier at the front writes an absolutely perfect poem. A Sultan who despairs of finding the woman he desires in his well-stocked harem. A...

A little country surrounded by the Wall everyone knows is insurmountable. But the boy who refuses to be king vows to pass over it. Young as he is, Adam understands that being king would shackle him more tightly than being the lowest slave. He watches birds and clouds pass by overhead as if this land surrounded by an impassable Wall is less than nothing. What is out there -- the destroying chaos they warn him about, or mysteries beyond his imagination? He runs away from kingship, and, though political potentates seek him out, he seeks the imposing shadowy presence of that final brambled cliff...

Gimel. Ur. Suoche. An unnameable desert. Shambhala. Xanadu. A boy enters manhood while exploring the world - and finally finds home among a frightening, humble people. Given the wild gift of scrying, Adam is subjugated to a mad emperor and slavers, meets the Prince of the Upper Air, runs from the Assassin's Guild, gets lost in an impassable desert, is overwhelmed by the maddening magic of the East, and finally finds his place among a people literally in the middle of nowhere. Yet even there the rising tide of, ahem, civilization - of war and commercialism and rampant greed - threatens to...

The War to End All Wars, except it is draining humanity. And the city has spiritually died. A sculptor comes home from war and dares to create a living sculpture that might yet restore hope to humanity. The city has no hope, no dreams, no vision. But Albion is inspired by the glimpsing visions he receives of the actress Argent de Resznay. But then she disappears and in her memory he begins to sculpt her back into reality. The government, meanwhile, prepares a device that will shut down the unconscious mind - and with it not only all resistance to authority, but any vestige of the creative...