The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories

World Fantasy Award: Best Collection winner (2003).

At times literary, at other times surreal, this collection offers an eclectic group of stories that deal with real-life conflicts, human values, and coming-of-age experiences all placed within fantastical settings. One tale recounts the author's search for a Kafka story that can only be found in an elusive and quite possibly cursed edition. Other stories feature humans dressing in full-body protective exoskins in the personas of old Hollywood movie stars to barter old Earth movies for an alien aphrodisiac and a young boy coming to terms with creation and moulding his own man out of detritus from a nearby forest. In the title story, a great fantasy writer loses touch with the world he has created and pleads with his young assistant to help him visualise the story's end and enable him to complete his greatest novel ever.

Contents:

• Creation
• Out of the Canyon
• The Fantasy Writer's Assistant
• The Far Oasis
• The Woman Who Counts Her Breath
• At Reparata
• Pansolapia
• Exo-Skeleton Town
• The Honeyed Knot
• Something by the Sea
• The Delicate
• Malthusian's Zombie
• On the Road to New Egypt
• Floating in Lindrethool
• High Tea with Jules Verne
• Bright Morning