Points of Departure

Philip K. Dick Award: Best Collection winner (1990).

Points of Departure is a collection of short stories about alternating between hope and despair. Pat Murphy's stories range from "Rachel in Love," which portrays a chimpanzee whose brain is implanted with the personality of a young girl who has died, to "His Vegetable Wife," the story of a farmer who grows a spouse from a packet of seed only to find that she is more quiet than docile. All but one of the 19 stories in this collection have been published previously in magazines and anthologies.

Contents:

Dead Men on TV (1988)
Women in the Trees (1990)
Don't Look Back (1980)
Orange Blossom Time (1981)
In the Islands (1983)
Touch of the Bear (1980)
On a Hot Summer Night in a Place Far Away (1985)
Sweetly the Waves Call to Me (1981)
His Vegetable Wife (1986)
Good-bye, Cynthia (1988)
Prescience (1989)
Clay Devils (1987)
A Falling Star Is a Rock from Outer Space (1986)
With Four Lean Hounds (1984)
On the Dark Side of the Station Where the Train Never Stops (1984)
In the Abode of the Snows (1986)
Rachel in Love (1987)
Recycling Strategies for the Inner City (1990)
Bones (1990)