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.Twenty-two works in all, gifts from the talent that Robert Jordan calls "the best writer in America, bar none."
Heat of Fusion and Other Stories contains a mostly even mix of poetry and prose which should dispel any notion that John M. Ford is a "mere" fantasy/SF writer. There's a verse story in which D'Artagnan and company meet another famous swordsman, a stage play about memory, a solid rendition of the visions-of-death story, and many others. Whether reworking myths or writing of a future, Ford often leaves details understated, so stories reward multiple readings. Although some of the poems didn't do much for me, likely due to my lack of affinity for the form, they all seem well constructed. This book backs up the publisher's promise of versatility and then some.
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