"Morrow's stellar best-of collection ... imaginative gems in which Morrow cocks a satirical eye at serious and salient subjects. Morrow is a master of reductio ad absurdum, and his puckish sense of humor keeps stories light and buoyant that might otherwise have turned cranky and polemical. This book reveals him to be one of the wittiest writers of contemporary speculative fiction."
~Publishers Weekly (starred review)
""Jim has won Nebula, World Fantasy and Sturgeon awards. He's one of those people who fiction is always full of interesting and challenging ideas.""
~Cheryl Morgan, Cheryl's Musings
""James Morrow is a fascinating author, mixing gorgeous prose with subtle humor, passionate heart with self-aware irony. This collection is an impressive tribute to the breadth of his talent, and a great place to either discover his work for the first time, or else catch up on the work of a fascinating and unique author.""
~Benjamin Wald, SFRevu
""Morrow's stellar best-of collection imaginative gems in which Morrow cocks a satirical eye at serious and salient subjects. Morrow is a master of reductio ad absurdum, and his puckish sense of humor keeps stories light and buoyant that might otherwise have turned cranky and polemical. This book reveals him to be one of the wittiest writers of contemporary speculative fiction.""
~Publishers Weekly (starred review)
""There is, however, a great deal to stimulate and delight the imaginative reader. Morrow is a classic satirist in the manner of Swift, Voltaire, and Twain, his stories at one and the same time dark comedies, inexorable tragedy.""
~James Sallis, Fantasy & Science Fiction
"No matter where—or when—he sets his stories, Morrow's a clean stylist with an accurate grip on the diction, the character, and the metabolic rate of the narrator. Intelligent and funny, this is the best kind of mind candy."
~Kit Reed, author of The Story Until Now
"Even as Reality by Other Means points out what is wrong with society, James Morrow never lets us forget that society is made up of individuals who matter, be they a soldier on the battlefield, a hitchhiker on the Ark, or our daughter the Earth. No one has used the devices of satire and science fiction to give us literature this smart, this elegant, this compassionate. I hope that Morrow, who understands that the only way out is for us to reason together, will forgive me for saying that I admire his works beyond all reason.""
~F. Brett Cox, coeditor of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Foundation
"James Morrow, a master of the reductio ad absurdum, is a thoughtful satirist whose sharp but never gratuitous wit takes aim at serious issues in beautifully crafted prose that is always a pleasure to read.""
~Pamela Sargent, author of The Shore of Women
"Here's undeniable proof that James Morrow is our Jonathan Swift—a funnier, more fantastical Swift. Morrow can be brainy and absurd, hilarious and profound, scatological and philosophical—all on the same page. After you stop laughing, you keep thinking, and that's when you realize you're in the hands of a master. No one else sounds like him, and no one else has sharper satirical knives.""
~Daryl Gregory, author of Afterparty
"In these angrily compassionate tales, Morrow ventriloquizes Dante and Swift in writing as cutting as freshly strung barbed wire. Each posits an astonishing otherness that debunks a menacing human folly while also eliciting gasps or guffaws of outraged delight.""
~Michael Bishop, author of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire
