BRAIN WRECKS: Stories
“Wonderfully detailed worlds propel these enthralling stories.” – Kirkus Reviews
Here’s a selection of 25 stories of mine, in five sets and in many tastes.
You’ll find stories long and short and very short, stories that make sense and nonsense, stories that feel as if you know places you’ve never been, never seen. Future civilizations. Mad wonders. Comical capers. Grotesque horrors. Familiar places subdued by magic.
The first set, called Beauty, Charm, and Strange, holds four independent stories. Here Our Steps Faltered is a cyberspace tale, Troupe is comical, The Cobalt Cyber Seas is weird, and Guignol is pure horror.
The second set, City Inside Out, is a set of five tales from the world of Descending Road: Spice On Hot Steel (punk), Lejina’s Song (androids), Pyro (drugs), From The Wall (horror), and Sulimar’s Road (comic grossness).
In Gorgons, the third set, come two tales of three species, Trizark (interspecies wedding) and Torghast (alien druglordship).
The fourth set called Roads, tells three stories of a mysterious upstate New York: Night Bells (post-upheaval)), Winterstate (magical redemption), and Deadwinter Moon (wolves).
In the last set are Very Short Stories, a collection of one, two, and three-page quickies of the imagination, of all kinds.
Sample scenes show you a lot. Here are links to some samples you can read. You can download the samples too, in PDF form.
Short-short Story Sample. Download.
Another short-short. No download on this one.
Hesitating? Here’s the Kirkus review.
Want to just go get wrecked? Start here.
The author tells you in his own voice why he wrote this book. Here is the text.
A published author reviewing the longer stories wrote:
“I've enjoyed and admired Dana Paxson's short fiction for years. When Paxson squints, tilts his head, and assesses the universe, he sees things we don't see ... or, at the very least, sees things in ways the rest of us can't. You'll enjoy the weirdness, the wonder, and the freshness of his vision in this collection.”
-- Marcos Donnelly, author of Prophets for the End of Time (Baen Books) and Letters From the Flesh (Edmonton Press)
