Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories - Softcover

Bisson, Terry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312890354 ISBN 13: 9780312890353

Publisher: Orb Books, 1994

Synopsis

Bears Discover Fire is the first short story collection by the most acclaimed science fiction author of the decade, author of such brilliant novels as Talking Man and Voyage to the Red Planet. It brings together nineteen of Bisson's finest works for the first time in one volume, among them the darkly comic title story, which garnered the field's highest honors, including the Hugo, Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus awards.

About this title

About the Author:

Terry Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author, born on February 12, 1942, in Owensboro, Kentucky. His many novels include Talking Man (1986), Fire on the Mountain (1988), Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), Pirates of the Universe (1996), and The Pickup Artist (2001). His 1990 short story "Bears Discover Fire" won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and his all-dialogue story "They're Made Out of Meat" is one of the most widely-reprinted SF stories of the last several decades. He has published several volumes of short fiction, including Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories (1993), In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories (2000), and Greetings (2005).

From Kirkus Reviews:

Nineteen tales, one from 1964, the rest 1988-93: Bisson's first story collection since the illustrious Voyage to the Red Planet (1990), Talking Man, etc. Bisson's stock in trade is whimsy where, at his best, he combines a splendidly loopy inventiveness with real poignancy, a hard-edged sense of wonder and a grasp of the genuinely alien. The exemplars here: the award-winning title piece, in which bears forgo hibernation in favor of camping out along interstate highway medians, warming themselves at ineptly smoky fires; the funny but affecting long story of alien contact and an aging astronaut (``The Shadow Knows''); a rather untypical life-after-death hair-raiser (``Necronauts''); a quite hysterically bizarre short-short about ``Partial People,'' who are ``people only incompletely seen, or found in boxes, perhaps under benches. Lips and eyes stuck under theatre seats like gum''; and any number of agreeably batty commentaries featuring giant mountains, aliens, famous writers, computers, hunting, winged children, the environment, race relations, time travel, England, and what-all. About half the entries here are amusing if ephemeral; for the remainder, Bisson's distinctive style and priceless imagination lift his work to an altogether more exalted plane. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orb Books
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0312890354
• ISBN 13: 9780312890353
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256