Nasty, Brutish and Short Stories - Softcover

Schulman, J Neil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584451262 ISBN 13: 9781584451266

Publisher: Pulpless.com, 1999

Synopsis

The Prometheus Award-winning author of "Alongside Night" and "The Rainbow Cadenza" offers a collection of his short fiction, including two never-before-seen stories.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Foreword

"There Ain't No Mainstream"

by Brad Linaweaver

J. Neil Schulman, Victor Koman and I have know each other for many years. This collection of short stories is what one would expect of Neil, since he has the same problem that Victor Koman and I have.

J. Neil Schulman is a writer.

What this means is that he can write anything. That's what it means to be a writer.

By way of explanation, I will relate a personal experience because I know that any writer will understand. I'm a member of both the Science Fiction Writers of America and the Horror Writers Association. I've been on panels with horror writers who dismiss my opinion because I write science fiction stories and, no surprise, I've had science fiction writers do the same thing with me because I write horror stories.

As he points out in his introduction, this is not a very long collection. But the variety is worthy of an encyclopedia. No surprise when you're dealing with a writer.

Schulman does not make the mistake of some writers who are identified with a particular genre. He doesn't deny that he's written science fiction. Nor does he deny the other genres on display in Nasty, Brutish and Short Stories. If he ever produces a Gothic Romance, he won't deny that's what he's done. Let him produce a novel set in the old west with lots of horses and gun play, and he won't feel the need to fabricate an outre label.

But he understands right down to the marrow of his bones why someone who has written science fiction might want to deny it. That's because genre writers are treated abysmally by the publishing industry even in the best of times.

These are not the best of times.

It is perhaps worth noting that science fiction writers are treated the worst of all genre writers. That's because a writer who wants to say something about the future of mankind in these dangerous times will naturally want to talk about the big picture. Such a writer is not thinking that the bigger his thoughts, the smaller will be his pay!

There are real people in these stories. That limits Schulman's effectiveness in genre writing.

There are real ideas here. That rules out any hope of his being taken seriously by the literati who like real people in fiction only when those "real people" are bereft of ideas. Try finding anyone that empty in real life and you'll see the problem with most fiction that Gore Vidal accurately describes as "written to be taught."

The mind that produced this collection of stories is uncomfortable with the artificial barriers thrown up between commercial fiction and literature. No wonder he's so fond of The Catcher in the Rye.

Can you imagine how tolerant he is of the barriers thrown up between different areas of genre fiction, as in my example of SFWA vs. HWA?

I am proud to have played a role in two of these stories coming out through conventional New York publishers. Neil relates in his introduction how I bought his story "Day of Atonement" for the anthology I co-edited with Ed Kramer for Tor Books, Free Space.

The other case was my keeping after him to dig "The Repossessed" out of the trunk and give it another chance to see the light of print. I'd placed a story of mine with Carol Serling's Adventures in the Twilight Zone and it occurred to me that here was Neil Schulman, author of one of the best episodes of the new Twilight Zone television series, and shouldn't he at least submit a story to her book? I made certain that the TV credit was not forgotten when the story went in. Co-editor Richard Gilliam was impressed, another enthusiast for "Profile in Silver."

Carol Serling led off the collection with "The Repossessed." For me, this kind of makes up for the series not producing the other Schulman script, "Colorblind." (That script and the whole story of that true adventure in the Twilight Zone is told in Profile in Silver and Other Screenwritings, the book, also from Pulpless.Com.)

The only other story where I remember doing some cheerleading is "When Freemen Shall Stand"; but I played no part in its final publication in a nationally distributed magazine, Liberty.

As Neil says, I'm always trying to get him to write short stories.

Read this book and you'll see why. There is no bad story in here. A lot of these tales would have found a home in slick magazines for short fiction back when there was a mainstream.

But there aint no mainstream today.

And the genres are dying.

That's why the world needs more books like this one and a company known as Pulpless.Com!

From the Author:

From the Introduction by J. Neil Schulman:

"[In a state of nature] No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." —Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan [1651]

Okay, you got me.

This collection of short stories probably doesn’t have a lot to do with Hobbes’ musings, over three centuries ago, about the necessity for government so that we don’t all live in a state of nature, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." It’s just a writer’s trick.

You see, this is a book of short stories. Short. Get it? I had to come up with a title. So, after playing around with titles having to do with strawberry short cake, short cuts, and short-sheeted beds, I remembered the quote from Hobbes.

On the other hand, some of these stories do have an anti-statist bent to them, and I do have a few acts of nastiness, brutality, and foreshortened lives within, so maybe I just can get away with this title after all, without being accused of cheating.

Putting together a collection of stories that go back to when I started writing is not without its embarrassments. It has a lot in common with going through an album of family photos.

But this collection contains some of what I consider my best work in any form.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pulpless.com
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1584451262
• ISBN 13: 9781584451266
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 164