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Loading... Fireflood and Other Stories (original 1979; edition 1981)288 | 5 | 91,531 |
(3.61) | 4 | A collection of eleven stories from the New York Times-bestselling author, including Nebula Award winner "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand." This brilliant collection of short fiction showcases renowned author Vonda N. McIntyre's sparkling lyricism, captivating vision, and advocacy of the different. The titular story is one of alienation and discrimination, as a woman transformed into an "ugly" lifeform--a clumsy "digger"--seeks to escape her servitude to humans, but is denied sanctuary by the beautiful and graceful "flyers." Also included is the acclaimed story "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand," which became the first section of McIntyre's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, Dreamsnake. In it, a woman who harnesses the power of snakes' venom to heal saves the life of a nomad boy in the desert--but the price she pays may be too much to bear. In "Aztecs," later expanded into the novel Superluminal, a woman undergoes biological modifications in order to pilot ships during faster-than-light travel. "A quality selection . . . Zoning in on McIntyre's penchant for intense, dark stories with human pain and transcendence at their core . . . Fireflood, as with all of McIntyre's fiction, is written in a brooding, pulsing prose that drops the reader into a setting with little to orient themselves save the words on the page." --Speculiction "Eleven stories by one of the most widely admired of the younger science-fiction writers . . . From awkward to wonderful--an interesting record of an up-and-coming talent's present whereabouts." --Kirkus Reviews… (more) |
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To Francis Collins | |
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(Fireflood) Dark moved slowly along the bottom of a wide, swift river, pushing against its current. | |
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Stories Previously published -
Of Mist, and Grass and Sand - Analog
Spectra - Damon Knight's Orbit 11, An Anthology of New Science Fiction Stories
Wings - The Alien Condition The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn - Fantasy & Science Fiction
The End's Beginning - Analog
Screwtop - The Crystal Ship Only at Night - Clarion
Recourse, Inc - Alternities
The Genius Freaks - Damon Knight's Orbit 12
Aztecs - The American Tricentinnial
Fireflood - Fantasy & Science Fiction | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources. Wikipedia in English (1)▾Book descriptions A collection of eleven stories from the New York Times-bestselling author, including Nebula Award winner "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand." This brilliant collection of short fiction showcases renowned author Vonda N. McIntyre's sparkling lyricism, captivating vision, and advocacy of the different. The titular story is one of alienation and discrimination, as a woman transformed into an "ugly" lifeform--a clumsy "digger"--seeks to escape her servitude to humans, but is denied sanctuary by the beautiful and graceful "flyers." Also included is the acclaimed story "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand," which became the first section of McIntyre's Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel, Dreamsnake. In it, a woman who harnesses the power of snakes' venom to heal saves the life of a nomad boy in the desert--but the price she pays may be too much to bear. In "Aztecs," later expanded into the novel Superluminal, a woman undergoes biological modifications in order to pilot ships during faster-than-light travel. "A quality selection . . . Zoning in on McIntyre's penchant for intense, dark stories with human pain and transcendence at their core . . . Fireflood, as with all of McIntyre's fiction, is written in a brooding, pulsing prose that drops the reader into a setting with little to orient themselves save the words on the page." --Speculiction "Eleven stories by one of the most widely admired of the younger science-fiction writers . . . From awkward to wonderful--an interesting record of an up-and-coming talent's present whereabouts." --Kirkus Reviews ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
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The best, apart from 'Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand', the Dreamsnake story, is the final story 'Aztecs' about the sacrifice which people who want to become pilots of interstellar craft - the ones who are able to stay awake during transit when even the ordinary crew have to go into stasis or die - sometimes have to make.
I found the tone of the collection on the whole rather downbeat. On the whole a balancing out into a 3-star read. ( )