Books with title Shuteye for the Timebroker: Stories

“Di Filippo is a joyful writer…insightful…skilled.” —Washington Post Book WorldYou can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a short, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast-moving, heart-warming, brain-bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you’ll no longer see everyday life quite the same.If you’re allergic to surprises, Paul Di Filippo is not the writer for you. With a total of fifteen stories including two original to this volume, Di Filippo delivers conventional stories unconventionally and unconventional ones straightforwardly. With a magic imagination he transforms traditional science fiction formulas into strange coruscating gems. Many of the tales in Shuteye for the Timebroker mix scientific rigor with wild and hilariously weird fantasy, producing delightful alloys of the surreal and the mundane.

Shuteye for the Timebroker gathers a wide, wild assortment of stories that collectively represent critically acclaimed author Paul Di Filippo's extensive concerns, themes and styles. Pure science fiction in the "Galaxy" mode can be found in the title piece, while modern-day publishing practices get a raking-over in the satirical "The Secret Sutras of Sally Strumpet" (included in The Year's Best Science Fiction Twenty-Second Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois).Humorous fantasies such as "Captain Jill" and "Billy Budd" segue into a Dunsanyian tale such as "Walking the Great Road." There's a touch of horror to be found in "Underground," "Eel Pie Stall," and "We're All In This Alone" (the latter co-written with award-winner Michael Bishop). A politically-charged story of a fantastic assassin occurs in "Shadowboxer." Finally, the nearly three dozen vignettes under the title "The Farthest Schorr" form a mini-collection in themselves, as they take flight from the surreal paintings of Todd Schorr.