Trade paper/ebook · 9781931520645 / 9781931520447 · 320 pp · July 12, 2011
Ryman writes about the other and leaves us dissected in the process. His stories are set in recognizable places—London, Cambodia, tomorrow—and feature men and women caught in recognizable situations (or technologies) and not sure which way to turn. They, we, should obviously choose what’s right. But what if that’s difficult? What will we do? What we should, or . . . ?
* “Often contemplative and subtly ironic, the 16 stories in this outstanding collection work imaginative riffs on a variety of fantasy and SF themes. “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter,” a Cambodian ghost story, and “The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai,” a samurai-style narrative, have the delicacy of Asian folktales or lyrical fantasies. By contrast, “V.A.O.,” about a future society destabilized by prohibitively expensive health care, and “The Film-makers of Mars,” which suggests that Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter stories were drawn from life, are set in futures that credibly extrapolate current scientific and cultural trends. Ryman (The King’s Last Song) frequently explores human emotional needs in heartless environments, as in ”Warmth,” which poignantly portrays a young boy’s bond with his robot surrogate mother. Readers of all stripes will appreciate these thoughtful tales. ”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Paradise Tales follows the success of Ryman’s most recent novel, The King’s Last Song, and builds on that with three Cambodian stories included here, “The Last Ten Years of the Hero Kai,” “Blocked,” and the exceedingly-popular ”Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter.” Paradise Tales includes stories selected from the many periods of Ryman’s career including “Birth Days,” “Omnisexual,” the very popular “The Film-makers of Mars,” and a new story, “K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career).”
Small Beer Press is also reprinting two of Ryman’s novels, The Child Garden and Was (November 2011), and another collection, The Unconquered Countries (June 2012), with new introductions or afterwords to continue to build the readership of one of the most fascinating writers exploring the edges of being, gender, science, and fiction.
Contents
The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai
Birth Days
VAO
The Future of Science Fiction
Omnisexual
Home
Warmth
Everywhere
No Bad Thing
Talk Is Cheap
Days of Wonder
You
K is for Kosovo (or, Massimo’s Career)
Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter
Blocked
Praise for Geoff Ryman’s most recent novel:
“[Ryman] has not so much created as revealed a world in which the promise of redemption takes seed even in horror.”
—The Boston Globe
“Inordinately readable . . . extraordinary in its detail, color and brutality.”
—The Independent (UK)
Geoff Ryman is the author of the novels The King’s Last Song, Air (a Clarke and Tiptree Award winner), 253, Lust, and The Unconquered Country (a World Fantasy Award winner). Canadian by birth, he has lived in Brasil, resides in the UK and is a frequent visitor to Cambodia.