Return to Mark/Space
ISBN 0-910489-26-2 (US hbk),,, 0-586-20837-2 (UK pbk)
short stories, science fiction, cyberpunk, slipstream, postmodern, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling
Chosen by the Locus Reader's poll as one of the best short story collections of 1989.
Introduction by William Gibson;
"What Cindy Saw",
"Under the Generator",
"Sleepwalkers",
"Tahiti in Terms of Squares",
"Silent Crickets",
"I Live in Elizabeth",
"The Almost Empty Rooms",
"The Gunshot",
"Equilibrium"
(later re-issued in the collection New Noir , 1993),
"Uneasy Chrysalids, Our Memories",
"Quill Tripstickler Eludes a Bride",
"Recurrent Dreams of Nuclear War Lead B.T.Quizenbaum into Moral Dissolution"
(later re-issued in the collection New Noir , 1993),
"What It's Like to Kill a Man",
"Triggering",
"Six Kinds of Darkness"
(also contained in Semiotext(e) SF14 , 1989),
"The Unfolding"
(with Bruce Sterling),
"The Peculiar Happiness of Professor Cort",
"Ticket to Heaven",
"Wolves of the Plateau"
(excerpt from: A Song Called Youth... also contained in Storming The Reality Studio , 1991).
"John Shirley's genius as a writer seems to me to be one of intensity, of weirdness so finely honed that it becomes a scalpel capable of deft and delicate operations that leave no scar but also leave nothing unchanged within the body of the victim/patient/reader. It is impossible to come away from certain stories in Heatseeker untouched, unchanged. And in virtually every story, there is at least one moment in which everything comes together -- language, mood, character -- and there, right before your eyes, in black and white, magic blazes up like a gift of fire". --Paul Witcover (in Science Fiction Eye , Volume 1, Number 5, July 1989).
"A deadly powerful collection of dark parables by a man who was writing the stylized naturalism of the future before it became fashionable. John Shirley's prophet-in-the-cyberwilderness voice deserves high billing among the best..." --Roger Zelazny.
"Shirley is a literary juggernaut, full of twisted humour and relentless energy. Heatseeker is essential. Don't miss it". --Lewis Shiner.
"His most significant and influential work". --Bruce Sterling.
"Hardcore cyberpunk plus something else. This is a great collection". --Henry W.Targowski (in Mark/Space , 1995).
Highly recommended.
Photo of John Shirley
(John Shirley in a punk-rock stance... courtesy of Eyeball Books)
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