The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories
At times literary, at other times surreal, this collection offers a diverse range of stories that deal with real-life conflicts, human values, and coming-of-age experiences, all placed within fantastical settings. An author's search for an elusive Kafka story leads to a potentially cursed book in "Bright Morning", while in the award-winning "Exo-Skeleton Town", humans dress in protective exoskins conveying the personas of bygone Hollywood movie stars in order to barter old Earth movies for an alien aphrodisiac. A young boy comes to term with "Creation" when he moulds a man out of the detritus of a nearby forest, and in the title story, a great fantasy writer loses touch with the world he has