Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

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Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Author:	Alfred Bester
Publisher:	Vintage, 1997
Series:
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Book Type:	Collection
Genre:	Science-Fiction
Sub-Genre Tags:	Science-Fantasy Soft SF
Awards:
Lists:
Links:	GMRC Review: Virtual Unrealities
Avg Member Rating:	(16 reads / 8 ratings)
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Synopsis

"Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester's methods. His stories never stand still a moment."
--Damon Knight, author of Why Do Birds

Alfred Bester took science fiction into hyperdrive, endowing it with a wit, speed, and narrative inventiveness that have inspired two generations of writers. And nowhere is Bester funnier, speedier, or more audacious than in these seventeen short stories--two of them previously unpublished--that have now been brought together in a single volume for the first time.

Read about the sweet-natured young man whose phenomenal good luck turns out to be disastrous for the rest of humanity. Find out why tourists are flocking to a hellish little town in a post-nuclear Kansas. Meet a warlock who practices on Park Avenue and whose potions comply with the Pure Food and Drug Act. Make a deal with the Devil--but not without calling your agent. Dazzling, effervescent, sexy, and sardonic, Virtual Unrealities is a historic collection from one of science fiction's true pathbreakers.

"Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction."
--Harry Harrison

Contents:

ix - Introduction (Virtual Unrealities) - (1996) - essay by Robert Silverberg
3 - Disappearing Act - (1953) - short story
22 - Oddy and Id - (1950) - short story
38 - Star Light, Star Bright - (1953) - short story
56 - 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette
91 - Fondly Fahrenheit - (1954) - novelette
112 - Hobson's Choice - (1952) - short story
127 - Of Time and Third Avenue - (1951) - short story
136 - Time Is the Traitor - (1953) - novelette
159 - The Men Who Murdered Mohammed - (1958) - short story
173 - The Pi Man - (1959) - short story
191 - They Don't Make Life Like They Used To - (1963) - novelette
225 - Will You Wait? - (1959) - short story
233 - The Flowered Thundermug - (1964) - novelette
273 - Adam and No Eve - (1941) - short story
287 - And 3½ to Go - short story
292 - Galatea Galante - (1979) - novelette (variant of Galatea Galante, The Perfect Popsy)
334 - The Devil Without Glasses - novelette