EXPERIMENTS AT 3 BILLION A.M. by Alexander Zelenyj (2009 Ebionvale Press / 658 pp. / hc)
2 questions immediately popped into my mind when I lifted this hefty volume out of its box: Who in the world is Alexander Zelenyj? -and- A 658-page hardcover short story collection? Not that lengthy shorts collections are non-existent (i.e. Tom Piccirilli's DEEP INTO THAT DARKNESS PEERING), but one from a relatively unknown author is a kind-of ballsy move on the part of the publisher.
So I started with David Rix's brief Foreword (I had no idea who he was, either) before diving into the first story, 'The Potato Thief Beneath Indifferent Stars.' I was pleasantly surprised at both the writing and the unusually tender nature of what the editor chose for the lead off entry: this thing could go anywhere from here . . . and it does.
There's 40 stories, 20 published for the first time. Most deal with isolation and are hard to classify; Zelenyj jumps from sci-fi to horror to fantasy to bizarro, many times within the same story.
Highlights include 'Black Flies Inside,' a warped muse on obsession; 'Teenage Pirates and the Ghosting of Texas,' a wickedly fun pulp-style horror yarn; 'Let the Firefly Men Remind You,' a wonderfully eerie tale that puts a nice spin on the alien encounter thing, and 'In the City Where Dreams Wander the Sidewalks' where the author displays his skill of suggestion, here crafting a surreal tale of people's lives transformed by a mysterious man.
The final story (featured here in white font on black paper) is one of the best. 'Poppy, the Girl of My Dreams, and the Alien Invasion I can Detect Like Radar Through My Braces' is a quick yet fantastic apocalyptic, scifi love story with a genuinely heartbreaking finale.
EXPERIMENTS AT 3 BILLION A.M. surprised me from beginning to end. While it took me a while to get through its massive length (and the few head-scratchers), the majority of this fine collection is quite impressive, especially coming from an author I knew nothing about. Recommended.
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2 comments:
Based on your rec, I'm going to snap this one up. He's burst onto the short story scene in the Barker style (nobody had heard of him before BOOKS OF BLOOD series, either).
I recently finished reading this one, and enjoyed it a great deal. It weaves pretty much every genre one can think of together into a strange and concise whole: horror to science fiction to magic realism to slipstream to bizarro to pulp fiction and all points between. At 664 pages and 40 short stories I highly recommend this tome!
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