-- Nominated for the Philip K.
Dick Award
-- A Locus Best Book of 2001
--
Bram Stoker Preliminary Ballot 2001
Book
Magazine
"Eccentric short stories, which frequently give everyday
life a loopy twist"
Review
of Contemporary Fiction
"Ray Vukcevich is a master of the last line. Almost every one
of his stories has a zinger at the end, but not the kind of zinger
that chocks the reader or causes annoyance. Often it's a perfect line
of dialogue that opens up the whole story.... Vukcevich is ingenious
with the short-story form. Although the stories read as playful vignettes,
Vukcevich covertly works in ideas of self, identity, destiny, and
obsession. And occasionally, the dangers of outer space."
Hartford Courant
". . . the 33 brief stories in Meet Me in the Moon Room
defy categorization genre. A few toy with the conventions of science
fiction; others branch off from trails blazed by Donald Barthelme.
Moon Room will delight those who appreciated the risks Don
DeLillo took in Ratner's Star."
Locus
"Vukcevich is a
master of radical recombinations, drawing from (amongst others) the
Brothers Grimm, Dickens, Lewis Carroll, Kafka, O. Henry, Dali, Asimov,
pulpish space opera, and the latest in nanotech to produce works that
are all his own. Sometimes in as little as four or five pages, he
deftly juggles so many ideas, emotions, and perspectives, it produces
a curiously refreshing sense of vertigo -- a high with no hangover
to follow.... It would be...a great mistake to ignore the extraordinary
talent of Ray Vukcevich."
New York Review of Science
Fiction
"...Ray Vukcevich
is a very slick writer, an authentic sprinter in an era of milers
and all-out stayers.... Vukcevich can do punchlines, but he does not
rely on them. Indeed, his extraordinarily light touch when it comes
to narrative closure is his most distinctive feature. Anyone who considers
bizarre surrealism and casual absurdity -- the main stocks-in-trade
of the fantastic ultrashort story writer -- easy clay to mold into
narrative form has not given serious consideration to the matter of
finishing."
Asimov's
"These
stories niftily propel
their characters down the blurred line between fantasy and psychosis,
with effects spanning the gamut from melancholy to goofy, from plaintive
to outraged.... This is Vukcevich's gloriously mad world, and we are
lucky to share it."
Publishers
Weekly
The same antic spirit
that imbued Vukcevich's mystery novel The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen
Faces moves playfully through this first collection of fantastic
fiction, whose 33 helium-filled stories achieve just the right absurdist
life to escape the gravity of their themes. "By the Time We Get
to Uranus" offers a peculiarly affecting take on terminal illness:
the afflicted grow buoyant spacesuits that force them to leave loved
ones behind. The mysteries of parenthood manifest amusingly in "Poop,"
about a couple who discover that their newborn's diaper fills variously
with birds, mice, and symphonic music. Though deceptively simple in
their pared-down style, the vignettes show meticulous care in the
crafting of oddball metaphors to express the moods of their estranged
spouses, exasperated lovers, competitive children, and disgruntled
employees. The willingness with which the author's characters accept
the incongruity of their situations often yields profoundly moving
insights into the human condition. In the poignant title tale, for
example, a man does not find it at all strange that a lover from decades
past has summoned him to a simulated moon landscape at a theme park,
reflecting that the meaning of life really is "nothing more than a
couple of people huddling close for comfort in a cold universe." Inventive
and entertaining, these stories yield more emotional truth than much
more comparatively realistic fiction.
Forecast: With blurbs from Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm and Jeffrey
Ford, this collection is a quality item that should benefit from good
word of mouth.
Booklist
A man pulls the sweater
his girlfriend made him over his head and nearly gets lost inside
it. Rescued from the arctic ice, the dying Victor (Frankenstein) tells
a story that leaves little doubt that the monster is James Joyce or
Stephen Dedalus or Finn (again). Tim saves the world from a comet
by having his family put paper bags over their heads. What? What?!
What?!! Calm down. This is just the world according to Ray Vukcevich,
sf-ish enough to get him into The Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction and Asimov's, but also resembling the fantastic
milieus of Gogol, Kafka, and Looney Toons. Whether you cotton to it
depends on how you feel about cartoons made of words and prisons made
of logic: are you afraid of amused? Actually, either reaction works
for appreciating Vukcevich's outlandish virtuosity. Sf fans with long
memories will note Vukcevich's deadpan delivery and jokey-creepy aura,
recall the wonder-workings of Fredric Brown (see From These Ashes
[BKL Ap 15 01] and smile.
Also: