Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Alfred Bester, Byron Preiss, Keith R. A. DeCandido

Vintage Books, 1997 - Fiction - 366 pages

"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And nowhere is Bester funnier, speedier, or more audacious than in these seventeen short stories—two of them previously unpublished—that have now been brought together in a single volume for the first time.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

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Cheryl_in_CC_NV - LibraryThing

Not a definitive collection, but much overlap w/ Starburst, which I just read. ? Kind of overwhelming to read that much Bester in such a short span of time. ? He really is much more modern than most ...

VIRTUAL UNREALITIES: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

User Review  - Kirkus

A major retrospective, comprising 15 tales from 194179 (mostly from the '50s and '60s), together with two previously unpublished pieces, though readers should note that the word ``selected'' has been ...

Contents

• Oddy and Id: 22
• Star Light Star Bright: 38
• Fondly Fahrenheit: 91

About the author

ALFRED BESTER was born in 1913. His fiction career included writing for the pulp magazines, comics, radio, and television. His extraordinary book, The Demolished Man, was the first winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel and was followed by the brilliant novels The Stars My Destination, The Computer Connection, Golem100, and The Deceivers, and numerous short stories. Bester was honored by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America with a Grandmaster Award. He died in 1987.

Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels -- including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes -- and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are Legends and Far Horizons, which contain original short stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy and SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg's Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.

Keith R.A. DeCandido was born and raised in New York City to a family of librarians. He has written over two dozen novels, as well as short stories, nonfiction, eBooks, and comic books, most of them in various media universes, among them "Star Trek, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Marvel Comics, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Serenity, Resident Evil, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, Farscape, Xena, " and "Doctor Who". His original novel "Dragon Precinct" was published in 2004, and he's also edited several anthologies, among them the award-nominated "Imaginings" and two "Star Trek" anthologies. Keith is also a musician, having played percussion for the bands the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players, the Boogie Knights, and the Randy Bandits, as well as several solo acts. In what he laughingly calls his spare time, Keith follows the New York Yankees and practices "kenshikai" karate. He still lives in New York City with his girlfriend and two insane cats.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester; A Byron Preiss book; Vintage Series
• Authors: Alfred Bester, Byron Preiss, Keith R. A. DeCandido
• Contributor: Robert Silverberg
• Publisher: Vintage Books, 1997
• Original from: the University of California
• Digitized: Jun 9, 2008
• ISBN: 0679767835, 9780679767831
• Length: 366 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction; Fiction / Short Stories (single author)