Crackpot Palace
Jeffrey Ford
Morrow, Aug 14 2012, $14.99
ISBN: 9780062122599

These are twenty exciting speculative short stories with eighteen included in other publications since 2008; one from the 1990s (“Every Richie There Is”) and one entry never published before (“The Wish Head”). In “The Dream of Reason” the scientist is losing his mind as he obsesses over proving his theory that the distant stars are diamond lights. The flock who attend this church are of a different breed in “Relic”. Those who know of “86 Deathdick Road” know they know nothing of dreams or nightmares and what they symbolize as hallucinatory illusions. Desperate and broke they decide to poach the translucent “Glass Eels” that sell for a $1000 a pound. “Down Atsion Road” in New Jersey the urban legend Crackpop allegedly lives in the Pine Barrens while protected from the Garden State demons by a moat and something else; just ask Ginny Sanger who nobody claims they ever heard of. Ranging from fantasy (“The Coral Heart”) to science fiction (“Daltharee”) and horror (“After Moreau”) readers will appreciate this super anthology; summed up nicely by Hippopotamus Man when he tells us the truth as to what came down on Moreau’s island to those like Dog Girl from the Bronx.

Harriet Klausner