419 Memoirs & Other Strange Stories

An outcast child and a mountain shaman hold the keys to humanity's survival. A gunfighter steps out of myth and into the twisted realities of the modern personal development movement. One weary universe collapses–and a new one rises. Voices from an all-too real future reach out to one another, desperate to connect. Hamlet celebrates his 40th birthday with an old friend and a to-do list. A television producer descends into madness. The god of sound taunts the god of sight.

Set in impossible pasts, bizarre futures, and skewed-but-recognizable versions of the present, these sixteen stories, and more, from the inimitable Michael Canfield will take you on iconoclastic voyages of the imagination you won't soon forget.

Includes The Food Processor, Library Rules, They Get Away from You, Once Upon a Time ... At the Learning Annex, A Flavor of Quark, Whatever Happened to NinjaBaby?, The Whited Child, A Flavor of Quark and nine others. Plus a complete short novel: The Plastic Fruit Museum, excerpts from two forthcoming novels: Red Jacket, and Growing Up Zombie, and many other extras.


Michael Canfield writes about monsters, superheroes, couples, bank robbers, babies, astronauts, paranoids, hobbyists, and other people. He has published fantasy, science fiction, horror and just-plain-odd stories in StrangeHorizons.com, futurismic.com, EscapePod.com, M–Brane SF, in dead-tree magazines including Black Gate, Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, and other places. His story "Super-Villains" was republished in the prestigious Fantasy: The Year's Best series, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books). Several other stories received honorable mention in Ellen Datlow's Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series. Born in Las Vegas, he now lives, works, plays, writes, and watches television in Seattle.