PODCASTS -- STORIES, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS
STORIES
“The Boatman’s Holiday” -- Star Ship Sofa
http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2010/05/26/aural-delights-no-137-jeffrey-ford/
“The Night Whiskey” -- Star Ship Sofa
http://www.starshipsofa.com/blog/2013/05/29/starshipsofa-no-291-jeffrey-ford/
“Creation” -- Star Ship Sofa
http://player.fm/series/starshipsofa/starshipsofa-no-188-jeffrey-ford
“The Annals of Eelin-Ok” -- Podcastle
http://podcastle.org/2009/03/25/podcastle-45-the-annals-of-eelin-ok/
“Daltharee” -- Lightspeed Magazine
http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/podcasts/podcast_daltharee_jeffrey_ford.mp3
“The Drowned Life” -- The Agony Column
http://trashotron.com/agony/news/2008/03-24-08.htm#podcast032708
“The Dreaming Wind” -- Podcastle
http://podcastle.org/2009/05/26/podcastle-episode-54-the-dreaming-wind/
"La Madre Del Oro" -- Podcastle
http://podcastle.org/2014/05/14/podcastle-311-la-madre-del-oro/
INTERVIEWS/PODCASTS
Readercon 31 Guest of Honor Panel on Works of Jeffrey Ford
Readercon 31 - The Works of Jeffrey Ford - YouTube
New York City Ghost Story Festival, 2022. With Dan Braum as host, Kathe Koja and Ian Rogers. New York Ghost Story Festival 22/23 Night 1 - YouTube
Discussion of The Physiognomy on the podcast, DEATH//SENTENCE. 11/12/02
Jeffrey Ford - The Physiognomy by DEATH // SENTENCE (soundcloud.com)
Interviewed by Henrik Moller for Udda Ting
134-Jeffrey Ford, writer of horror & weird fiction by Henrik Möller (soundcloud.com)
Panel and Readings, Summer Night Time Logic. Host, Dan Braum. With Gwendolyn Kiste, Laurel Hightower, and Mike Allen. Summer 2021
Summer 2021 Readings #2 - YouTube
Panel on Speculative Horror for Clarion with Victor Lavalle, Sam J. Miller, and Shelley Streeby
https://youtu.be/aED04ImzBX0
Reading and Interview for KGB Fantastic Fiction with Kaaron Warren, Ellen Datlow, and Matt Kressel. Story read -- "Big Dark Hole."
Fantastic Fiction at KGB with Jeffrey Ford & Kaaron Warren - YouTube
New York City Ghost Story Festival Day 4, interview and reading, with Daniel Braum and Brian Evenson
NY Ghost Story Festival 2020: Night Four - YouTube
Conversation with Dax Despres for Second Life Book Club
show 286: the magnificent jeffrey ford is here – the drax files radio hour
Conversation with Daniel Braum for Night Time Logic
https://inkheist.com/podcasts/
Ahab's Return Interview with Hank Garner at Author Stories Podcast
hankgarner.com/episode-449-jeffrey-ford-interview/
Conversation with Andy Duncan and Karen Burnham – Locus Online
http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2011/10/andy-duncan-and-jeff-ford-in-conversation/
Conversation with Liz Hand, Gary K. Wolfe, and Karen Burnham – Locus Online
http://www.locusmag.com/Roundtable/2011/06/jeffrey-ford-elizabeth-hand-and-gary-k-wolfe-in-conversation/
Conversation with Jon Armstrong – If You’re Just Joining Us
If You're Just Joining Us with Jeffrey Ford : Jon Armstrong : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Conversation with Gary K. Wolfe, Karen Burnham, Liza Groen Trombi, and Jonathan Strahan – Coode Street Podcast
http://www.jonathanstrahan.com.au/wp/2011/03/19/episode-43-live-with-gary-k-wolfe-karen-burnham-jeffrey-ford-and-liza-groen-trombi/
Conversation with Ed Champion and Gwenda Bond – Bat Segundo Show # 36
http://www.edrants.com/segundo/the-bat-segundo-show-36/
Conversation with Ed Champion – Bat Segundo Show # 191
http://www.edrants.com/segundo/jeffrey-ford-ii-bss-191/
Conversation with Ed Champion – Bat Segundo Show #483
http://www.edrants.com/segundo/2012/08/
Conversation with Rick Kleffel of Agony Column on 60th Anniversary of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
http://bookotron.com/agony/audio/2009/2009-news/090309-fandsf60-2.mp3
Library Lovefest Interview about The Shadow Year
Episode 313 of The Coode Street Podcast with Gary Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan (Twilight Pariah)
jonathanstrahan.podbean.com/e/episode-313-jeffrey-ford-and-the-twilight-pariah/
Reviews
The Physiognomy
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/02/reviews/971102.02scifit.html#physiognomy
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2008/10/a-celebration-o.html
https://www.sfsite.com/08b/phy39.htm
http://www.powells.com/review/2009_03_08.html
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeffrey-ford/the-physiognomy/
http://www.risingshadow.net/library/book/12502-the-physiognomy
http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2009/01/bookmagazine-review-physiognomy-by.html
http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/ford-the_physiognomy.htm
http://inktrails.blogs.com/northern_book_review/2005/08/the_physiognomy.html
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/bm2ML3xWD9k
Amazon.com Review
In the Well-Built City, Cley is the perfect judge and jury, the infallible arbiter of life and death, for he is trained in the art/science of physiognomy. To the physiognomist, body shape and facial features reveal every aspect of personality, expose every secret, and even predict the future. When Drachton Below, Master of the Well-Built City, sends his premier physiognomist into the primitive outlands to uncover the thief of an unperishing fruit that may grant immortality, Cley discovers love and the truth about physiognomy. His discoveries unleash horrific destruction and plunge him into Hell--and neither he nor the Master can foresee their revolutionary fate of their world.
A New York Times Notable Book and the winner of the 1998 World Fantasy Award, The Physiognomy may be read with equal success as either fantasy or SF, but it does not much resemble the fiction of either genre. This novel's closest relatives are In the Well-Built City, Dante's Divine Comedy, Kafka's black allegories, and Caleb Carr's crime thriller The Alienist. The brilliant and sardonic Physiognomist Cley is SF/F's most entertainingly arrogant narrator since Richard Garfinkle's Celestial Matters. You won't believe that this strange, ambitious, and sui generis work is Jeffrey Ford's first novel. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Memoranda
Amazon.com Review
The awe-inspiring historical concept of the memory palace is put to grand use in Jeffrey Ford's fascinating novel Memoranda, the sequel to his World Fantasy Award-winning New York Times Notable Book, The Physiognomy.
Cley was once the greatest practitioner of the Physiognomy, a dangerous pseudoscience invented by the twisted tyrant Drachton Below. Since the fall of Below's Well-Built City, Cley has dedicated himself to healing. But when his new people fall into a deadly sleep from which he cannot wake them, he ventures to the ruins of the Well-Built City for the cure. He discovers Below is still alive--but the antidote is lost and Below is asleep, victim to the disease he created. Cley must strike a pact with Below's demon to enter Below's mind in search of the antidote's formula. But even if he survives the demon, Cley may not survive the very real dangers of Below's vast, intricate, and treacherous memory palace--or the disintegration of the dying madman's mind. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Last year, Ford's The Physiognomy won the World Fantasy Award for best novel. Here's a worthy sequel. In the first book, Physiognomist Cley helped bring about the destruction of the Well-Built City, a technological marvel where foreheads, cheekbones, chins were measured in order to determine the moral character of the populace, and where mismanaged science controlled every aspect of life. Now Cley has moved to the primitive village of Wenau, where he works as a healer. His idyllic existence is ruined when the evil Master Below, the ruler of the destroyed Well-Built City, sends a sleeping sickness that quickly spreads throughout Wenau. In order to save his friends, Cley returns to the ruined City to find BelowAand an antidote. Once there, however, he learns that Below himself has been stricken by his own poison. Below's misbegotten demon son Misrix offers to help Cley enter the sleeping Below's mind to seek out the cure. "To decipher the symbols, you need only read the Physiognomy of Father's memory," Misrix explains. Yet traveling through the subconscious of a madman may well be more dangerous than the sleeping sickness itself, for there Cley must interpret a surreal landscape of events, objects and characters, even as they distort his own thoughts. Reading Ford's vivid descriptions of Below's bizarre subconscious is like stepping into a Dal! painting. Ford's symbolic view of memory and desire is as intriguing as it is hauntingAthough the book ends with more questions than it began. Admirers of The Physiognomy will prize this book, while trusting that the next (and conclusion to the trilogy), The Beyond, will clarify Ford's views on the nature of mind and reality.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
https://www.sfsite.com/09b/memo65.htm
http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2009/01/bookmagazine-review-memoranda-by.html
http://inktrails.blogs.com/northern_book_review/2005/08/memoranda.html
The Beyond
Amazon.com Review
In Jeffrey Ford's World Fantasy Award-winning, New York Times Notable Book, The Physiognomy, the Physiognomist Cley destroys the Well-Built City and almost destroys the woman he loves. In the sequel, Memoranda, the ex-Physiognomist experiences one of the strangest adventures in all of fantasy fiction when he is forced to literally enter and explore the mad mind of his dying master, the murderous tyrant Drachton Below. Now Cley returns, along with Below's demon son, in The Beyond. The trilogy's concluding volume is slow to start and episodic, but also imaginative, unusual, and intelligent.
Cley wanders both literally and figuratively in the wilderness as he follows the woman he hideously harmed into the Beyond, a mysterious, bizarre, and frightening frontier between worlds. The demon Misrix uses the Physiognomist's powerful drug, sheer beauty, to watch his friend's journey, even as he pursues his own equally dangerous quest, the search for his humanity. --Cynthia Ward --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Following The Physiognomy (1997), which won a World Fantasy Award, and Memoranda (1999), Ford completes the trilogy with a quest novel of fantastic adventure stronger on style than story. Cley, the erstwhile Physiognomist, First Class, who mentions his former profession only once, travels outside the Well-Built City with Wood, his dog, into the unknown seas and mountains of the Beyond, where they encounter many wonders: omnivorous trees, invisible monsters, a woman encased in ice, and a skeleton from which Cley removes a necklace, only to have her ghost demand it back. From the last Clay receives a seed, which, when buried, grows into a friendly humanoid vegetation creature. Demons, classically winged with horns and barbed tails, constantly threaten. With the aid of a sense-expanding drug, the demon Misrix, back in the ruins of the Well-Built City, sees and narrates the travels of Cley and Wood through the Beyond to death and transfiguration. Too often Misrix interrupts the story for unlikely sentimentality, until his final break ties him with Cley, whom he is ironically accused of having murdered. Ford's graphic imagination is as powerful as ever, but the quest itself is vague and undefined, while the story ultimately fails to grip. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/ford-the_beyond.htm
http://www.readersread.com/cgi-bin/review.pl?reviewid=50110
http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2009/01/bookmagazine-review-beyond-by-jeffrey.html
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeffrey-ford/the-beyond/
The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque
From Publishers Weekly
Ford expertly created a surreal alternate landscape in his acclaimed fantasies The Physiognomy and Memoranda; here, in his fourth novel, sepia-colored old New York is the fever-dream world. Piero Piambo is the portraitist of choice among New York's nouveau riche in 1893, but his career fills him with self-loathing. When a blind man with uncannily white eyes offers him "a job like no other" painting the mysterious Mrs. Charbuque Piambo quickly accepts, as the hefty commission will allow him to abandon society portraiture. But the terms of the deal are very strange: Mrs. Charbuque insists that she will hide behind a screen; to divine what she looks like, Piambo may ask her questions, but not about her appearance. It soon becomes clear that she will not be interrogated; instead, like a possibly "unhinged" Scheherazade, she mesmerizes Piambo with her story of growing up convinced she possessed psychic powers conferred on her by twin snowflakes. Piambo's opium-addicted friend Shenz convinces him to investigate his mysterious model, leading them to interview a deranged "turdologist" who sheds light on her past. But then Piambo is assaulted by a man identifying himself as Mr. Charbuque, demanding to know why the artist is "seeing my wife." And there are other dangers about, as the city is under attack by a parasite that eats "the soft tissue of the eye" and causes its victims to weep blood. Add dangerously unstable characters speaking with delicious floridity, unexpected bursts of macabre humor and violence, and a gender-bending subplot that subtly picks up steam, and you have a standout literary thriller.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-A true literary thriller. In New York City at the turn of the 20th century, Piambo is a young artist earning his bread painting "corrective" portraits of plain society wives, beautifying them for the canvas and their husbands. He has a crisis of conscience when one woman, standing under her portrait, leans close and whispers, "I hope you die." As he restlessly wanders the streets that night, a blind man approaches, claiming to know him by his dishonest smell, and offers him the commission of a lifetime: paint a portrait of his employer and receive compensation so grand that he will never have to paint another wife. The catch? Piambo will not be permitted to see Mrs. Charbuque. She will sit behind a screen, and he may ask her questions; from the answers he is to divine her essence. If he captures her likeness, compensation will triple. From this irresistible premise, Ford devilishly spins his story in prose so controlled-yet so dark with underlying fever and inevitability-that it calls to mind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The philosophical and psychological aspects loom large, and Mrs. Charbuque is a near-masterpiece-part sphinx, part hydra, the stuff of the most potent myths. A subplot involving a possible plague adds some hardcore spookiness and, of course, points back to Mrs. Charbuque. This book is smart, spellbinding, and sure to knock any teen's favorite suspense/horror tale from top place to second.
Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
https://www.sfsite.com/10b/pm138.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/aug/16/sciencefictionfantasyandhorror.featuresreviews
http://www.powells.com/review/2002_11_01.html
http://www.curledup.com/charbuqu.htm
http://www.sfrevu.com/ISSUES/2003/0305/Book%20-%20The%20Portrait%20of%20Mrs%20Charbuque/Review.htm
http://www.readersread.com/cgi-bin/review.pl?reviewid=70208
http://inktrails.blogs.com/northern_book_review/2005/09/the_portrait_of.html
http://www.salon.com/2002/06/20/ford_12/
The Girl In The Glass
http://www.januarymagazine.com/fiction/girlinglass.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/books/review/28CAIN.html?_r=0
http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10381
http://sfrevu.com/Review-id.php?id=2775
http://www.austinchronicle.com/books/2005-08-12/284201/
http://markcnewton.com/2007/08/05/book-review-the-girl-in-the-glass-by-jeffrey-ford/
http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.asp?bookid=4794
From Publishers Weekly
A band of con artists–cum–spiritual mediums focus their psychic and sleuthing powers on a murder mystery in Ford's offbeat, thoroughly researched fifth novel (The Physiognomy; The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque; etc.), set in Depression-era Long Island, on the posh North Shore. Diego, a 17-year-old Mexican illegal immigrant, narrates the escapades, as he follows his mentor and surrogate father Thomas Schell, who rescued him from the street and tutored him in subjects from English to chicanery. Disguised as a Hindu swami, Diego helps Schell conduct phony séances to bilk wealthy Long Islanders. But when Schell sees the apparition of a young girl during a séance and then hears of the disappearance of Charlotte Barnes, daughter of shipping magnate Harold Barnes, he determines to solve the case. Schell and Diego—along with henchman Antony and phony psychic Morgan Shaw—find Charlotte's dead body covered by a cloth painted with a Ku Klux Klan symbol. They link her murder, along with those of several other dead children, both to the Klan and to a nefarious Dr. Greaves, aka Fenton Agarias, who headed up grotesque eugenics experiments. Though Ford's efforts to evoke the period occasionally strike a twee note, he's crafted an engaging read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Booklist
Ford's fascinating literary thriller tells the story of an orphan's career as Ondoo, a phony mystic. He is really Diego, a Mexican and part of a trio staging seances for the gullible grieving of Long Island's Gold Coast, where in 1932 you'd never know the Great Depression is raging. Besides whacked-out humor and compelling suspense, there is sentiment among the thieves in the novel, and all those qualities make it hard to put down. After all, how can you not love a wake attended by Hal the Dog Man, Marge the Fat Lady, and "the legless spider boy who walked on his hands and could bite a silver dollar in half," especially when the deceased is Coney Island snake charmer Morty, whose close companion and best friend, Wilma the Cobra, died of a broken heart when he expired and lies coiled up next to his head in the coffin? And when Diego's mentor undertakes a quest for a kidnapped girl, the mood turns mysterious without, thanks to all the fast dialogue, ever slowing the pace. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
The Shadow Year
From Publishers Weekly
In Edgar-winner Ford's disappointing sixth novel, the narrator—a nameless boy growing up on suburban Long Island in the mid-1960s—spends what remains of his summer vacation roaming the neighborhood with his older brother, Jim. At home, money is tight, forcing their father to work three jobs while their mother drinks herself to sleep every night. A prowler may be loose on the streets, and the narrator and Jim see a menacing man in a white car lurking near their house and school. When a local boy disappears soon after school starts, the narrator and Jim are sure Mr. White is responsible. They turn to their younger sister, Mary, for help, after she mysteriously moves figurines in the boys' model town, reflecting events before they've occurred. The stage is set for suspense, yet Ford (The Girl in the Glass) deflates it at every opportunity with his unresolved subplots. Instead of building to a thrilling climax, the story peters out and loose ends are either forgotten or tied up too neatly. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
In his latest novel, the author of The Girl in the Glass (2005) and The Empire of Ice Cream (2007), among other genre-bending tales, takes us back in time to the 1960s, when strange doings are afoot in a small suburban community. A schoolboy has vanished; a stranger has appeared; a prowler (possibly a pervert) is lurking about; and a librarian is losing her grip on reality. Keeping track of it all are several young chums, including the sixth-grade narrator; his older brother, Jim; and their sister, Mary, who may somehow be affecting what’s happening as she rearranges figures on the toy model of the community in her basement. Imagine a young-reader amateur-sleuth novel written by someone like Kafka, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of this one: surreal, unsettling, and more than a little weird. Ford has a rare gift for evoking mood with just a few well-chosen words and for creating living, breathing characters with only a few lines of dialogue. Give this one to readers who appreciate the blending of literary fiction, fantasy, and mystery --David Pitt --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From The Washington Post
Momentum generated by atmosphere and vivid characters carries the reader of Jeffrey Ford's new novel a long way. It's the mid-1960s -- or so one surmises from certain details: LBJ is president, but hippy vibes have yet to waft into the Long Island town where the story is set. That story centers on a family that is classically dysfunctional -- a dad who is rarely available, a mom who drinks herself into nightly stupors, grandparents who step into the breech as best they can -- but that, true to its time, functions fairly well just the same.
The kids cope with adult fecklessness by playing pranks and collaborating on an alternate world: Botch Town, their homemade variation on Plasticville or a Lionel train village. Kept in the family's basement and populated by clay models of neighbors, friends and enemies, Botch Town is a kind of running soap opera produced by the unnamed narrator's older brother, Jim, with occasional and spooky help from their younger sister, Mary. Jim is Botch Town's nominal groundskeeper, but it's Mary -- along with her alter ego, a boy named Mickey -- who can move the residents into positions they turn out to have assumed in real life as well. The narrator himself is a sixth-grade nerd with a notebook, which he intends "to fill . . . with the lives of my neighbors, creating a Botch Town of my own between two covers."
There's a lot to write about: a prowler, the disappearance of a neighbor boy and the death of an old man. A Mister Softee driver has promised a free sundae of monstrous proportions to any kid who collects a whole set of "Softee cards," but he may have removed every copy of one particular card from the distribution pile. A sinister character known as Mr. White seems bent on harming children. After being fired, a dotty school librarian walks around a baseball diamond muttering to himself.
As the novel switches between actual incidents involving these people and changes in the configuration of their effigies in Botch Town, an eerie tension takes hold. The prose deepens one's sense of foreboding. Take this chapter-opening passage, in which Ford unforgettably evokes the season: "The days sank deeper into autumn, rotten to their cores with twilight. The bright warmth of the sun only lasted about as long as we were in school, and then once we were home, an hour later, the world was briefly submerged in a rich honey glow, gilding everything from the barren branches of willows to the old wreck of a Pontiac parked alongside the Hortons' garage. In minutes the tide turned, the sun suddenly a distant star, and in rolled a dim gray wave of neither here nor there that seemed to last a week each day."
Ford has won an Edgar award for mystery writing and been nominated for a Nebula for science fiction, which may reflect an impatience with the restrictions of genre. The Shadow Year takes the shape of a mystery (who is Mr. White, and what is he up to?), but it also has supernatural elements (especially Mary/Mickey's ability to influence actual events by moving around those clay figures in the basement), while at the same time it scrutinizes its pivotal family with almost sociological rigor. It all works, I think, except for one thing: too much contrivance in what eventually happens to Mr. White. This is a common problem in fiction, especially novels on the sensationalistic end of the spectrum. The setup is so pregnant with drama that almost no plausible resolution can do it justice.
In this case, though, the letdown is forgivable because Ford does so many things well. He makes the drunken mother not just another lush (she likes to believe she reads herself to sleep rather than passing out on the sofa each night, and the kids often place an open book on her lap after she nods off). And he gets across that one of the most unsettling things happening to this family is that the kids are beginning to pull apart from one another, that Botch Town will not be a joint project much longer.
Doomed though it may be, Botch Town is one of the most enthralling places I've visited in a long time.
https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2008/eh0805.htm
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeffrey-ford/the-shadow-year/
http://www.mysteryone.com/review.php?ID=109
http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.ASP?bookid=9310
http://blogcritics.org/book-review-the-shadow-year-by/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/books/review/McCulloch-t.html
Empire of Ice Cream
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In "Coffins on the River," one of several autobiographical stories in Ford's outstanding second collection of fantastic fiction (after 2002's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant), the narrator remarks: "[T]he ideas would fly like bats at sundown, like phone calls from our creditors." Whether drawing on his past as a schoolboy (in the previously unpublished "Botch Town"), a clam digger ("The Trentino Kid") or an adult returning to his childhood home ("A Night in the Tropics"), Ford uses such incongruously lyrical phrases to infuse the everyday with a nebulous magic that erases the line between reality and belief. Sorrow is always quietly present, even in pieces of pure whimsy such as "The Annals of Eelin-Ok," "The Green Word" and "Summer Afternoon," and it becomes more prominent in three tales of people created by others' imaginations: the surreal "A Man of Light," the bittersweet "Boatman's Holiday" and the Nebula-winning title story. Brief afterwords provide both real-world context and a welcome pause between the intensely engaging stories. Both new and returning fans will be entranced and delighted. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
A book that opens with a story about creatures who live their entire existences in sand castles, from when youthful builders abandon them to when the tide destroys them, demands readers possessing a healthy sense of wonder and the willingness to embrace the bizarre and fantastic. The title story beautifully twists the experience and senses of a synesthetic musician to answer the question, what would happen if synesthetic experiences took on physical forms? "The Weight of Words" takes the phrase seriously to explore the sinister potential of print. "Boatman's Holiday" depicts what Charon, the boatman of Hades, does on vacation. Giants and unidentifiable alien creatures, fairy tales, the intertwining of wonder and terror, and fantastic views of both the strange and the ordinary all appear in this marvelous collection, with Ford's comments on his inspiration and motivations appended to each story. Ford is nothing if not versatile, as this collection confirms to great effect. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
https://www.sfsite.com/07a/ei227.htm
http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/reviews/book-review-the-empire-of-ice-cream-by-jeffrey-ford/
http://www.theoohtray.com/2011/02/02/modern-classic-book-review-the-empire-of-ice-cream-by-jeffrey-ford/
http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/2006-old/ford-empire_ice_cream.htm
http://sandstormreviews.blogspot.com/2006/08/empire-of-ice-cream-jeffrey-ford.html
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_ford_icecream.html
http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2014/04/review-of-empire-of-ice-cream-by.html
http://sfrevu.com/Review-id.php?id=3841
http://www.rambles.net/ford_empireic06.html
https://juandahlmann.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/review-of-jeffrey-fords-wfa-nominated-the-empire-of-ice-cream/
http://speculativereviews.blogspot.com/2006/07/empire-of-ice-cream-by-jeffrey-ford.html
http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0703/onbooks.shtml
http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2006/04/the_empir.shtml
"Jeffrey Ford's The Empire of Ice Cream is probably the finest book of 2006 in any category, a spectacular gathering of oneiric tales ranging from the dreams of postwar suburban America to those of lands very far away. The displays of narrative craft, prose poetry, and sympathetic characterization are breathtaking, glorious."
— Nick Gevers, "2006: The Year in Review," Locus Magazine
"Put simply, Jeff Ford stands in the top five or six short fiction writers currently working in the field. This collection, which assembles stories from the past three or four years, contains no duds at all, and a goodly handful of stories that are sufficiently wonderful as to almost leave your humble correspondent speechless. If you love short fiction, you need this book. If you love great science fiction or fantasy period, you need this book. It’s still early in the year, but I’m completely confident when I say that there won’t be a more essential collection published all year."
— Jonathan Strahan, editor of the annual anthology Best Short Novels
"A leading light in today's short story firmament, Ford is a literary descendant of Poe, Verne, Bradbury, Ellison, and more, but while he often conjures up images that make the real surreal, or the surreal tangible, he never entreats us to give up hope. Despair exists, but not alone, and throughout his writing I find reassurance in the human condition. Not because it is indomitable, but because it expresses the ability to look both outward and inward and to find value in both directions. This collection of stories is thoughtful and intriguing, and once begun, exceedingly difficult to put down. We owe both author and publisher a vote of thanks for bringing forth this terrific collection."
— SFRevu.com
Praise for the author's first collection:
"Jeffrey Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories is the finest single author short story collection I've read in a decade. But everyone says that, so I'm not telling you something you couldn't hear somewhere else."
— Lou Anders, Senior Editor, Argosy
"I don't know if Speculative Fiction is large enough to contain Jeffrey Ford for very long. But while it does, we have this book."
— Richard Bowes, author of From the Files of the Time Rangers
In 2002, author Jeffrey Ford published his first short fiction collection, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories, to wide, critical acclaim. The collection received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and was later selected for PW's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2002" List. The Fantasy Writer's Assistant then went on to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Single-Author Collection of the Year.
Now Golden Gryphon Press releases Ford's second, long-awaited short fiction collection, The Empire of Ice Cream. As noted fantasist Jonathan Carroll writes in his Introduction to the book: "Ford sees wonder everywhere and embraces it fully. A generous writer, he is willing to share it with us. The precision and clarity with which he gives us his vision is really the next best thing to being there."
In the title story, winner of the prestigious Nebula Award (and a finalist for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award), a young musician perceives another sensory world of sights and sounds and smells while consuming cup after cup of coffee.
A faerie Twilmish chronicles his brief yet adventurous life in a sand castle, during those few hours between the outgoing and incoming tide, in "The Annals of Eelin-Ok." Through a complex formula we can calculate "The Weight of Words," and thus determine their subliminal, and surreptitious, affect on the reader. In "A Night in the Tropics," we learn of a possibly demonic chess set, originally crafted in 1533 by Italian goldsmith Dario Foresso, in a New Jersey bar called The Tropics. And in "Boatman's Holiday," Charon, the boatman of Hell, takes a hiatus from his horrific day job to embark on a rather memorable vacation.
Also included is a new, previously unpublished novella (nearly 40,000 words), entitled "Botch Town," in which a young boy from Long Island comes of age in a town peopled by family and neighbors, each trying to live a life, amidst both a real and a perceived menace. Jeffery Ford can take the mundane, the everyday, and, with the skill of an adept, mold these into brilliantly realized visions, wondrous yet elusive.
The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant
From Publishers Weekly
In World Fantasy Award-winner Ford's enchanting first story collection, proof abounds that a fresh perspective or inventive approach can give the most familiar themes fresh life and startling clarity. "Exo-Skeleton Town," set on a planet where human beings dress like classic movie stars to trade old films for the aphrodisiacal excrement of the planet's cinephile beetle population, is a surprisingly poignant tale of lonely dreamers isolated by their inescapable illusions. In "At Reparata," a king's melancholy over the death of his queen achieves independent life in the form of a ravenous moth that threatens to consume the entire kingdom. Ford (The Physiognomy) laces the 16 selections with subtle allusions to Poe, Verne and other literary forebears that give the deceptively simple plots resonance and depth. His most effective tool, however, is gentle humor that softens the philosophical edges and magically transforms the zombie operatives, organic computer salesmen and extraterrestrial colonists into sympathetic characters with recognizable sensitivities and longings. A lion's share of the stories explore the theme of artistic creation from invigoratingly original angles. "Creation" reconfigures aspects of biblical Genesis and the legend of Frankenstein into a moving tale of love between a father and son. "Bright Morning" is a masterful sleight-of-hand in which the author's autobiographical reminiscence of his fascination with Kafka plunges him into a private Kafkaesque fiction. Sure to be one of the keynote collections of the year, this book will be welcomed by fans of literate, witty modern fantasy.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
These 16 stories are credits to Ford, far too good to be left languishing in moldering obscurity in magazines and chapbooks, and on fugitive Web sites. So thanks, Golden Gryphon, for chasing them down and corralling them between book covers. They include "Creation," a nonstrident variation on the theme of Catholic childhood; "Out of the Canyon," set in the West and involving a curse; and the title story, which says a great deal about writing and fantasy (library trivia lovers will rejoice in the nonhuman assistant's name: Ashmolean). Then there is "The Honeyed Knot," which draws on Ford's many years teaching writing and the specific experience of having had a rapist-murderer among his pupils. The other 12 tales show off Ford's thematic reach, and one can't help noticing his command of language and skill at slowing the pace almost to stasis without becoming boring. Good stuff and good examples for short-story writers. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Jay Lake, Tangent.
The Fantasy Writer's Assistant was a pleasure to read and review. Some stories I cared for more than others, and a few were stellar. I had read perhaps a third of this collection in the pieces' various original appearances, so seeing them was like encountering old friends — "The Honeyed Knot," "Floating in Lindrethool." Others were new to me, bursting into my consciousness like fireworks — "Something by the Sea," "At Reparata." But one stands head and shoulders above the rest — "Creation," which originally appeared in the May, 2002 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. At the moment, that is hands down the best story I have read this year, and on the very short list of the best stories I have read in my life. (My wife, who reads little genre fiction other than my own, and not much of that, was impressed with the story when I forced F&SFupon her.) Editor Marty Halpern chose to open the book with "Creation," a clash of cymbals that echoes all the way through and on out into life. The collection goes on through a diverse territory, the texture of Ford's imagination reflecting the colors of the reader's own.
So say the name again. Go on. "Jeffrey Ford." Now say "Creation." See how they fit together? Now read it, and the rest of the book, including the fine introduction by Michael Swanwick. I dare you to say I am wrong.
Having said so much about this story already, I'll pass lightly over it in detail. "Creation" is an excruciatingly fine example of what I call shark-in-muddy-waters world building, where vast and important facts are revealed to the reader through the little slivered cracks of detail. Like a shark, brushing by you in muddy water, so you are left only with a scrape upon your leg and the memory of rough-textured skin from which to extrapolate monsters. This is a story about the strangeness of the quotidian world, how children cannot tell eerie for ordinary, and what happens to the things in which we believe, all told with a stunning economy of prose. And the father is a hero for us all.
"Out of the Canyon" is, perhaps unconsciously, a lovely slipstream homage to Heinlein's "By His Bootstraps." Not quite as close-ended as Heinlein's seminal work, "Out of the Canyon" concentrates on an ancient curse that is active across improbable stretches of time and coincidence, spiraling in on itself at a mysterious southwestern omphalos of the world.
A disarming conceit permeates "The Fantasy Writer's Assistant," one that from a less deft writer might have been a screaming telegram from the false modesty division. Stories about writers writing about writing are hard to write with any worthy sensibility, but Ford does it. For my money though, the howlingly funny excerpts from the (hopefully) mythical fictional land of Kreegenvale are the true gem of this piece.
You call it Go, we call it Maize. Cast within a brief scholarly frame tale, "The Far Oasis" tells of love gone so bad that it has evolutionary consequences, all in the context of an abstract, powerful game called Maize. The bitter power of lost desire and homesickness permeates this story like a parable for every divorce, every breakup, every petty vengeance ever wrought by one lover upon another.
"The Woman Who Counts Her Breath" sets the reader up to despise a character, then walks through her backstory until we reach a détente with our own expectations. This story is as sly and bitter as "The Far Oasis," told with the sensibility of John Updike rather than James Blish. And, as Ford tells us in the story notes, a dash of Freud.
Guy Gavriel Kay has made a career out of writing mannered high fantasy about excruciating courts, blood intrigue and moonlit affairs. "At Reparata" is a piece at slantwise with that tradition, stretching from E. R. Eddison to Kay, a modern fairy tale with a helping of dispossession. At Reparata, a court fabricated from an empty hazelnut and generous portion of funds, one's role in life stands in place of one's inner meaning. Reparata's end, death by moth, drives the courtiers out of their roles into their true meanings. I take it as a story of hope.
"Pansolapia" is a difficult piece of flash fiction, winding in on itself like the original Labyrinth, or perhaps the original Gordian knot. Theseus has not come with Ariadne's string, and Alexander and his sword are absent, so the reader struggles with some astonishing prose and vivid imagery to wonder what was at the center? Or like an onion, is there only another layer.
Remember "Town Without Pity?" It's the old Perry Mason theme song. Hum a few bars and set it running through your mind before reading "Exo-Skeleton Town." Maybe stick a gat and fifth of Jack in the drawer and tug down your fedora. This is science fiction qua Raymond Chandler, with a heaping spoonful of William S. Burroughs and bugs, by God, all over me, get them off! Joseph Cotten guest stars in the Hellstrom Chronicles. It damned near defies description and is a striking story to boot.
"The Honeyed Knot" is a complicated story that is deceptively simple. Ford, the English teacher, writes about Ford, the English teacher. According to the notes, story-Ford's experiences parallel writer-Ford's experiences. And he pulls simple sadness and ordinary evil ("a sinister Dutch-boy haircut") into a meditation on how synchronicity permeates all of life.
Leonard Cohen said, "All men will be sailors until the sea shall free them." Humans sail the seas of story, our every waking thought woven into narrative. Ideas aren't as simple as propositions and resolved thusly we shall debate. "Something by the Sea" tackles this premise at a deeper level, weaving story together across frames of tale and into the life of Math the dog (also the name of a mythical Irish king) and the crew of the good ship The Mare. Who escapes, and into what, resolves indistinctly into a haze of violet smoke and the blood of Neptune's Daughter.
"The Delicate" is Ford's vampire story, written small in the town of Absentia and as a study for Ford's award-winning novel The Physiognomy. There is a great deal of human stupidity in this story, and some lovely prose.
"Malthusian" is a strange name for a character, given the specific meaning of the word. "Malthusian's Zombie" is even stranger, given Malthus' associations with death on the grandest of scales. Only an economist could be so grim. Or, in Ford's world-of-story, a psychologist who spent his working life deep programming killers in the name of Cold War security. There is a clever but ultimately unexplained transition at the end that steps outside the nominal bounds of the story's level of realism, but it was a satisfying read.
Christ and the Devil and some guy driving a car meet an old woman with tentacles and an anger management problem. Absurdism rampages through "On the Road to New Egypt," along with some trenchant observations about salvation and life in suburban New Jersey.
When I first read "Floating in Lindrethool" as a reviewer, for its original appearance at SCI FICTION, the story dogged me for a long time. It has more of Ford's quirky world building, and a deep sense of the pointlessness of everyday endeavor — Death of a Salesman over and over, supported not by middle-aged incompetence but by a genuine, certifiable Establishment conspiracy. Even the name bothered me, and I spent hours on the Web trying to parse out "Lindrethool," until Jeff Ford told me he'd just made it up. In a post-Enron world, or maybe at a later read, the story has shifted some of its meaning for me, but lost none of its power.
Another bit of rampant absurdism, "High Tea with Jules Verne" races through a brief encounter with the Great Author and his little pest problem. It's a love note to the past, to pulps and Golden Age science fiction and the things we all care about as genre readers, even if only as history.
"Bright Morning" is the final story in this collection, and it's another Ford-on-Ford story. This one is Ford-the-writer writing about Ford-the-writer from the competing point of view of Ford-the-writer. In a sense, it's a response to nitpicking editors and small-minded critics and dense reviewers and irritated readers. In another sense, it's a response to clever editors and perceptive critics and thoughtful reviewers and grateful readers. It's another story whose central conceit is so permeated with hubris that only a writer of Ford's astonishing understatement can pull it off. Frankly, it's not quite as smoothly done as "The Honeyed Knot," but it ends better.
The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories
by Jeffrey Ford
Golden Gryphon Press, Urbana, IL, August, 2002
$23.95 (US), $35.95 (Canadian)
ISBN: 193084610X
http://www.goldengryphon.com/
— Jay Lake, Tangent Online, Posted on 2002-07-15
https://www.sfsite.com/06b/fa130.htm
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2002/20020916/honeyed_knots.shtml
http://richard-parks.com/2011/11/29/review-the-fantasy-writers-assistant-by-jeffrey-ford/
http://www.truereviewonline.com/b74v19n3_09.php
http://surrealbookreview.blogspot.com/2002/06/fantasy-writers-assistant-and-other.html
http://www.listal.com/viewentry/89818
"Jeffrey Ford's The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories is the finest single author short story collection I've read in a decade. But everyone says that, so I'm not telling you something you couldn't hear somewhere else."
— Lou Anders, Senior Editor, Argosy
More praise for The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories:
"I don't know if Speculative Fiction is large enough to contain Jeffrey Ford for very long. But while it does, we have this book."
— Richard Bowes, author of the World Fantasy Award-winning "Streecar Dreams"
"But one [story] stands head and shoulders above the rest — "Creation," which originally appeared in the May, 2002 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. At the moment, that is hands down the best story I have read this year, and on the very short list of the best stories I have read in my life.
— Jay Lake, winner of the 2004 John W. Campbell Jr. Award for Best New Writer
When renowned writer Ashmolean loses touch with the fantasy world he has created, he pleads with his young assistant to visualize the story's end, enabling him to complete what will surely be his greatest novel ever. "The Fantasy Writer's Assistant," a finalist for the prestigious Nebula Award, is the title story to Jeffrey Ford's highly anticipated first short-fiction collection.
One tale written exclusively for this volume, "Bright Morning," recounts the search for a Kafka story that may be the key to an author's future success, but this story can only be found in an illusive—and quite possibly cursed—violet-bound edition. On an alien world in "Exo-Skeleton Town," humans dress in full-body protective exo-skins in the personas of old Hollywood movie stars, and barter old Earth movies for an alien aphrodisiac known as freasence. "The Delicate," a grisly tale about a creature that absorbs life essences, formed the genesis of Ford's award-winning "Well-Built City Trilogy." A young boy comes to terms with "Creation" when he molds his own "man" out of the detritus of a nearby forest; and in "High Tea with Jules Verne," an interview with the master fantasist Verne leads to a few unexpected revelations.
Jeffrey Ford mixes myths, dreams, and realities into the consistency of a well-blended fantasy story; he then adds a dash of the noir, a pinch of the sardonic, and seasons liberally with the profound. He's cooked up these sixteen delicacies just for your reading pleasure.
With an Introduction by author Michael Swanwick, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.
Cover art by John Picacio.
And even more praise for The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories:
"These are all exquisite fantasy plots which excel in the surprise ending: wonderful examples of Ford's genius."
— Midwest Book Review, August 9, 2002
"There are many things Ford does well — he consistently writes magnificent endings to his stories, endings which are seldom predictable and if they are then are so because they are perfect; he has a masterful ability to put just the right amount of ambiguity into a story to make it haunting; he often creates situations and settings that seer themselves into your memory — but what I most admire in his autobiographical stories is his ability to make them feel informal, off-the-cuff, even chatty, when in reality every sentence is integral to the whole. . . ."
— Matthew Cheney
The Drowned Life
From Publishers Weekly
Following close upon the release of The Shadow Year, Edgar-winner Ford's third collection leads readers down dark and subtle passageways onto some very strange turf. In the title story, people drown and end up in a submerged city whose inhabitants are scornful of anyone wanting to return to the surface; a man named Hatch is compelled to escape Drowned Town in order to uphold a promise to his son. Similar metaphors of submersion are applied to drastically different effect in The Manticore Spell, The Dismantled Invention of Fate and In the House of Four Seasons. In Night Whiskey, the book's strangest tale, two men must roust slumbering drunks from trees after an annual festival; in addition to sending celebrants literally up a tree, the special once-a-year bash also features visitations with dead relatives, and what begins as near-slapstick ends with disturbing revelations and a loss of innocence. Throughout these 16 stories, Ford covers much stylistic terrain, weaving between science fiction, realistic stories with fantastic elements and even some nearly straight-up (and successful) comedy. Readers of all stripes should be able to find something here to love. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From School Library Journal
Sometimes we read something and immediately think of a friend who would really like it. This collection of short stories from the author of The Shadow Year contains some of the most unusual and provocative settings and plots this reviewer has ever encountered, which will make it perfect for book talking to patrons. The first story features a man who, filled with the pressures of daily life, finds himself at the bottom of the sea in a place called Drowned Town, on the run from sharks called Financial Ruin. In "The Night Whiskey," local citizens win a chance to drink a magical berry liquor that enables them to experience the dream of a lifetime, only this year the results are quite shocking. In "The Scribble Mind," an art student stumbles onto an elaborate conspiracy where a select few can remember something that gives them exclusive membership into a special society. Sometimes shocking, sometimes mesmerizing, sometimes humorous, this collection will please fans of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor. Recommended for libraries where short story collections are popular.—Kellie Gillespie, City of Mesa Lib., AZ
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/09/entertainment/ca-jeffrey-ford9
http://www.greenmanreview.com/book/book_ford_drownedlife.html
http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2008/11/drowned-life-by-jeffrey-ford-reviewed.html
http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=7939
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeffrey-ford/the-drowned-life/
http://charles-tan.blogspot.com/2008/11/bookmagazine-review-drowned-life-by.html
http://jlundberg.livejournal.com/577226.html
Crackpot Palace
Starred Review, Shelf Awareness
Crackpot Palaceby Jeffrey Ford
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Speculative fiction has produced several great practitioners of the art of the short story whose critical acclaim matches that given to more traditionally "literary" writers. With his fourth collection of short stories, Crackpot Palace, Jeffrey Ford is positioned to join such luminaries as Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison in that inner circle.
Ford's stories are stuffed with so many ideas, weird scenes and startling denouements that it is hard to summarize them. In "Down Atsion Road," Ford mixes urban legend, a ghost story and the New Jersey Pine Barrens to chilling effect. While his inventiveness is unmatched, he is also a master of psychological realism. There is a gritty day-to-day aspect to some of his tales that adds a degree of verisimilitude to events most genre writers wouldn't have a clue how to sustain. In "Every Richie There Is," a mentally challenged neighbor's slow disintegration from cancer and madness is chronicled with devastating skill. Finally, Ford's sense of the place where the weird intersects with the beautiful is unsurpassed; "Dr. Lash Remembers" is a steampunk gem where dream, sickness and hallucination are layered into disorienting new patterns.
With Crackpot Palace, one has a chance to read a collection by a true master of the short story. For lovers of the weird and fantastic and lovers of great writing, this is a treasure trove of disturbing visions, new worlds and fully realized craft. --Donald Powell, freelance writer
Discover: 20 fantastic and disturbing visions, including the never-before-published "The Wish Head," from a master of the short story.
Kirkus Reviews --
The fourth collection of stories from Ford includes examples of fantasy, science fiction, neo-steampunk, noir and a few genre-busting curiosities.
The longest piece in the book, “The Wish Head,” is a haunted police procedural set in upstate New York in the mid-20th century. “The Double of My Double Is Not My Double” doubles down on the rich history of the doppelganger; it is funny, morbid and very clever. “Every Richie There Is” is a dry-eyed look at our inevitably mixed feelings about our neighbors. “Glass Eels” smarts like a sliver of glass under a fingernail. To all but one story, Ford adds a note. These notes pay homage to generous editors, describe flashes of inspiration, explain references and enlighten the ignorant. One note contains a bonus track, an additional story.
Ford finds his way into scenarios infernal, haunted or merely strange, and keeps his wits about him on the journey.
Library Journal Review of Crackpot --
Ford, Jeffrey. Crackpot Palace: Stories. Morrow. Aug. 2012. c.352p. ISBN 9780062122599. pap. $14.99. F
Within the fantasy genre, Ford (The Shadow Year; The Girl in the Glass) is not a writer who is easily categorized. This collection showcases not only the range of his imagination but, based on his own notes describing the origins of many of the stories contained in this collection, also the depth and breadth of his personal interests in science, history, culture, and the human condition. Nor does Ford remain close to the shore of reality merely dipping a toe or finger into the fantastical from time to time. Instead, he wades—often waist-high or deeper—into the often murky waters, deliberately entangling his narrative in the inescapable undertow one finds there. It is here Ford’s writing skills truly shine as he deftly draws the reader into his tale—whether it be one of an ancient science experiment gone awry as in “The Dream of Reason” or the smoke-filled atmosphere of a Prohibition-era jazz club in “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.”
Verdict Recommend to readers willing to explore many facets of fantasy writing. [See Prepub Alert, 7/1/12.]—Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT
Monsters and Critics Review
Sci-Fi, Fantasy & Horror ReviewsBook Review: Crackpot PalaceBy Sandy Amazeen Jul 30, 2012, 2:41 GMT
This new book of from the Edgar Award winning author of The Girl in the Glass is Ford’s fourth short story collection that is certain to delight his fans and generate new ones. Ford’s imaginative writing almost always delivers a strange twist to what at the onset, seems like a perfectly ordinary story as demonstrated in “Daltharee” which begins with a thriving city in a glass bubble but turns into something else entirely. “Relic” tells the tale of Father Walter in charge of a church and relic at the end of the world. When a visitor takes a piece of the relic with her, Sister North sets out on a journey to the beginning of the world to get it back but is the precious item truly a relic and does it matter? In an attempt to fit in with his girlfriend’s family, a young man agrees to sit in church overnight with her recently deceased relative in “Sit the Dead”. What happened that night will haunt him for the rest of his life. Anyone who thinks daddy longlegs are cute, harmless spiders will reconsider after reading the chilling “Daddy Longlegs of the Evening”.
Although most of these were previously published, it is a delight to have them brought together. Each story includes background information about what served as inspiration, the intended message if any and where it first appeared in print. Ford excels at creating vividly imagined, finely nuanced characters and settings, frequently with an unexpected dark side that drags readers along on a short but exhilarating ride. These are great good fun and highly recommended.
Rajan Khanna's review "Like a Meaningful Dream" for TOR.com
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/08/like-a-meaningful-dream-crackpot-palace-by-jeffrey-ford
Gary Wolfe's review for Locus Magazine
http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/09/gary-k-wolfe-reviews-jeffrey-ford/
John Stevens's Review for SF Signal http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/11/this-strange-and-mercurial-world-jeffrey-fords-crackpot-palace/
http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=13675