Introduction
Pat Murphy
Dan Marcus writes stories that will knock you off balance. They will take you by surprise. They will make you question your assumptions. They will stretch your thinking and shake up your ideas of what science fiction is and what it can do.
Each story in this collection will take you somewhere new, somewhere different, somewhere unexpected.
A man surfing on the ammonia ocean of a Jovian moon catches a glimpse of something that changes the course of his life.
An entrepreneur opening a Christian-themed megamall brings Jesus Christ himself from another universe to speak at the grand opening.
Pablo Picasso is painting in Paris—and then the Martians invade.
A space-faring intelligence that counts humans as long distant ancestors encounters a young woman doing battle with giant bugs straight off a pulp magazine cover.
So many worlds, each one drawn with an expert hand in a few deft strokes. Dan makes it look easy, but as a short story writer, I can tell you it’s not. Novelists have pages and pages to introduce a complex environment, develop characters, explore grand themes. A short story writer must do all those things in a fraction of the space.
Each of these stories is a captured moment, brief but complete, memorable, and packed with an emotional charge.
I’ve given you a hint of what you’ll find in these stories. Perhaps I should offer a few warnings as well.
Don’t expect stories in which humans reign supreme as galactic overlords, heroic and triumphant. I told you: this is science fiction that will make you question your assumptions. Yes, there is heroism, but it’s not where you expect it. This is science fiction that upends tropes and smashes expectations.
Don’t expect this to be science fiction where technology is the point. Oh, the technology is here; every nut and bolt and equation is in place. (Dan Marcus knows his science.) But the nuts and bolts are not the point of the story. These are stories with heart, about people who are trying to find their way.
And finally, don’t expect this to be a book that you’ll read in an afternoon and put aside. These characters, these places will linger in your consciousness. After reading Dan Marcus’s description of the prairie in “Prairie Godmother,” I’ll never see Kansas as boring again. My view of that landscape will always be colored by the resonance of his description.
These stories may affect you in unexpected ways. You may find yourself watching the night sky for the ionization trails of ascending spaceships. Alien songs may haunt your dreams. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
—Pat Murphy, 2020