Product Description

Here are 33 weird, wonderful stories concerning men, women, teleportation, wind-up cats, and brown paper bags. By turns whimsical and unsettling -- frequently managing to be both -- these short fictions describe family relationships, bad breakups, and travel to outer space. Vukcevich's loopy, fun-house mirror take on everyday life belongs to the same absurdist school of work as that of George Saunders, David Sedaris, Ken Kalfus, and Victor Pelevin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1295448 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 253 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The same antic spirit that imbued Vukcevich's mystery novel The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces moves playfully through this first collection of fantastic fiction, whose 33 helium-filled stories achieve just the right absurdist lift to escape the gravity of their themes. "By the Time We Get to Uranus" offers a peculiarly affecting take on terminal illness: the afflicted grow buoyant spacesuits that force them to leave loved ones behind. The mysteries of parenthood manifest amusingly in "Poop," about a couple who discover that their newborn's diaper fills variously with birds, mice and symphonic music. Though deceptively simple in their pared-down style, the vignettes show meticulous care in the crafting of oddball metaphors to express the moods of their estranged spouses, exasperated lovers, competitive children and disgruntled employees. The willingness with which the author's characters accept the incongruity of their situations often yields profoundly moving insights into the human condition. In the poignant title tale, for example, a man does not find it at all strange that a lover from decades past has summoned him to a simulated moon landscape at a theme park, reflecting that the meaning of life really is "nothing more than a couple of people huddling close for comfort in a cold universe." Inventive and entertaining, these stories yield more emotional truth than much comparatively realistic fiction. (Aug.)Forecast: With blurbs from Damon Knight, Kate Wilhelm and Jeffrey Ford, this collection is a quality item that should benefit from good word of mouth.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
A man pulls the sweater his girlfriend made him over his head and nearly gets lost inside it. Rescued from the arctic ice, the dying Victor (Frankenstein) tells a story that leaves little doubt that the monster is James Joyce or Stephen Dedalus or Finn (again). Tim saves the world from a comet by having his family put paper bags over their heads. What? What?! What?!! Calm down. This is just the world according to Ray Vukcevich, sf-ish enough to get him into the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Asimov's but also resembling the fantastic milieus of Gogol, Kafka, and Looney Toons. Whether you cotton to it depends on how you feel about cartoons made of words and prisons made of logic: Are you afraid or amused? Actually, either reaction works for appreciating Vukcevich's outlandish virtuosity. Sf fans with long memories will note Vukcevich's deadpan delivery and jokey-creepy aura, recall the wonder-workings of Fredric Brown (see From These Ashes [BKL Ap 15 01]), and smile. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"...Ray Vukcevich is a very slick writer, an authentic sprinter in an era of milers and all-out stayers.... " -- The New York Review of Science Fiction

"...a first-rate collection." -- Jeffrey Ford, author of The Beyond

"...a master of radical recombinations.... It would be...a great mistake to ignore the extraordinary talent of Ray Vukcevich." -- Faren Miller, Locus

"...funny, savage stories, all flint and steel, scraps of flannel, pratfalls and prideful weirdness, sparks falling away into darkness." -- James Sallis, author of Ghost of a Flea

"...resembling the fantastic milieus of Gogol, Kafka, and Looney Toons." -- Booklist, July 2001

"There is no other planet like planet Ray." -- Nina Kiriki Hoffman, author of Past the Size of Dreaming

"defy categorization by genre...will delight those who appreciated the risks Don DeLillo took in Ratner's Star." -- The Hartford Courant

Customer Reviews

Quality Collection!
Hi. Meet Me in the Moon Room contains many fine stories, a few brilliant stories, a couple of workman-like stories, some fablistic creations, and less than it's fair share of skippable stories. More good than bad; more great than horrible. Vukcevich is quirky, smart, and lives in Oregon but his mind races across the galaxy. If you read this, you read quality.

I give it four stars because there are some clunkers, but you might give it five stars because the clunkers are few and far between.

Wunnerful, wunnerful
I wanted to read this book because I so much enjoyed Ray's novel, The Man of Maybe Half-a-dozen Faces. This book is a treasure. There is honestly no predicting where Ray is going to go from moment to moment, but it's all perfectly in character within the context of the story, and the closest I can come to expressing what's going on with Vukcevich's prose is to tell you that it's genuinely original. He'll take you by surprise time and again, but delight you while he's doing it.

Many times when one is reading a book of short stories one begins to predict the endings of stories, or at least the style and tone of stories, three-quarters of the way through the collection. I couldn't begin to get there with this book: it was fresh from start to finish.

So: buy this book if you want something that is fresh, innovative, original, imaginative, intelligent, and diverting. I think that once you read Ray Vukcevich you'll want to read everything you can find by Ray Vukcevich. Give him a try! You won't be sorry!

Great writing
It made me laugh, It made me cry. It scared me. It was inspiring. As someone said on the cover there is no other planet like planet Ray. I strongly recommend this book for fans of good writing.
I look forward to Mr. Vukcevich's next book.