Last Plane to Heaven
The Final Collection
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Last Plane to Heaven is the final and definitive short story collection of award-winning SF author Jay Lake, author of Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura.
Long before he was a novelist, SF writer Jay Lake, was an acclaimed writer of short stories. In Last Plane to Heaven, Lake has assembled thirty-two of the best of them. Aliens and angels fill these pages, from the title story, a hard-edged and breathtaking look at how a real alien visitor might be received, to the savage truth of "The Cancer Catechisms." Here are more than thirty short stories written by a master of the form, science fiction and fantasy both.
This collection features an original introduction by Gene Wolfe.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The prolific Lake's death in 2014, after a long, harrowing, and very public battle with cancer, gives extra weight to these 32 epitaphs. Lake's command of language is strong and sincere, and his stories of everyday heartaches, filled with secret fears and self-delusion, whisk readers from inner geographies of mind to limitless gulfs of space. Lake's characters emotionally embody the doomed heroism of Nordic gods sneering at grim fates, finding bittersweet redemption in dark byways of human ignorance. Reality is shattered when an alien controls a hardened mercenary's dreams in the darkly romantic "Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story." Cynical humor greets oblivion in "The Speed of Time." In surprisingly intelligent space opera ("Permanent Fatal Errors") and a visit to the City Imperishable ("Promises"), revelations eschew oversentimentality for moral complexity. "Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names" injects pathos into the Cthulhu mythos, questioning identity and raising hackles. Malevolent faeries face metaphysical annihilation in a dying young woman's cancer cells in "Her Fingers Like Whips, Her Eyes Like Razors." And in "The Cancer Catechism," Lake discovers faith in the inevitability of death. As he states, "In the end, words are all that survive us"; his fans and friends may find some comfort in the hope that his words will live on forever.
