Leviathan Volume 3 »

The World Fantasy Award and British
Fantasy Award finalist Ministry of
Whimsy, publisher of the Philip K.
Dick Award winning The Troika,
presents the latest installment of the
original anthology series Leviathan.
Featuring Zoran Zivkovic's short novel
The Library. From Michael Moorcock to
L. Timmel Duchamp, Jeffrey Ford to
Brian Stableford, Leviathan 3 showcases
the best of contemporary fantastical
fiction. Also including work by Rikki
Ducornet, Carol Emshwiller, James
Sallis, with translations of Gautier and
Gourmont.

Publishers Weekly

Postmodern playfulness and solid storytelling intermingle fluidly in this bountiful third volume of the publisher's genre-bending anthology series. In contrast to previous volumes, whose eclectic contents resisted tidy categorization, the editors have grouped these 21 stories into five different elliptically defined "libraries." As befits a structural scheme that includes a virtual library of books as yet unwritten and a library whose sole volume changes its contents each time the cover is closed, the selections are dominated by themes of impermanence and transformation. James Sallis's elegiac "Up" is set in a world where people disappear once they've reached the limit of their life's possibilities, leaving only shadowy outlines to mark their passing. In Jeffrey Ford's amusingly sentimental "The Weight of Words," a man hires a scientist who has worked out the chemistry of language to adulterate messages to his ex-wife with expressions of affection invisible to the naked eye. Carol Emshwiller, in her delightful "The Prince of Mules," transports a lovestruck woman and the oblivious object of her affection into an enchanted alternate world where identities shift with amusingly unpredictable results. Though many stories are too elusive to register as more than experiments, some like Brian Stableford's ingenious "The Face of an Angel," in which a plastic surgeon is the unlikely agent of mankind's second fall from grace are sure to be shortlisted for fiction awards. The variety and ambition of this compilation mandates that lovers of speculative fiction consider it for their own self-defined libraries. (July) Mass Market Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.