From the Inside Flap
Fear and wonder, a powerful combination.Terry Dowling is one of the best kept secrets in modern science fiction, fantasy and horror, a storyteller that Grand Master Jack Vance in his introduction calls, A very talented writer, one I admire and respect. Locus saw Dowling's first book, Rynosseros, as placing him among the masters of the field , while editor David G. Hartwell calls him A master craftsman...one of the best prose stylists in science fiction and fantasy. In the words of Harlan Ellison, Here is Jack Vance, Cordwainer Smith and Tiptree/Sheldon come again, reborn in one wonderful talent...you'll purr and growl with delight. Such praise is certainly deserved. Winner of the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Collection, Dowling's stories have appeared in The Year's Best Science Fiction, The Year's Best SF, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Best New Horror and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, in major anthologies like Songs of the Dying Earth, Inferno, The Dark, and Wizards, and such leading publications as SciFiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone.Now, for the first time, Amberjack: Tales of Fear & Wonder gives us the best of Terry's recent uncollected work in a single wonderful volume. From invasion by the truly alien in The Lagan Fishers , Truth Window and Flashmen to the gut-wrenching horror of Toother and The Suits at Auderlene , from the day-after-tomorrow, hardline SF of He Tried to Catch the Light to the epic sweep and swashbuckling adventure of The Library , this is imaginative storytelling as it should be: provocative, unsettling, beautifully crafted, full of invention and genuine surprise and, yes, a definite touch of the dark side. Who's the writer who can produce horror as powerful and witty as the best of Peter Straub, SF as wondrously byzantine and baroque as anything by Gene Wolfe, near-mainstream subtly tinged with the fantastic like some tales by Powers or Lansdale? Why Terry Dowling, of course. - Locus [November 1999] The only contemporary writer who comes close to that wondrous talespinner Cordwainer Smith. - Locus [February 1993] One of the best-known and most celebrated of Australian writers in any genre. - George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, Songs of the Dying Earth, 2009 A writer of great sophistication whose work has few parallels elsewhere in the genre. - Foundation [61] A master short story writer...one of the most important writers working in or out of any genre...one of the best and most important writers working in Australia today. - Jack Dann
