You have just picked up this wonderful book, and so far you know very little about it. You don't yet know that it's bursting with short stories ranging across the spectrum of speculative fiction by one of Australia's finest genre writers, comfortable in any mode. You don't yet know that you'll have just finished a thrilling new take on King Arthur and Camelot, when you find yourself reading a story in which an older and wiser Lee Harvey Oswald saves a life.
There are so many stories, from so many genres, so many styles, you could be forgiven for thinking you're reading an anthology filled with stories by many different writers. But you're not. This is all one man. One of Australia's best, one of Western Australia's very best, this is Stephen Dedman, and we are blessed to have him and his stories. - KA Bedford, award-winning author of Time Machines Repaired While-U-Wait! and Black Light
It's a much-abused promise, but Stephen Dedman's 'Charm, Strangeness, Mass and Spin' genuinely does have something for everyone: Astounding tales of time-travel, alien worlds, and alternate realities. Stories set against dystopias almost indistinguishable from our own world, new twists on Arthurian myth, and trips back to the Old West. There's a far-future human colony where gender is an almost-forgotten concept; an encounter between Fritz Lang and a young Adolf Hitler, with consequences that neither could ever have forseen; an obsessive fan who pays handsomely for the teeth of Edgar Allan Poe...while the seller of these grisly trophies pays rather more dearly than that. There are extraterrestrial beings, dinosaurs, cloned sex-toys, and ghosts. Many ghosts. And monsters - some of whom are terrifyingly human. There are places in this collection that no sane person would ever want to visit, but Dedman's clear and utterly-engaging prose takes you there, and you'll be thankful for the journey. An astounding collection. - Chuck McKenzie
