The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories

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Description

A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnsons speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning The Privilege of the Happy Ending and The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, as well as two never-before published works.

Reviews

Praise for Kij Johnsons stories:

Wondrously strange and sinister stories of other worlds, future times, and everyday life gone haywire. Plus: A cat walks 100 miles through Heian-era Japan in the loveliest short story I read all year. Dan Kois, Slate

The best short-story collection I read this year was Kij JohnsonsAt the Mouth of the River of Bees. Adam Roberts,The Guardian

Ursula Le Guin comes immediately to mind when you turn the pages of Kij Johnsons first book of short stories, her debut collection is that impressive. The title piece has that wonderful power we hope for in all fiction we read, the surprising imaginative leap that takes us to recognize the marvelous in the everyday. Alan Cheuse, NPR

For all the distances traveled and the mysteries solved, those strange, inexplicable things remain. This is Johnsons fiction: the familiar combined with the inexplicable. The usual fantastic. The unknowable that undergirds the everyday. Sessily Watt, Bookslut

In her first collection of short fiction, Johnson (The Fox Woman) covers strange, beautiful, and occasionally disturbing territory without ever missing a beat. . . . Johnsons language is beautiful, her descriptions of setting visceral, and her characters compellingly drawn. These 18 tales, most collected from Johnsons magazine publications, are sometimes off-putting, sometimes funny, and always thought provoking. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[The] stories are original, engaging, and hard to put down. . . . Johnson has a rare gift for pulling readers directly into the heart of a story and capturing their attention completely. Those who enjoy a touch of the other in their reading will love this collection. Library Journal(starred review)

When shes at her best, the small emotional moments are as likely to linger in your memory as the fantastic imagery. Johnson would fit quite comfortably on a shelf with Karen Russell, Erin Morgenstern and others who hover in the simultaneous state of being both 'literary' and 'fantasy' writers. Shelf Awareness

The book overflows with stories that, sentence by sentence, scene by scene, can never be taken for granted; they change in your hands, turn and shift, take on new faces, new shapes. Their breathing grows heavy, soft, then heavy again. You lean in close.James Sallis, F&SF

Kij Johnson has won short fiction Nebula awards in each of the last three years. All three winning stories are in this collection; when you read the book, you may wonder why all the others didnt win awards as well. Ponies, to pick just one, is a shatteringly powerful fantasy about the least lovely aspects of human social behaviour and also about small girls and their pet horses. Evocative, elegant, and alarmingly perceptive, Johnson reshapes your mental landscape with every story she writes. David Larsen,New Zealand Herald

Apparently, Johnson publishes in fantasy and SF mags because theyre the only ones whod have her, thoughNew Yorkershould be so lucky. PopMatters

"'Ponies . . . reads like the sort of thing that might have happened if Little Golden Books had inadvertently sent a contract to Chuck Palahniuk. . . .Its not surprising that ['The Man Who Bridged the Mist'] won the Nebula Award and garnered Hugo, Sturgeon, and Locus nominations, since its a stunning example of what Johnson does best using the materials of SF, fantasy, myth, and even romance not as genres to inhabit, but as tools for building or, you could say, as a kind of story kit. Locus

Author Bio

Kij Johnson (kijjohnson.com) writes speculative and experimental fiction, and has won the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, among others. She also writes gaming material and teaches creative writing, novel idea generation, and science fiction and fantasy lit, at the University of Kansas and elsewhere. She is an associate director of the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction and the Speculative Imagination.