his tripartite omnibus of the shorter works of Patrick O'Leary--author of two well-received novels, Door Number Three and The Gift--contains eight stories, nine essays and 28 poems.
In "23 Skidoo," an alien narrator posing as a human shares his psychoses as he tries to maintain and integrate his personalities. "Brand Equity" offers a future where chaos and uncertainty are reduced by unthinking allegiance to commercial products. A father experiences an eerie glimpse of his son's potential future, triggered by a captured bat, in "Bat Boy." Telephone technology and Orwellian monitoring converge in "The Problem Phone." "We Are All Together" examines an alternate life for John Lennon. "The Maker of Miniatures" follows the scientifically advanced artistic struggles of a young girl named O. The longest story, "Before and After," details the weird experiences of two men in a bizarre club that promises an experience "beyond sex." Finally, "Ding, Ding, Ding" recounts an absurd Christmas concatenation of fates.
Among O'Leary's essays, we find several themes repeating. Behind-the-scenes peeks at the gestation of his own stories and novels are to be found in "How I Wrote a Science Fiction" and "Why Not?". Appreciations of fellow authors focus on Gene Wolfe ("If Ever a Wiz There Was") and Spider Robinson ("The Importance of Being Spider"). Similar tributes to musicians involve Van Morrison ("More Than Meat") and Randy Newman ("A Matter of Vision"). And the future's verdict on our current shabby existence is the burden of "1000-2000."
O'Leary's poetry--mostly narrative in nature, as he takes pains to describe it--reflects an SF writer's peculiar slant of vision even when the subject is the writer's own vasectomy ("Vasectomy: A Poem in Two Parts") or raising children ("Only Parents Believe in Monsters"). Poems with specifically science-fictional themes include "Somewhere Like Leonardo," about unsung childhood geniuses lurking among us, and "The Astronaut," which lets us peer into the mind of an Apollo voyager.
An impossible bird in the hand
This kind of wide-ranging collection is reminiscent of an ambitious project Harlan Ellison might undertake: a panoramic overview of the career of a writer who cannot be bound by one genre or form. And although O'Leary is still only in the early stages of his writing life, his voice is so assured and empathetic that he deserves this kind of retrospective.
Starting his career with two novels rather than with shorter works (a third book, The Impossible Bird, is due soon), O'Leary might be unknown to the magazine readers who follow the current scene. And since many of these tales, "mediations" and poems appeared first in small-press 'zines, their consolidation between covers in this attractive book (the Rick Lieder cover is a stunner) is particularly valuable.
O'Leary's voice might summon up in readers associations with such satirical and sardonic wizards as Terry Bisson and James Morrow. Like these authors, O'Leary can spin a simple situation--a man calls up his phone company to complain about his service--into a surreal adventure that ends up in the crazy stratosphere of human confusion. Yet O'Leary's quiver is not limited to this single arrow of comedy, for in a piece like "Bat Boy" he strikes melancholy notes similar to Bradbury's in The October Country. And in "Before and After," which starts out gritty and sleazy then somehow miraculously segues into tender and wise, he emulates the aforementioned Ellison.
The essays confirm and deepen the impressions produced by the stories, as we get familiar with O'Leary the man. "It Only Has to Stink--Impeachable Offenses" is a splendidly partisan political assault cast in the form of a conversation, where O'Leary the citizen and O'Leary the dramatist merge. As for his poems, they are all impeccably structured, full of clarity and insight into life's smaller moments when we might gain an unexpected glimpse of larger prospects. In a poem like "Pinball," a simple game which others might disdain is converted into a complete allegory of life.
