Black Pockets: And Other Dark Thoughts

This collection of 19 horror stories, culled from the career of a writer best known for his literary science fiction, explores horror as a product of the human mind by allowing personal, political, and metaphysical obsessions to unleash terrors that beset these characters and by refusing to rely on genre-typical terrors such as serial killers and ancient curses. The original novella "Black Pockets" depicts a hate so all-consuming that a man makes a bargain to carry out the revenge plot of a dying enemy in order to gain the power to pursue his own victims. In unusual zombie tale, "I Walked with Fidel," Fidel Castro's ideals are slowly betrayed by both Cold War superpowers. And a Kafka-like uneasiness pervades "A Piano Full of Dead Spiders," in which a composer's music actually is the result of spiders walking on piano strings. Posing as philosophical puzzles, the stories gain emotional power from an attention to character development and the insightful investigation of both private and collective nightmares.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Veteran SF author Zebrowski (Macrolife) probes the nether reaches of horror in this outstanding story collection. Spanning three decades and divided into "Personal Terrors," "Political Horrors" and "Metaphysical Fears," these 19 disturbing tales treat "the greatest horrors that dwell inside us," or what Zebrowski calls "our jailed innards." From "The Wish in the Fear," a story of heartbreak and alienation, through "The Soft Terrible Music," a searing portrait of the fate of dissidents, to the soul-shaking "Interpose," a wholly new look at Jesus Christ, Zebrowski treats the psychological enigma of the look-alike Other—or perhaps what he calls "the fault in us" responsible for mankind's crimes. Clearly displayed also is Zebrowski's deep sympathy for the underdog, whether the starving Polish zoo animals in his ferocious allegory "General Jarulzelski at the Zoo" or the helpless female trapped by her reproductive system in "First Love, First Fear." The title story sums up humanity's Faustian fascination with power, forcing those fearful glimpses into what we all would rather not see: ourselves. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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