John Kessel
Writer, teacher of writing, professor of literature, and author of speculative fiction, literary fiction, slipstream
SOME BOOKS
Corrupting Dr. Nice
August Faison and his gorgeous daughter Genvieve are rogues of the first water--seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of them all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem at the time of Christ.
Dr. Owen Vannice is too innocent, and far too rich, for his own good. A fabulously wealthy young amateur paleontologist who has just spent the last year, and billions of his parents' dollars, doing research in the Cretaceous period, he finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow.
Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. Now he works for the exploitive crosstime corporations, which have turned his timeline into a tourist trap, complete with luxury hotels and junkets to the Crucifixion.
When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed. For Genvieve is falling in love with "Dr. Nice" against her better judgement, and is willing to double-cross her father to win him. And Owen is losing his innocence, joining with Simon and his fellow zealots in their revolutionary plans to drive out the invaders from the future.
Skillfully interweaving romantic comedy, heart-stopping suspense, and brilliantly satiric social commentary, Corrupting Dr. Nice is sophisticated speculative fiction by an award-winning modern master.
Good News from Outer Space
George Eberhart is an online tabloid reporter and writer--once a legitmate newsman, the crumbling economy has forced him into writing "news" that is little more than fiction. But now George is onto something, something real. He has perceived a pattern in the sensationalist stories he reports, a pattern that has led him to believe that the stories of alien invasion may be something more than hysteria.
The Reverend Jimmy-Don Gilray is a TV evangelist, whose Zion Tribulation Hour brings in millions of dollars and converts every day. His message is simple: on the stroke of midnight, December 31, God will send his messengers to Earth in a spaceship, and the Day of Judgement will dawn. There is nothing that The Rev wants less than some reporter proving that the Aliens are already here.
And meanwhile, all over America, strange beings who look human are doing totally inexplicable things--committing acts which seem like meaningless cruelty or kindness to their victims.
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence
and Other Stories
John Kessel, ever at the forefront of speculative fiction, mashes up Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein and comes up with a huge win: “Pride and Prometheus,” which received the Nebula and Shirley Jackson awards and was nominated for many others. The fourteen stories in this astonishing, long-awaited collection intersect imaginatively with literary classics (The Wizard of Oz, Flannery O’Connor) and history. The Baum Plan also includes Kessel’s modern classic “Lunar Quartet” sequence about life on the moon.
The Collected Kessel
A retrospective collection of the best of John Kessel's short science fiction and fantasy, noted for its wit, satirical cunning, and dark sense of humor.
Kessel is one of the most acclaimed speculative fiction writers of his generation, winner of the Nebula, James Tiptree, Sturgeon, and Shirley Jackson Awards and author of the apocalyptic satire Good News from Outer Space and the screwball comedy time travel story Corrupting Dr. Nice. The Collected Kessel contains forty-two stories, never before gathered into a single volume, spanning Kessel’s entire career, from the 1982 Nebula Award winning novella “Another Orphan” to the 2008 Nebula Award winning novelette “Pride and Prometheus.” In addition, Kessel has written brand new story notes to accompany each of these stories.
Visit the Society of Cousins, a utopian lunar colony where men have all the privilege and women all the power. in "Invaders," witness the arrival of aliens from space who come to earth from across the galaxy seeking cocaine. Join an idealistic monk on a desperate mission to liberate his planet in the far-future space opera, "Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance." Time travel back to classic Hollywood for encounters with Orson Welles, Preston Sturges, and Marilyn Monroe. By turns funny, satirical, tragic, wry, and witty, Kessel's stories challenge the mind and the heart.