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Live! From Planet Earth

By George Alec Effinger & Neil Gaiman &
Live! From Planet Earth by George Alec Effinger & Neil Gaiman &  digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

The Hugo Award–winning author’s “most memorable short stories . . . a tribute from those who best knew his work—his friends, fellow writers, and editors” (SFRevu).

George Alec Effinger was a true master of satirical Science Fiction. Before his death in 2002, he gained the highest esteem amongst his peers for his pitch-perfect stylistic mimicry and his great insight into the human condition. Despite a life filled with chronic illness and pain, Effinger was a prolific novelist and short story writer, earning multiple Nebula and Hugo Award nominations.

LIVE! FROM PLANET EARTH represents a very special look at the many works of this unique genius. These 22 short pieces have been specifically selected and introduced by his fellow writers and editors, from Michael Bishop to Jack Dann, Mike Resnick to Neil Gaiman. Each writes about his or her memories of Effinger and his legacy.

Included are “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” in which Earth is visited by benevolent aliens who happen to have annoying opinions about everything. “Everything but Honor” goes along as a black physicist time-travels to 1860 to murder a Civil War general. Also included here are Effinger’s O.Niemand stories, which perfectly mimic the styles of Steinbeck, Hemingway and Twain. The results are a tour de force sure to please existing fans and make new fans of anyone who reads them. 

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About George Alec Effinger

George A. Effinger was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1947. He attended Yale University, where an organic chemistry course disabused him of the notion of becoming a doctor. He had the opportunity to meet many of his science fiction idols thanks to his first wife, who was Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm’s babysitter. With their encouragement, he began writing science fiction in 1970. He published at least twenty novels and six collections of short fiction, including When Gravity Fails and The Exile Kiss. He also wrote and published two crime novels, Felicia and Shadow Money. With his Budayeen novels, Effinger helped to found the cyberpunk genre. He was a Hugo and Nebula Award winner and is a favorite among fellow science fiction writers.

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is the celebrated author of books, graphic novels, short stories, films, and television for readers of all ages. Some of his most notable titles include the highly lauded #1 New York Times bestseller Norse Mythology; the groundbreaking and award-winning Sandman comic series; The Graveyard Book (the first book ever to win both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals); American Gods, winner of many awards and recently adapted into the Emmy-nominated Starz TV series (the second season slated to air in 2019); The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was the UK’s National Book Award 2013 Book of the Year. Good Omens, which he wrote with Terry Pratchett a very long time ago (but not quite as long ago as Don’t Panic) and for which Gaiman wrote the screenplay, will air on Amazon and the BBC in 2019.

Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan

Barbara Hambly

<DIV>Barbara Hambly (b. 1951) is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as historical novels set in the nineteenth century. After receiving a master's degree in medieval history, she published The Time of the Dark, the first novel in the Darwath saga, in 1982, establishing herself as an author of serious speculative fiction. Since then she has created several series, including the Windrose Chronicles, Sun-Cross, and Sun Wolf and Starhawk, in addition to writing for the Star Wars and Star Trek universes.<br><br>Besides fantasy, Hambly has won acclaim for the James Asher vampire series, which won the Locus Award for best horror novel in 1989, and the Benjamin January mystery series, featuring a brilliant African-American surgeon in antebellum New Orleans. She lives in Los Angeles.</DIV>

Pamela Sargent

Pamela Sargent has won the Nebula and Locus Awards and was honored in 2012 with the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award, given for lifetime contributions to science fiction and fantasy scholarship. Her many novels include Venus of Dreams, The Shore of Women, The Golden Space, The Sudden Star, and The Alien Upstairs.
About Ruler of the Sky, Sargent’s historical novel of Genghis Khan, told largely from the points of view of women, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has commented: “Scholarly without ever seeming pedantic, the book is fascinating from cover to cover and does admirable justice to a man who might very well be called history’s single most important character.” The Washington Post has called Sargent “one of the genre’s best writers,” and Michael Moorcock has said of her work: “If you have not read Pamela Sargent, then you should make it your business to do so at once. She is in many ways a pioneer, both as a novelist and as a short story writer. . . . She is one of the best.”
Sargent is the editor of the Women of Wonder anthologies, the first collections of science fiction by women. Her novel Climb the Wind, set in the United States after the Civil War, was a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and her novel Earthseed has been optioned by Paramount Pictures. Melissa Rosenberg, the scriptwriter for all five Twilight films, is set to write and produce the movie through her company Tall Girls Productions.

Lawrence Person

Neal Barrett

Richard Gilliam

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