Perpetuity Blues

The work of novelist and short-story writer Neal Barrett, Jr., runs the gamut from science fiction, westerns, and historical novels to off-the-wall but well-received mainstream fiction, and this collection brings together 11 previously uncollected short stories, many of which first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Best of the West, and The New Frontier. It also features the novella “Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” and presents the reader with a distinct mix of science fiction and western, which is Barrett at his offbeat best. Here readers will discover Billy the Kid, Erwin Rommel, and the Wright brothers all sharing a dilapidated hotel on the edge of nowhere in “Sallie C,” see how business is done with art-loving extraterrestrials in the “Trading Post,” and meet Maggie McKenna, a country girl whose auctorial aspirations are aided by an alien temporarily stranded on Earth, in “Perpetuity Blues.”