Story titles in this Collection:
Statement of Liability
Preface (to the forward to the backward)
Umbra
Of Parades, Avenues, and Afterwards
Of Hearts, Souls, and Straws
The Merry-Go-Round and Round and Round
The Haunting
Recipe for Avocado Salad
Edward and the Rainbow
Template for a Letter to Your Mother
Venus of the Swamps
The Hallway of Infinite Wonder
Edward and the Thespicians
Spacesuit
Dancing on the Edge of Infinity
Now She Came Like One Hell of a Wind

Some Bawdy Jokes
In the Middle of Nowhere and Not Doing a Hell of a Lot
Edward and His Alien (Oh My!)
How to Obtain Sanity, etc.
Five-Oh-Seven Pacific Standard Dreamtime
Things To Do List, Part II
The Sword
Afterword
Appendix

Edward Dancing on the Edge of Infinity
by Bruce Taylor

Trade paperback, 5.25 x 8, 196pp
ISBN 9781892619105
$10.00
Buy Now

Rating: IC (mature themes, some language, surreal scenarios)

"Edward," sayeth the Way of All Being (a soft and furry sentiency that runs through all, and appears in Edward with a sense of Swift Divinity, like a beam of light of roller skates), "Go forth and adjust the antidifibulium with the sonosinclastic Ergophoblotern and math the chronodimensulator adjusted with perfection to the anti-delleriumum phonoplasticulator--"
"Huh?" replieth Edward.

This novelized collection of semi-autobiographical short stories takes a sharp-witted poke at the fragile bubble that is reality/life/politics -- and consciousness in general. True to the un-tradition of magic realism, Taylor uses a variety of ingenious, hilarious, and agreeably disorienting techniques (not to mention games, puzzles, to-do-lists, and 194 footnotes) to blur the boundaries between dream and reality, science fiction and spiritual surrealism, and author, protagonist, and audience. With an introduction by Jay Lake.

Reviews and Comments:

Read Andrea Johnson's review in SFRevu

On Kafka's Uncle, and Other Strange Tales, by Bruce Taylor:
"It's important to realize that Bruce's stories are not strange; the world is, and he's separated himself from it in order to show us new realities, with remarkable clarity and insight. I am one of his admirers and I am not alone." 
       - Brian Herbert, New York Times best selling author

From the Introduction by Jay Lake:

Intertexted. Counternarrative. Crossplotted. Literary genres and subgenres are conversations. Shouting matches between writers, some of them living and some of them dead. Voices echo down the ages, answering to the unknown author of The Epic of Gilgamesh, to holy Moses and J and the redactor and the rest of the Bible’s editorial board, to Homer’s wine-dark prose, to Virgil, all the way to the call-and-response of modern day science fiction and fantasy. In this living, swirling mass of dialog and dialectic, some writers still manage to stand alone. Like a street corner prophet shouting signs of the Apocalypse and crooked stock tips in the same breath, Bruce Taylor is one of those literary unitarians. His prose is as distinctive as his appearance: a lithe, lean man in a travel-worn ice cream suit and top hat who perpetually seems to have unfolded himself from the steamer trunk of someone’s imagining. Taylor tells stories like a card trick emerging from the fast shuffle of bitten nails and sly, smiling patter. He plumbs the depths of biography, allegory and hagiography with a charming lack of self-consciousness. Edward is as real as your memory of last year’s breakfast and as strange as the Green Men behind the wheel of a monstrous SUV. All of it brought to the page with a knife-edged styling and a post-modern sense of structure that would keep a seminar full of MFA students cross-eyed for a month. Subversion. Inversion. Perversion. Reveling in the name of Mr. Magic Realism, Taylor pursues difficult themes and topics in his work. Edward the man is just that—a man—but Edward the book isn’t afraid of anything. Infused with both a psychotically persistent optimism and a powerful sense of indignation at the abuses of both authority and life in general, this book is a road map to the awakening of the American mind. I might say he’s a leftist, but that would be to badly misrepresent Taylor’s politics. I might say he’s a surrealist, but that would too simply label Taylor’s aesthetic. I might say he’s a humanitarian, and there I would be right. His passionate conviction bleeds through his work, staining the words with a post-hippie samizdat leavened with heartfelt compassion. Edward is Steal This Book, The Anarchist’s Cookbook, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull for this decade, written by the love child of Tom Robbins and Philip K. Dick. Read it with an open mind and willingness to be folded into a world you might not understand or trust, but which will reward you. Patience. Persistence. Results. Is Edward his masterwork? I should hope not, if only because I expect much more from Taylor in the years to come. Is it a statement? Surely—apocalyptic shout and investment advice rolled together in eighty thousand words of peribiographical speculation and moral philosophy. Or perhaps Edward is a fun read, a slice of life that you can fold around you for a few shining hours. What more do you want from a book? Quit paying attention to me and read Edward.

Jay Lake
Portland, OR