Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester

Available for the first time in a single volume: the pioneering short stories of Alfred Bester, author of The Stars My Destination, including two never-before-published pieces. Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester's methods. His stories never stand still a moment. --Damon Knight, author of Why Do Birds Alfred Bester took science fiction into hyperdrive, endowing it with a wit, speed, and narrative inventiveness that have inspired two generations of writers. And nowhere is Bester funnier, speedier, or more audacious than in these seventeen short stories--two of them previously unpublished--that have now been brought together in a single volume for the first time.

Read about the sweet-natured young man whose phenomenal good luck turns out to be disastrous for the rest of humanity. Find out why tourists are flocking to a hellish little town in a post-nuclear Kansas. Meet a warlock who practices on Park Avenue and whose potions comply with the Pure Food and Drug Act. Make a deal with the Devil--but not without calling your agent. Dazzling, effervescent, sexy, and sardonic, Virtual Unrealities is a historic collection from one of science fiction's true pathbreakers.

Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction. --Harry Harrison