The Heat Death of the Universe and Other Stories

Book excerpt: This new printing of Pamela Zoline's famous cross-genre story collection reproduces the 1988 text, but with an important emendation on page 123. Aside from that, and a dazzling new cover, this edition brings to a new audience, a new generation, the same excitement that comes of encountering the emergence of an important new voice for visionary fiction. Only very rarely does there appear a book that captures the attention of a broad spectrum of readers, draws extraordinary praise from critics, and catapults the author overnight into an established presence. That is exactly what has happened with this collection. This book presents two novellas (including "Sheep," which appeared first in our Likely Stories) and three long stories. Alongside her oft-anthologized story "The Heat Death of the Universe," will be found "Instructions for Exiting This Building in Case of Fire," "The Holland of the Mind," and "Busy About the Tree of Life." We're taken from the ontological recesses of Sarah Boyle's kitchen into an encyclopedic cure for insomnia, and then find recounted what must surely be the most catastrophic (and hilarious) genealogy in modern fiction. All along the way, as the cultural detritus of Western Civ seeps in between the quotidian cracks, Zoline never loses sight of the personal dimensions of life.