Prayer for Broken Stone is a short story anthology by American author Dan Simmons. This includes 13 previous works, along with an introduction by Harlan Ellison in which the latter recounts how he "discovered" Dan Simmons at the Rockies "Writer Conference" at Colorado Mountain College in 1981. The title is a line of borrowing from TS Eliot's "The Hollow Men".
Video Prayers to Broken Stones
Isi
"Sungai Styx Berjalan Hulu"
Histori
"The River Styx Runs Upstream" is the first published work of Dan Simmons, and the short story that brought it to Ellison's attention in August 1979. Simmons tells the story in his introduction, noting that Ellison's initial reaction was this (perhaps a bit of a tongue on the cheek):
"Who is this Simmons ?" shouted Ellison. "Stand up, wave your hand, show yourself, what a monstrosity egomaniac who has a bile , an arrogant pride to make a story about five thousand damn words in this workshop? Show yourself, Simmons! "
Simmons survived Ellison's criticism, and Ellison encouraged Simmons to send it to Twilight Zone Magazine for their first annual contest for unpublished authors "(page 16, introduction to" The River Styx Runs Upstream "). Of the approximately 7,000 submissions, it was tied for the first place and published February 15, 1982 (according to the PtBS copyright page, in April, not February).
Plot summary
The real story is the classic Simmons in his literary allusion, with an inscription from Ezra Pound's Cantos ; the protagonist's father is a Pound scholar with a keen interest in Cantos (read from it for his sons), and the premise can be seen as coming from a line in Cantos.
The mother of the family has died of some unspecified disease. Beaten by sadness, father's offer (regardless of the prospect of financial collapse) with "Resurrectionists" to have his wife's corpses re-techized. The resurrection is a hollow one, for all higher cognitive functions are irreversible, even though it functions somewhat autonomously. Their family was stigmatized, and father slowly broke down and his class became less and less popular until he took a sabbatical to write his long-planned work at Cantos. He spends most of his hangover. Simon, the protagonist's brother, eventually committed suicide. A few years later, while the protagonist was at the university (sponsored by Resurrectionists, whom he had joined) the father committed suicide as well. He graduated and started working for them and helped spread the living dead. He does little but works, spending his spare time with the resurrected family.
"My Eyes Dare Not Meet in a Dream"
History
"Eyes I Dare Not Meet in Dreams" was first published in OMNI Magazine in September 1987. It was inspired by his 1969 experience in Germantown, Pennsylvania, when he worked with disabled children and retired as an assistant teacher in the Day School of Upsals for the Blind. The story forms the seed, the original form, from the later novel of Simmons, The Hollow Man .
Plot summary
The two main characters are the Americans of Bremen and Gail. Both are telepathic, the only other telepath ever known. Inevitably, they fall in love. When Gail died of illness, Bremen was devastated. He gave up his career in mathematics and became a drifter. At the start of the action, he has ended up in a facility for underage children who are disabled and vice versa. He became a sort of man named Robby, who had been blinded and mentally disabled before being born by his mother's drug abuse habit, and decided that before he left the facility (because he felt he had been there for so long), he would use telepathic powers to give Robby a gift kinds: pictures and sounds from the outside world.
Bremen broke through Robby's mental defenses, but unexpectedly sucked into Robby's mind, where Gail manifested. The mix between Gail and Bremen is deep and deep. Unfortunately, the tension holds Bremen and Gail in mind and in understanding what comes up pushes Robby's chubby body into the abyss and ends. Bremen abandoned Robby's thoughts, taking Gail and Robby with him while Robby's body died.
"Vanni Fucci Live and Good and Live in Hell"
This story, and the next one, are both very funny and related to the evangelists. It was first published in Dark Harvest's "Night Visions 5" in 1988.
The events involved a day when a large and immoral televangelist (Brother Freddy) saw Dale Evans's erroneously scheduled performance when an exotic Italian-looking companion was walking on stage. He announces that he is Vanni Fucci (the character of Dante Alighieri Divine Comedy ) and that "for the last seven hundred years I have lived in hell." (p. 72) Every Bolgia Dante's Hell was allowed to send one of his inhabitants (Fucci is the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Hell Circle) back to Earth for a short time, and Fucci was accidentally chosen. Unlike most people who return like that, he does not indulge in as much of the world's pleasures, but has returned to fix a sad problem. He recounts that Hell and even gods were created and not created by the power of beliefs, and unfortunately Fucci is condemned to eternal suffering simply because he is politically cross from Dante and Hell Dante is the most popular version (and so, the original).
At this point, it is clear that supernatural forces are at work: Security is prevented from going up on stage by invisible and very tough walls, and cameras are physically dismantled but still transmitted through the air.
From Fucci's perspective, Hell's torture is bad enough, but a colossal and cosmic injustice is condemned to Hell because his politics exacerbate him enough so that he "gives the Lord of the figs"; to punish Fucci for his blasphemy, every thief "within a hundred yards" became "Chelidrids, jaculi, phareans, cenchriads" and "two-headed amphisbands" (pg 80), who then attacked him and made him ill. violent party. This punishment of course further exacerbates Fucci.
Recently, Hell's management has added a big-screen TV that broadcasts "Brother Freddy's Hallelujah Breakfast Club" eight times a day. Just talking about it on stage is aggravating Fucci so he gives the God of figs. Twice. Soon most of the audience (and Brother Freddy and most of his staff) turned into a named monster and attacked Fucci. The whole animal ball disappears in the fires of hell and sulfur.
"Vexed to Nightmare by Cradle Shake"
"Vexed to Nightmare by Cradle Goyang" (other than an allusion to "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats) is a short story relating to televangelism after an apocalypse. Simmons mentions in the introduction that he was commissioned to write a Christmas story that included a "neglected gift", but that he was given free freedom on the contrary: one of the authors was given a happy and happy story, so that the other three could be as without pout and dark as they are amused. Strangely, the happy tale was never really put forward, so the collection was dark. It does not help that their next Christmas is reissued in Asimov's SF Magazine where it serves to blast the next for a group of people. (p.Ã, 86). As Simmons proceeded to relate, "Not long before I had a reputation as The Man Who Sacrificed Christmas with a Survival Knife." It was first published in Mile High Futures in November 1985.
Plot summary
It's set in a flooding New York post-disaster city, where televangelists have sent missionaries equipped with Satellite TV reception units to transform the infidels. Jimmy-Joe's brother Billy-Bob has been sent to NYC. There he meets the Red Bantam clan, which pictures the tattoo of a denial on its members (as Simmons notes, this is a sly reference to Bantam Books publishers), which Jimmy-Joe interpreted as the Mark of the Beast. Requested by the Holy Spirit, Jimmy-Joe takes a survival knife that appears as an extra gift as a gift. He told the children that "Anyone on the roof tonight will see [the infidel and therefore evil, from his point of view] Santa Claus and his reindeer." When someone shows up on the flight to search for him, Billy-Bob sacrifices him on the altar holding the antenna with a survival knife.
"Remembering Siri"
"Remembering Siri" is a science-fiction short story; this is the first work of Simmons written (the original of "Centaur's Death" is probably the absolute first story ever told about Cantos) in his Hyperion Cantos fictional universe, published in Asimov's SF Magazine in December 1983 Simmons uses it as the seed for Hyperion (where it appears almost word for word ) and The Fall of Hyperion . Simmons's inspiration is a proposition, "What if Romeo and Juliet ever lived?" (p. 100) For the plot summary, see "The Consul's Tale".
"Metastasis"
"Metastasis" is a horror short story published in the Dark Harvest anthology of 1980 Night Visions 5 .
It's related to Louis Steig, whose mother is dying of cancer. He rushed to his side, but his car hit a black ice. He suffered damage to his eyesight and his brain. When visiting his mother, he finds a creature that can not be seen by anyone else, whom he calls a "cancer vampire", which pervades his mother with "tumor-slug". At his funeral, many of these vampires visited to feed the now fat and growing snails that permeated his body. Finally after his sister and fiancé had cancer, Louis discovered that he could kill a cancer vampire by taking radioactive isotopes into his body; This isotope acts as a beacon for snails, which are poisoned when they flock to it. In turn, these snails poison the vampires who eat them when the vampires themselves flock to Louis.
"Offers"
"The Offering" is a teleplay adaptation of "Metastasis", which appeared on the TV show Monster in 1990. It is largely loyal to "Metastasis", simplifying things and making titles less fun.
E-Ticket to 'Namland
"E-Ticket to 'Namland" was first published in OMNI Magazine in November 1987. It concerns a Vietnam war veteran who returns to Vietnam and after visiting a recreation park that creates war, rages and flees to the forest with his grandchildren, kills his pursuer with the weapons he stole from South Vietnam who had returned for revenge on the Korean government for betraying everything he and his associates strove for.
"Iverson's Pits"
"Iverson's Pits" is another horror short story, published in 1988 in "Night Visions 5" by Dark Harvest.
Plot summary
It tells the fate of a young Scout during the fiftieth anniversary of Battle of Gettysburg. There he was randomly assigned to assist a veteran, a Captain Montgomery from North Carolina. The captain swung an antique pistol at an anonymous scout, and ordered the cart and team. Incidentally, only such a team emerges, and the captain goes to "Iverson's Pits", where he expects to achieve an achievement for his long-held obsession with retaliation to his former commander Alfred Iverson. Apparently, Iverson's inability had prompted him to order his people into Union trap gear while he had lunch. To cover up his own failings, Iverson claims that all his people are cowards and try to give up.
Two hide in some weeds and ambush a young man who looks just like Iverson. The boy stopped the Captain to kill him, because the traveler was too young. They respectfully welcome travelers, whose names are Sheads, and visit his home. Jessup Sheads toasts the captain's regiment, and then Iverson himself with some local wine. The captain rejected the second toast, cursing Iverson. Sheads reveals herself as Iverson's nephew. Iverson goes down, and nephew kills Montgomery when he pulls a gun on Iverson. About to bury Captain, Iverson ordered Sheads to kill scout too, to silence all witnesses, when the earth began to move and open. With his teeth, he grabs and devours Sheads. Iverson tried to escape with his horse and kill Scout, but he threw a lantern into Iverson, distracting him. Hole took Iverson and his horse, and Scout eventually became a historian specializing in Gettysburg.
"Shave and Hair Pieces, Two Bites"
"Shave and a Haircut is a horror short story published in Masque III (edited by J. N. Williamson) in 1989.
Two boys, Kevin and Tommy, have become convinced (mostly Kevin) that two barbers who run an unpopular and obscure hairdresser in the city are actually vampires. Despite failing most vampire tests (such as disliking garlic, crossing running water, crosses etc.), both go into the barbershop basement. They were arrested and the truth was revealed: no barber is a vampire. Instead, they draw blood for their vampire population; Vampires have changed over the centuries into gigantic objects that are more akin to blisters weighing 1000 pounds than anything humans can infect. They bargain with a barber guild: if the guild will hide and feed them, then the barber will be allowed to take some purified blood that gives partial immortality to humans. Both were forcibly inducted into this bleak brotherhood.
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