Rating: 
Summary: Dark, but not entirely downbeat.
Review: The contents of BLACK BUTTERFLIES have been neatly dissected into 'This World' and 'That World'. The stories in 'This World' lack overtly fantastic elements, and most of them are very frightening indeed. Shirley's version of 'This World' seems to be populated largely by psychopaths who murder and rape as much from boredom and bafflement as anything else; one of the few characters in 'This World' to display anything resembling empathy is the computer science teacher in 'What Would You Do For Love?', and she uses computer models to help predict the actions of people around her. 'What Would You Do For Love?' is not only the last story in 'This World', as though it were a segue into 'That World', it's the first in which most of the characters will seem familiar to nearly all of us, and the first with something like a conventionally happy ending. Shirley's talent is that he enables us to empathise with characters who have so little empathy for others, whether we want to or not, despite gut-punch beginnings that many horror writers might use as a coup de grace. 'That World' throws overt fantasy elements into Shirley's universe, and while some of the stories (such as 'Pearldoll' and 'Aftertaste') are almost conventional horror tales, others are... different. 'The Exquisitely Bleeding Heads of Doktur Palmer Vreedeez', in which celebrities are encased alive in plastic sheathing for a horrific sculpture garden to the enjoyment of Idi Amin, is a enormously over-the-top sick joke. 'Delia and the Dinner Party', in which a little girl's 'imaginary friend' translates her parents' over-dinner conversations, is a gem, and if you'd prefer something upbeat and dislike televangelists as devoutly as I do, 'Flaming Telepaths' will make your day.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing collection of strange and wonderful stories
Review: This book deftly transcends genre in every conceivable way. A marvelous and diverse collection of stories from the man who brought you cyberpunk. --Thomas S. Roche is editor of the NOIROTICA series and co-editor of IN THE SHADOW OF THE GARGOYLE.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing collection of strange and wonderful stories
Review: This book deftly transcends genre in every conceivable way. A marvelous and diverse collection of stories from the man who brought you cyberpunk. --Thomas S. Roche is editor of the NOIROTICA series and co-editor of IN THE SHADOW OF THE GARGOYLE.
Rating: 
Summary: disturbing
Review: This book of short stories is divided into two sections, This World and That World, which deal with everyday horrors and otherworldly horrors respectively. Of these two sections, the first is the most successful, which mostly involve the shocking realities of the underbelly of society, evoking a hybrid of John Rechy and Stephen King, and hitting you with the impact of a screwdriver to the kidneys (the best of these, "Cram", will have you thinking twice about ever getting on the subway again). The second section, comprising more outright horror, is less successful (By far the best of these is "Delia and the Dinner Party"). Though Shirley is a very vivid writer, the shocks in these stories seem mostly arbitrary and forced compared to those in the first section. Still worth checking out, though. I also docked him some points for using rock lyrics as titles-- he's much too good a writer to be slumming like that.
Rating:
Summary: disturbing
Review: This book of short stories is divided into two sections, This World and That World, which deal with everyday horrors and otherworldly horrors respectively. Of these two sections, the first is the most successful, which mostly involve the shocking realities of the underbelly of society, evoking a hybrid of John Rechy and Stephen King, and hitting you with the impact of a screwdriver to the kidneys (the best of these, "Cram", will have you thinking twice about ever getting on the subway again). The second section, comprising more outright horror, is less successful (By far the best of these is "Delia and the Dinner Party"). Though Shirley is a very vivid writer, the shocks in these stories seem mostly arbitrary and forced compared to those in the first section. Still worth checking out, though. I also docked him some points for using rock lyrics as titles-- he's much too good a writer to be slumming like that.
Rating:
Summary: Strong stuff, not for the timid or the easily offended.
Review: This collection isn't for the faint-of-heart, nor for the easily offended. John Shirley holds nothing back, and these stories are thoroughly chilling, sexually perverse, and from a world we don't really want to know. We meet characters we don't really want to know such as the title lady in the first story, "Barbara", a victim of a carjacking who in her weirdness takes over the situation and takes her carjackers into her own perverted world. Then there's the cop who suspects his partner has murdered his own wife. A subway trip during an earthquake. A probing into the psyches of slasher movie fans. A televangelist telecasting from one of the most satanic appearing rock cafes. An immortal slaughtering Earth's remaining population. These are stories to be taken one at a time. Maybe they're not all great, but you'll find several you won't forget.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting read...
Review: This dark collection of stories was very interesting. Take a nightmare, and imagine it being warped, twisted, and then shown to you in print. John Shirley had one or two stories in there that I've read again, simply because they were so powerful. Others, I read, and promptly flushed from my memory banks... If you're looking for spooky, violent and fairly sexually themed stories, this is good. If you're easily offended, or have a weak stomach, skip this...
Rating:
Summary: Immediately buy anything by John Shirley
Review: This is an incredible book. Without a doubt, original, intense, and scary. It's not horror, and it's not science fiction. Black Butterflies is unique. John Shirley is a vastly underrated postmodernist writer. Anyone who longs for something different should read his work. I did, and I enjoyed it all immensely.
Rating:
Summary: dark stories for this and that world
Review: _Black Butterflies_ by John Shirley is a collection of a decade's worth of dark short stories by Shirley, the author of _Wetbones_ and writer of the screenplay for "The Crow." Half of the stories involve the horrors of "this world," the dark streets and alleyways of our existence; the other half of the stories involve "that world," the strange and supernatural. Shirley's stories are dark, intense, imaginative and will often sear images into your brain. Recommended for fans of dark fiction, perhaps along the lines of Clive Barker.
Rating:
Summary: dark stories for this and that world
Review: _Black Butterflies_ by John Shirley is a collection of a decade's worth of dark short stories by Shirley, the author of _Wetbones_ and writer of the screenplay for "The Crow." Half of the stories involve the horrors of "this world," the dark streets and alleyways of our existence; the other half of the stories involve "that world," the strange and supernatural. Shirley's stories are dark, intense, imaginative and will often sear images into your brain. Recommended for fans of dark fiction, perhaps along the lines of Clive Barker.
|
