Introducing the first true Dave Eggers’ McSweeney production (and it is a production — jacket, binding, illustrations, chapter headings and all) to be published here, Michael Chabon explains that the starting point for this eclectic collection is the notion that all the short genre fiction which once supported American magazines of the Fifties should be considered no less valid a part of the present literary landscape as the ‘sparkling, plotless and epiphanic’ stories of which it is all too often currently comprised. Where today, he asks — and here one has to wonder how hard he actually looked — is the ghost story, the horror story, the detective story, the story of suspense, terror, fantasy or the macabre? Where, he ponders, is the sea adventure, the spy, war or historical story?

Well, never fear, McSweeney’s here with 20 contemporary takes on these supposedly long-lost and forgotten genres. All new, never before seen, original stories by Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Elmore Leonard, Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers et al.

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