Jim Van Pelt's first collection, Strangers and Beggars, was voted one of the Best Books of 2003 by the American Library Association. Now, in this new collection, Van Pelt continues to explore the ever-changing boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and horror. The Last of the O-Forms is an important collection filled with stories that transport us to far-flung worlds and to the harder-to-find inner worlds that define the human condition.
From Booklist
In the stories of Van Pelt's Strangers and Beggars (2002), civilization as we know it may have gone to smash, but for the characters, tomorrow is still another day. Same here. In the title story, a menagerie of mutant animals is losing business because humans are mutating, too, and don't want to be reminded; on the other hand, humans are mutating, too, so . . . In "A Flock of Birds," perhaps 50,000 people remain in the U.S. after a big biowar, but some other creatures are unaffected--and more. The ghost story "Do Good," about a high-school assistant principal nearing retirement, skirts the maudlin to become heartwarming. Three futuristic crime tales, three stories of sports and games to come, a Lovecraft pastiche set in the Old West, a couple of yarns--one sf, the other a ghost story--spun out of classic movies, and three more stories are just as satisfying for their realistically developed milieus and actions as for their surprises and ironies. They're colorful and flavorful, too: terrific stories. Ray Olson
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Review
A supple, inventive, and ambitious writer who handles any genre with expert ease -- Gardner Dozois, editor of The Year's Best SF __