Iron Mosaic — Michael Cobley

Short stories are a bit like refugees, or at least the disparate and contrary members of a contrary family, sent forth alone into the world. Short stories are tours of duty through personal badlands, hikes across the hinterlands. Short stories are like puzzle pieces carved from glass or wood or diamond or clay or whatever's close to hand. So when the refugee brothers and sisters and cousins return to their roots, when the tours of duty are documented and the hinterlands charted, and when the puzzle pieces are found to fit only into the mind of the carver, what are you left with? The voices of a freeform choir? An enigmatic Escheresque atlas? Or seventeen stories from the pen of Michael Cobley; memos from places both dark and light. Discover a ghost's point of view of the living. Pursue monsters through a land of ice and snow. Take a waltz through space and time. Strut your stuff at the Panddomainium. Embark on a mystic journey to the Great Barrier Reef Range. Know the feeling of technology beneath the skin. Seventeen stories from a persistently thoughtful and entertaining writer. Seventeen tickets to strange worlds and strange thoughts. Enjoy the ride.