Super Flat Times: Stories
by Matthew DerbySign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
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Great, great book, funny and driven by one of the purest, most expressive of emotions, anger. It can come across as bitter and too surreal for some readers, but for the few who appreciate Derby's unique blend of tone, hunor, and poetry, and can understand why anger is so necessary these days, it explodes into an unrivaled panacea, not easily matched by anyone that readily comes to mind. Very contemporary in its cultural "jabs" and "cool" in surreal Sci-fi world building. Co...more
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Read in July, 2008
This collection has been compared, such as on the dust jacket or on-line, to so many out-there sci fi writers that I feel a bit bad adding George Saunders, Italo Calvino, and Leonora Carrington (Max Ernst's girlfriend during the heyday of Surrealism) to the list. But I just had to! No character development here, but what would that even mean in this richly-imagined, positively poetic, sickly funny future world where humans have changed themselves so drastically that we would barely recognize t...more
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Read in January, 2003
This is a collection of literary science-fiction short stories that can be enjoyed by fans of either genre. I really think Derby has done something amazing with both. A warning: this book can get a little bleak, but it's never unbelievable or pretentious in its hopelessness (I'd just like to warn people who are looking for an upbeat fantasy, this ain't it).
If you're at all dubious, I highly recommend the story "Crutches Used as Weapon."
If you're at all dubious, I highly recommend the story "Crutches Used as Weapon."
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As I'm reading The Children's Hospital, I was thinking of other high-concept fiction (some would call it literary science fiction, but why the genres, people?) that I've enjoyed. I adore this book. It's so clever yet approachable. Derby was Ben Marcus's student, and that's pretty obvious, but he's kind of Marcus-lite, and I like him more, so there.
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recommends it for:
robot fathers, future-mongers
This book. This thunderous. This book. This. It has given me heart worms. It has maken me. This book. I have learnt nothing from it. Nothing from it. Why has he did this to me? Matt Derby. With his word weapons. With his weeping wonder. This book has. I am. He will, Matt Derby, one day, write a novel that will undo us all. I hope.
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Read in September, 2008
I suspect that this guy really hates himself, which was a turn off in the stories.
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Read in May, 2007
A book of short stories sort of pretending to be a novel. A few of the stories I really admired and enjoyed, but for the most part I found myself a little bit annoyed.
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good, but a little hard to follow sometimes. pretty dark stuff, post apocalyptic
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