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A Different Kind of Tension: New and Selected Stories
A definitive collection of new and selected stories by a master of the form
“Comparisons might be drawn to writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethem’s stories are enlivened by his wit and provocative wordplay.” —Chicago Tribune
This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, “The Red Sun School of Thoughts,” never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power—those in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself.
Elsewhere we meet “Super Goat Man,” a down-at-heels bohemian superhero; “The Porn Critic,” whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations; and “Sleepy People,” who pose interpersonal conundrums without ever rousing from their slumber. Fluidly moving between realism and the surreal, the absurd and the mundane, A Different Kind of Tension is a container bursting with life and death, couples in trouble, talking animals, and technologies on the fritz. Through it all are people longing to be seen and to connect; to thrive, love, and be forgiven. “This is the joy of reading Jonathan you never know what you’re going to get.” (Financial Times)
“Comparisons might be drawn to writers ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Haruki Murakami to Margaret Atwood and J. D. Salinger. All of Lethem’s stories are enlivened by his wit and provocative wordplay.” —Chicago Tribune
This dazzling, genre-defying collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his best work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, “The Red Sun School of Thoughts,” never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power—those in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself.
Elsewhere we meet “Super Goat Man,” a down-at-heels bohemian superhero; “The Porn Critic,” whose accidental expertise wrecks his own romantic aspirations; and “Sleepy People,” who pose interpersonal conundrums without ever rousing from their slumber. Fluidly moving between realism and the surreal, the absurd and the mundane, A Different Kind of Tension is a container bursting with life and death, couples in trouble, talking animals, and technologies on the fritz. Through it all are people longing to be seen and to connect; to thrive, love, and be forgiven. “This is the joy of reading Jonathan you never know what you’re going to get.” (Financial Times)
400 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 23, 2025
29 people are currently reading
4374 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Lethem
247 books2,639 followersJonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer.
His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller.
In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship
His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller.
In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 3, 2025
Thirty-one stories, dozens of themes and countless innovations, A Different Kind of Tension will engage the imaginations of all readers.
It’s fascinating to see how creative minds viewed what the future might look like from the past. Lethem's visions are more expansive than jet packs and flying cars. My favorite stories in this collection move from the retro to high-tech seamlessly. It is impossible to tell if these short tales were composed 1980’s or 2020’s. Bob Dylan, mind-altering substances, Star Wars, Brooklyn, punk-rock, our characters embody cool corners of space familiar to Baby-Boomers and Generation X.
Standout scenes include a swinger party in which any drugs or alcohol consumed is transferred between characters by kissing, gridlock traffic jams so long that drivers fantasize about being elsewhere by watching palatial real estate demonstrations on screens in their car, carny-types who set up low-rent virtual reality stations to allow audience members the chance to watch what the players do in a second-life type environment. It is great fun to jump from analog to cyberpunk, from literary to experimental.
Other highlights include the man engaged in a sales presentation on Skype who bleeds more profusely with each passing minute, the boy who discovers truths about himself and his father while living in a commune filled with compelling mini-stories in every room, and the apartment burgled but when the police arrive with a special spray, people are outlined with the missing objects.
Every dart thrown by Lethem hits the board and some strike the center of the bullseye.
Thank you to Ecco Books and Netgalley for a review copy.
It’s fascinating to see how creative minds viewed what the future might look like from the past. Lethem's visions are more expansive than jet packs and flying cars. My favorite stories in this collection move from the retro to high-tech seamlessly. It is impossible to tell if these short tales were composed 1980’s or 2020’s. Bob Dylan, mind-altering substances, Star Wars, Brooklyn, punk-rock, our characters embody cool corners of space familiar to Baby-Boomers and Generation X.
Standout scenes include a swinger party in which any drugs or alcohol consumed is transferred between characters by kissing, gridlock traffic jams so long that drivers fantasize about being elsewhere by watching palatial real estate demonstrations on screens in their car, carny-types who set up low-rent virtual reality stations to allow audience members the chance to watch what the players do in a second-life type environment. It is great fun to jump from analog to cyberpunk, from literary to experimental.
Other highlights include the man engaged in a sales presentation on Skype who bleeds more profusely with each passing minute, the boy who discovers truths about himself and his father while living in a commune filled with compelling mini-stories in every room, and the apartment burgled but when the police arrive with a special spray, people are outlined with the missing objects.
Every dart thrown by Lethem hits the board and some strike the center of the bullseye.
Thank you to Ecco Books and Netgalley for a review copy.
April 15, 2025
Jonathan Lethem has been entertaining me for over 25 years with his wit and imagination. This collection is a bit uneven, and I admit having to struggle with otherworldly subjects. His longer books, featuring life in New York, are preferable, but I did enjoy a chance to become acquainted with his shorter works.
Want to read
June 12, 2025Rec. by: A Goodreads giveaway, sure, but more than that by previous work
June 10, 2025
I am very grateful to receive this ARC from NetGalley--I love Jonathan Lethem. I find his stories intriguing,. thought-provoking and often disturbing. I'll admit my favorite story in this collection, The Red Sun School of Thoughts, is the most realistic of the stories (with a sudden veering off toward the end of the story into science fiction which was a surprise and although a little jarring worth its strangeness because of its humor but also tantalizing hints of differing perspectives, shifts into other kinds of thinking, and possibilities of future worlds to come). Most of the story concerns an adolescent boy whose mother is dying and whose father is, mostly absent and so self-absorbed that even when he is physically present he is not fully present. The boy is struggling (as Lethem's boys--and adolescents)--often are) with figuring out who he is and how he fits into the world. iespecially loved all the musical references and what they mean to the boy. It takes place in San Francisco amongst a diverse group of people living together in a kind of commune.
Another story I particularly like is "Pending Vegan," about a man (husband and father) struggling with increasing awareness of what is wrong in his world, his society. As is generally true in these stories, and Lethem generally, there is a lot of humor in this story, as well as sadness and anxiety.
The stories are generally science fiction explorations of worlds, future dystopias for the most part. And although they are meaningful and self-contained, they also felt to me like fragments of a larger consciousness, a fuller narrative that is coherent and unsettling. And, of course, beautifully written.
Many of these stories have been published elsewhere, although also included are four new ones.
A Different Kind of Tension lives up to its title. The stories surprise, disturb, intrigue and glisten with beautiful sentences and a coherent vision.
I want to thank Ecco Press, NetGalley, and the author for providing me with an early reviewer copy of this book and I strongly recommend it for anyone who loves good writing and new perspectives on humanity.
Another story I particularly like is "Pending Vegan," about a man (husband and father) struggling with increasing awareness of what is wrong in his world, his society. As is generally true in these stories, and Lethem generally, there is a lot of humor in this story, as well as sadness and anxiety.
The stories are generally science fiction explorations of worlds, future dystopias for the most part. And although they are meaningful and self-contained, they also felt to me like fragments of a larger consciousness, a fuller narrative that is coherent and unsettling. And, of course, beautifully written.
Many of these stories have been published elsewhere, although also included are four new ones.
A Different Kind of Tension lives up to its title. The stories surprise, disturb, intrigue and glisten with beautiful sentences and a coherent vision.
I want to thank Ecco Press, NetGalley, and the author for providing me with an early reviewer copy of this book and I strongly recommend it for anyone who loves good writing and new perspectives on humanity.
October 16, 2025
"Whether life can thrive inside the aura of death, as I needed so badly to feel it could" (Lethem 381).
This is vintage, marvelous Jonathan Lethem.
"A Different Kind of Tension" is truly a treasure trove of how wonderful Mr. Lethem is as a writer, a wordsmith, and a writer who always has his heart out on his sleeve.
Every story brims with humor and the candor I am used to from his masterpieces "The Fortress of Solitude", "Motherless Brooklyn", "The Wall of the Eye, The Wall of the Sky" and "Brooklyn Crime Novel".
Some stories in this collection I have definitely read, and have always laughed out loud because they are at once witty and devastatingly sad.
The first stories in this work are dystopian in tone. They are riffs on the stories of Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, and Samuel R. Delany. They are set in worlds where humans find it difficult to connect with one another, and technology usually becomes a temporary solution for loneliness, until it becomes a toxic crutch.
Standouts include:
"Sleepy People"- a darkly perverse story of a lonely woman named Judith who finds a sleeping man on the curb. She does sleep with him as he is fast asleep (or is he?!) and the boundaries of consent are crossed. It's a disturbing tale that shows the lengths she will go to in order to have some kind of possible connection. Then unsavory characters appear...
"Super Goat Man" was my favorite story from his collection "Men and Cartoons" about a young man named Everett who grew up with a washed up superhero named Super Goat Man in Brooklyn during the 1970s. Super Goat Man becomes a legend in Everett's eyes growing up, "Super Goat Man was only another of the strange men who sat on stoops in sleeveless undershirts on hot summer days watching the slow progress of life on the block" (Lethem 143).
Later as Everett has become a college professor, he learns that Super Goat Man crossed a line with his future partner Angela. Everett's childhood hero at once becomes a human foil, and all at once human for him. Everett knows that like his dad, Super Goat Man, aka. Ralph Gersten, instilled a love of jazz in him, "my preference was not so much Ornette Coleman and Rahsaan Roland Kirk as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson" (161). It's a story of love- both lost and regained for a father figure and hero worship that ends in a satisfying, bittersweet end.
"Access Fantasy" is a disturbing story of how people have developed human relationships towards their cars, gridlocked on the highway during a not too distant future. The rich live in subterranean dwellings below.
My favorite stories are two that I'd regard as the masterpieces of the collection.
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" is a riff on the immortal and harrowing novel and film "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" by Horace McCoy, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Jane Fonda and Gig Young in what is some of the most indelible acting I have ever seen in film.
It's about 16 year old Lewis and 20 year old Gloria (named after McCoy's heroine) also living in a bleak not too distant future. To eat, they must put on virtual reality outfits in harrowing situations that put their lives at risk. Like the source material's bleak dance till you drop premise- here situations like sexathons are horrifying to stomach.
Then there are the unsavory characters Mr. Sneeze, Fearing, and Kromer who predatorily prey on Gloria and Lewis. Lewis falls for a young girl named Lane who is weak willed and innocent. Lewis and Gloria's friendship are put to the test by some of these challenges, in which they narrowly escape, "pretty funny that Fearing would take out his frustration on us, but that just shows you how good Fearing had that whole town wrapped around his finger" (66).
Unlike the brokenhearted ending of "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" Gloria lives, "Gloria didn't laugh, but I knew she would later".
"The Red Sun School of Thoughts" is my other favorite. It is a coming of age story set in the 1970s Bay Area where our narrator is thinking about the meaning of life. He lives in a commune and wants The Founder to answer questions for him. An Octopus also appears.
The beating heart of this story is the narrator's grief over his mother being ill, dying with cancer. He writes, "only later did I understand that this plan was devised to keep me out of my mother's hair as she began her treatments which consisted of both conventional Western medicine and its alternatives, all fruitless. She couldn't deal with a thirteen year old who'd been suspended from school" (Lethem 352).
It is a story of self discovery, of developing a love for music, for movies such as "Star Wars" and classics such as "Beat the Devil" and "A Thousand Clowns".
"The Red Sun School of Thoughts" and "Super Goat Man" are the two stories that allude to "The Fortress of Solitude" for me- and share the common themes of loss, anxiety, and ultimately an acceptance to keep going.
I have written time and time again that in all of Professor Lethem's fiction that I have read, each story and novel always comes from a bruised, battered heart that has seen and experienced loss. Even in the dystopic stories- they all brim with sadness because the author's storied career and writing in some way, in an autobiographical lens make these works all the more poignant.
This is vintage, marvelous Jonathan Lethem.
"A Different Kind of Tension" is truly a treasure trove of how wonderful Mr. Lethem is as a writer, a wordsmith, and a writer who always has his heart out on his sleeve.
Every story brims with humor and the candor I am used to from his masterpieces "The Fortress of Solitude", "Motherless Brooklyn", "The Wall of the Eye, The Wall of the Sky" and "Brooklyn Crime Novel".
Some stories in this collection I have definitely read, and have always laughed out loud because they are at once witty and devastatingly sad.
The first stories in this work are dystopian in tone. They are riffs on the stories of Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip K. Dick, and Samuel R. Delany. They are set in worlds where humans find it difficult to connect with one another, and technology usually becomes a temporary solution for loneliness, until it becomes a toxic crutch.
Standouts include:
"Sleepy People"- a darkly perverse story of a lonely woman named Judith who finds a sleeping man on the curb. She does sleep with him as he is fast asleep (or is he?!) and the boundaries of consent are crossed. It's a disturbing tale that shows the lengths she will go to in order to have some kind of possible connection. Then unsavory characters appear...
"Super Goat Man" was my favorite story from his collection "Men and Cartoons" about a young man named Everett who grew up with a washed up superhero named Super Goat Man in Brooklyn during the 1970s. Super Goat Man becomes a legend in Everett's eyes growing up, "Super Goat Man was only another of the strange men who sat on stoops in sleeveless undershirts on hot summer days watching the slow progress of life on the block" (Lethem 143).
Later as Everett has become a college professor, he learns that Super Goat Man crossed a line with his future partner Angela. Everett's childhood hero at once becomes a human foil, and all at once human for him. Everett knows that like his dad, Super Goat Man, aka. Ralph Gersten, instilled a love of jazz in him, "my preference was not so much Ornette Coleman and Rahsaan Roland Kirk as Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson" (161). It's a story of love- both lost and regained for a father figure and hero worship that ends in a satisfying, bittersweet end.
"Access Fantasy" is a disturbing story of how people have developed human relationships towards their cars, gridlocked on the highway during a not too distant future. The rich live in subterranean dwellings below.
My favorite stories are two that I'd regard as the masterpieces of the collection.
"How We Got in Town and Out Again" is a riff on the immortal and harrowing novel and film "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" by Horace McCoy, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Jane Fonda and Gig Young in what is some of the most indelible acting I have ever seen in film.
It's about 16 year old Lewis and 20 year old Gloria (named after McCoy's heroine) also living in a bleak not too distant future. To eat, they must put on virtual reality outfits in harrowing situations that put their lives at risk. Like the source material's bleak dance till you drop premise- here situations like sexathons are horrifying to stomach.
Then there are the unsavory characters Mr. Sneeze, Fearing, and Kromer who predatorily prey on Gloria and Lewis. Lewis falls for a young girl named Lane who is weak willed and innocent. Lewis and Gloria's friendship are put to the test by some of these challenges, in which they narrowly escape, "pretty funny that Fearing would take out his frustration on us, but that just shows you how good Fearing had that whole town wrapped around his finger" (66).
Unlike the brokenhearted ending of "They Shoot Horses Don't They?" Gloria lives, "Gloria didn't laugh, but I knew she would later".
"The Red Sun School of Thoughts" is my other favorite. It is a coming of age story set in the 1970s Bay Area where our narrator is thinking about the meaning of life. He lives in a commune and wants The Founder to answer questions for him. An Octopus also appears.
The beating heart of this story is the narrator's grief over his mother being ill, dying with cancer. He writes, "only later did I understand that this plan was devised to keep me out of my mother's hair as she began her treatments which consisted of both conventional Western medicine and its alternatives, all fruitless. She couldn't deal with a thirteen year old who'd been suspended from school" (Lethem 352).
It is a story of self discovery, of developing a love for music, for movies such as "Star Wars" and classics such as "Beat the Devil" and "A Thousand Clowns".
"The Red Sun School of Thoughts" and "Super Goat Man" are the two stories that allude to "The Fortress of Solitude" for me- and share the common themes of loss, anxiety, and ultimately an acceptance to keep going.
I have written time and time again that in all of Professor Lethem's fiction that I have read, each story and novel always comes from a bruised, battered heart that has seen and experienced loss. Even in the dystopic stories- they all brim with sadness because the author's storied career and writing in some way, in an autobiographical lens make these works all the more poignant.
October 15, 2025
I received a copy of this book for free in a Goodreads giveaway.
This is an interesting and eclectic collection of short stories, but it felt a bit sprawling and unfocused. I found myself wanting some of these to be more fleshed out and others to be just puzzling, which I suppose is true of most short story collections, but this one felt a bit long, like there were too many stories and too many ideas crammed into one collection. And yet, after I finished reading it, I looked back and appreciated the many journeys it took me on.
Particularly in the more speculative fiction-type stories, I often felt like they should be fleshed out more. There's a certain amount of world building that's usually helpful in these types of stories, so there's only so much you can do in a short story, and I often had the feeling that the world felt underdeveloped, and if only it were a much longer piece of fiction, the author could have done the proper world building and had an interesting plot in that world.
The more realistic stories are more effective, focusing on character and not having to deal with setting up a different world with different rules or technologies. I don't know if it's just because I read it last that it stayed in my mind, but I enjoyed the last story in this book. It's the longest one and is realistic until a sudden science fiction-y element thrown in near the end, but it's a personal story about a teenage boy figuring out life and relationships with other people, including his parents and the family he finds at the commune he lives in.
It's hard to read this straight through, and even though I took over a week doing so, I still felt a lot of whiplash, with so many different worlds and ideas crammed into this short story collection. I think it could have done with some trimming down, just to make the reading experience not nearly as exhausting, but at the end of it, I could not help but admire the variety and breadth of ideas in this book.
This is an interesting and eclectic collection of short stories, but it felt a bit sprawling and unfocused. I found myself wanting some of these to be more fleshed out and others to be just puzzling, which I suppose is true of most short story collections, but this one felt a bit long, like there were too many stories and too many ideas crammed into one collection. And yet, after I finished reading it, I looked back and appreciated the many journeys it took me on.
Particularly in the more speculative fiction-type stories, I often felt like they should be fleshed out more. There's a certain amount of world building that's usually helpful in these types of stories, so there's only so much you can do in a short story, and I often had the feeling that the world felt underdeveloped, and if only it were a much longer piece of fiction, the author could have done the proper world building and had an interesting plot in that world.
The more realistic stories are more effective, focusing on character and not having to deal with setting up a different world with different rules or technologies. I don't know if it's just because I read it last that it stayed in my mind, but I enjoyed the last story in this book. It's the longest one and is realistic until a sudden science fiction-y element thrown in near the end, but it's a personal story about a teenage boy figuring out life and relationships with other people, including his parents and the family he finds at the commune he lives in.
It's hard to read this straight through, and even though I took over a week doing so, I still felt a lot of whiplash, with so many different worlds and ideas crammed into this short story collection. I think it could have done with some trimming down, just to make the reading experience not nearly as exhausting, but at the end of it, I could not help but admire the variety and breadth of ideas in this book.
October 10, 2025
thank you to the Author and Publister for my ARC.
This is an honest review. please read.
I had to step away from this book many times and separate my personal preferences from their review.
If I were to rate and review this book on the same scale as the novels I routinely read it would be very unfair. my personal preference would have me rating 2 stars.
To me this book is not meant to be read streight through like a novel. it is a collection of short stories and should be read as such.
My frustration, as well as the reason I walked a way from it multiple times, is the fact that reading the stories back to back in one sitting is difficult. the stories are so vastly different and unique I found it hard to transition from one vivid story to the next.
once I spread out my readings and looked at the collection for what bit is I came to the conclusion to rate 4 stars.
the author does a wonderful job creating a vibrant world in such a small span of pages. the works are out side the box yet keep the reader at attention.
I recommend the book for the individual 30 stories to be read as they should.
This is an honest review. please read.
I had to step away from this book many times and separate my personal preferences from their review.
If I were to rate and review this book on the same scale as the novels I routinely read it would be very unfair. my personal preference would have me rating 2 stars.
To me this book is not meant to be read streight through like a novel. it is a collection of short stories and should be read as such.
My frustration, as well as the reason I walked a way from it multiple times, is the fact that reading the stories back to back in one sitting is difficult. the stories are so vastly different and unique I found it hard to transition from one vivid story to the next.
once I spread out my readings and looked at the collection for what bit is I came to the conclusion to rate 4 stars.
the author does a wonderful job creating a vibrant world in such a small span of pages. the works are out side the box yet keep the reader at attention.
I recommend the book for the individual 30 stories to be read as they should.
October 2, 2025
This is a fantastic collection. By turns, futuristic, surreal, hilarious, deep. His choices for characters are visceral and eye opening. With reflection his stories become modern fables.
His latest published short story, "The Red Sun School of Thoughts" is ingeniously placed within Lethem's universe. Its allusion to one of Superman's weaknesses is a deep cut. At first autobiographical, then surreal, it transcended the destination I imagined it would reach.
His latest published short story, "The Red Sun School of Thoughts" is ingeniously placed within Lethem's universe. Its allusion to one of Superman's weaknesses is a deep cut. At first autobiographical, then surreal, it transcended the destination I imagined it would reach.
August 20, 2025
A Different Kind of Tension is a bold, genre-bending collection that showcases Jonathan Lethem’s versatility and enduring curiosity. It’s a rich exploration of the odd, emotional, and surreal—all delivered with his characteristic wit and intellectual daring.
July 18, 2025
Kept me reading
July 26, 2025
A Different Kind of Tension contains some interesting fictional short stories.
September 13, 2025
a lot of fun and interesting stories in here. none stood out to me, because all were wonderful and well-done. 5 stars. tysm for the arc.
September 21, 2025
Some good short stories
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews