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Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection
Last Plane to Heaven is the final and definitive short story collection of award-winning SF author Jay Lake, author of Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura.
Long before he was a novelist, SF writer Jay Lake, was an acclaimed writer of short stories. In Last Plane to Heaven, Lake has assembled thirty-two of the best of them. Aliens and angels fill these pages, from the title story, a hard-edged and breathtaking look at how a real alien visitor might be received, to the savage truth of “The Cancer Catechisms.” Here are more than thirty short stories written by a master of the form, science fiction and fantasy both.
This collection features an original introduction by Gene Wolfe.
Long before he was a novelist, SF writer Jay Lake, was an acclaimed writer of short stories. In Last Plane to Heaven, Lake has assembled thirty-two of the best of them. Aliens and angels fill these pages, from the title story, a hard-edged and breathtaking look at how a real alien visitor might be received, to the savage truth of “The Cancer Catechisms.” Here are more than thirty short stories written by a master of the form, science fiction and fantasy both.
This collection features an original introduction by Gene Wolfe.
319 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 16, 2014
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619 people want to read
About the author
Jay Lake
239 books254 followersJay Lake lived in Portland, Oregon, where he worked on multiple writing and editing projects. His 2007 book Mainspring received a starred review in Booklist. His short fiction appeared regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, Endeavour Award, and was a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
April 4, 2020
A diverse collection of stories that beautifully represents Lake's skill and depth as a writer. The world lost a great storyteller far too soon.
May 16, 2015
I do read short stories, and frequently even review the books in which they appear—contrary to the characterization of Jay Lake's readers that appears in Gene Wolfe's Introduction to Last Plane to Heaven, Lake's just barely posthumous and self-described Final Collection. But I may not be a typical Lake reader. I came all too late to the appreciation of his talent, after all, despite his having been a local (Portland, Oregon) author. Ya can't read 'em all, even if you somehow have all the time in the world (and may it ever be so)... but somehow I overlooked Lake until he'd already taken his own last flight, and that is to my own discredit.
Now, Lake turns out to be a pretty good storyteller anyway, always ready with a vivid description or turn of phrase, but the most amazing thing about this collection is its sheer depth of field. While all of these tales partake in some way of the fantastic, and they're all recognizably from a single mind, there's extraordinary variation from story to story. Lake's gaze ranges from steampunk to folk tale, from historical fiction to contemporary urban fantasy, from riffs on Biblical literalism worthy of Christopher Moore to Lovecraftian grimth to Rudy Ruckerish surrealism. (Those Rucker-like stories were written in collaboration with Ken Scholes, by the way, for Borderlands Books in San Francisco, a store I was lucky enough to visit on my last trip to the Bay Area. It's worth a trip, and I don't mind giving them a free plug.)
Even though Lake was based in Portland, though, there's not much PDX in these tales, apart from the occasional stray mention of Powell's (another independent bookstore to which I don't mind giving a little juice). Until the last couple of stories—but then "Mother Urban's Book of Dayes" and "Angels V: Going Bad" contain almost too much local color! Rest assured, though, that whether he's writing about my adopted hometown or the Lesser Port of Grand Reserve in a steampunk solar system, Jay Lake knows what he's talking about.
And then... there's the end. "The End," a section containing just one piece, "The Cancer Catechism," which is almost too hard to read. This is, after all, Lake's Final Collection, assembled with his active participation even after the chemotherapy for his colorectal cancer had mostly (but not entirely) eliminated his ability to write at all. He confronted this unflinchingly during his last days... and it behooves us to listen when he writes about what's real, quite as much as when he's writing about the unreal.
Now, Lake turns out to be a pretty good storyteller anyway, always ready with a vivid description or turn of phrase, but the most amazing thing about this collection is its sheer depth of field. While all of these tales partake in some way of the fantastic, and they're all recognizably from a single mind, there's extraordinary variation from story to story. Lake's gaze ranges from steampunk to folk tale, from historical fiction to contemporary urban fantasy, from riffs on Biblical literalism worthy of Christopher Moore to Lovecraftian grimth to Rudy Ruckerish surrealism. (Those Rucker-like stories were written in collaboration with Ken Scholes, by the way, for Borderlands Books in San Francisco, a store I was lucky enough to visit on my last trip to the Bay Area. It's worth a trip, and I don't mind giving them a free plug.)
Even though Lake was based in Portland, though, there's not much PDX in these tales, apart from the occasional stray mention of Powell's (another independent bookstore to which I don't mind giving a little juice). Until the last couple of stories—but then "Mother Urban's Book of Dayes" and "Angels V: Going Bad" contain almost too much local color! Rest assured, though, that whether he's writing about my adopted hometown or the Lesser Port of Grand Reserve in a steampunk solar system, Jay Lake knows what he's talking about.
And then... there's the end. "The End," a section containing just one piece, "The Cancer Catechism," which is almost too hard to read. This is, after all, Lake's Final Collection, assembled with his active participation even after the chemotherapy for his colorectal cancer had mostly (but not entirely) eliminated his ability to write at all. He confronted this unflinchingly during his last days... and it behooves us to listen when he writes about what's real, quite as much as when he's writing about the unreal.
Word is the beacon of our minds and the light of our days, withered proxy for an absent God.Don't worry if you don't understand that one right away... if you pay attention to the music, eventually the words will follow. And the words live on, even after the flesh has failed... Lake knew that, and after reading Last Plane to Heaven, I think I understand it a little better as well.
—"Angels IV: Novus Ordo Angelorum," p.260
March 12, 2015
I liked the SF stories more than the others.
The angel stories didn't work for me, except for the searing one about the angel that laid the tenth plague on Egypt. Reminds us that the Old Testament God would never make the Top 100 Employers list.
In some, Lake's style, skilled as it is, gets in the way of the story. In others, as noted by others, he's just a tad too cryptic. Probably the Gene Wolfe influence.
But yes, this reminds us that we have lost a good writer with interesting ideas. Thanks, Jay.
The angel stories didn't work for me, except for the searing one about the angel that laid the tenth plague on Egypt. Reminds us that the Old Testament God would never make the Top 100 Employers list.
In some, Lake's style, skilled as it is, gets in the way of the story. In others, as noted by others, he's just a tad too cryptic. Probably the Gene Wolfe influence.
But yes, this reminds us that we have lost a good writer with interesting ideas. Thanks, Jay.
October 2, 2014
Very, very good; there's much to like. Let's start with the form. The book (which I got from Uncle Hugo) is clearly a act of love and care from TOR. TOR's books are generally of high standard in their production values, of course, but one can appreciate that this particular instance was special. The cover deserves a special mention, as it is magnificent. The audiobook (an Audible production) is also beautifully, lovingly assembled and performed—even if it lacks both the moving Afterword (that in hindsight should actually be read firstly) and the Foreword by Gene Wolfe, both class acts that I feel should have remained.
The contents, now. There's a swelling undercurrent of darkness, which would be expected. There's some understated humor trying to break to the surface, sometimes, but not really managing to. There's Jay Lake penchant to the gravitas and the mystical, but there is also scope for levity.
Last Plane to Heaven; "Hello", Said the Gun; The Woman Who Shattered the Moon; The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen are all masterpieces, but aren't the only ones.
There are memorable phrases (and narrative plots and situations) throughout.
"Now, well, nothing much at all mattered. Time has caught up with us all."
"Nothing happened, of course, except a terrific hum, several dozen cases of very fast-moving cancer among the scientists and technicians who were too close to the primary accelerator grids, and the plug being pulled on the universe. Though we didn’t know that last bit for almost a hundred years."
"My greatest fear, the one that keeps me awake most often, is that it is we survivors who vanished. Everyone else is there, moving forward at one second per second, but only our time has stopped, an infection that will make us see a glacier as fit driver for a water wheel, and even the dying of the sun as a flickering afternoon’s inconvenience."
"Him? What the hell was a him? What the hell was I thinking? Animals were bedeviled with y-chromosome carriers. Humans, blessed by evolution and intelligence, had moved beyond that particular genetic disorder. Everybody knew it. There hadn’t been a natural-born male human since the days of Herad the Great—she’d put the last of the poor, damned mutants mercifully to death back the first of Years Before."
“No one wants truth, Charlie. They want certainty. They want forgiveness. They want love. Truth is like a dead city, a million watery graves. It doesn’t compromise and it gives nothing back.”
"He never was a churchgoing man, McAllen, but anyone who’s stood when the bullets fly or watched over the herds when the wolf packs are hunting down the moon knows better than to disbelieve. Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world."
"Chance is God’s reminder to us that order is not one of the forces of the world."
“Innocence always was a recipe for disaster.”
The book includes one unforgettable essay about the cancer. I was immediately reminded of Christopher Hitchens Mortality.
Hitchens: "It’s quite something, this chemo-poison. It has caused me to lose about fourteen pounds, though without making me feel any lighter. It has cleared up a vicious rash on my shins that no doctor could ever name, let alone cure. (Some venom, to get rid of those furious red dots without a struggle.) Let it please be this mean and ruthless with the alien and its spreading dead-zone colonies. But as against that, the death-dealing stuff and life-preserving stuff have also made me strangely neuter. I was fairly reconciled to the loss of my hair, which began to come out in the shower in the first two weeks of treatment, and which I saved in a plastic bag so that it could help fill a floating dam in the Gulf of Mexico. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the way that my razor blade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble. Or for the way that my newly smooth upper lip would begin to look as if it had undergone electrolysis, causing me to look a bit too much like somebody’s maiden auntie. (The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t yet wilted, but so much of it was shaved off for various hospital incisions that it’s a rather patchy affair.) I feel upsettingly denatured. If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice."
Lake: "Chemo is an entirely different chamber of horrors than surgery. You find new fields of pain and loss there, novel revelations to feed your burgeoning faith in cancer. There are needles, of course, but you have rapidly grown accustomed to them. The drugs aren’t so bad the first time or two. But where surgery dropped you swiftly into a hole which then took a month to climb out of, chemo lowers you slowly, inch by inch, week after week, into a hole which you may never climb out of. Starting with your dignity and ending with your sense of self, chemo takes everything away from you. Those mornings of yours grow later and later. You begin to miss work and misunderstand your spouse and children. The smallest things become difficult and the largest things become impossible. You never knew how large a thing standing in the shower could be. You can’t drive, and you don’t have the energy to be a passenger for long, so you stop going out even when people are willing to give you rides. You stop seeing your friends unless they make the time to come to you. Your kids avoid you because you smell funny, like sweat and puke and chemicals. Your spouse doesn’t hold you at night anymore because they are afraid of somehow hurting you."
In their framing of God, I found both basically equivalent. Jay Lake: "There is no devil mocking you. God didn’t give you cancer to punish you. Colon cancer has come to you through a combination of losing the genetic lottery, cosmic rays, and perhaps too much bacon in your younger days."
Jay Lake's final text on this book, an essay on cancer ("The Cancer Catechism") is reason enough to buy the book. I won't forget it and even if I dearly hope I'll never need to actually use this help myself, if I do come with cancer one day, this is definitely the first piece I'll read and will learn from.
The contents, now. There's a swelling undercurrent of darkness, which would be expected. There's some understated humor trying to break to the surface, sometimes, but not really managing to. There's Jay Lake penchant to the gravitas and the mystical, but there is also scope for levity.
Last Plane to Heaven; "Hello", Said the Gun; The Woman Who Shattered the Moon; The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen are all masterpieces, but aren't the only ones.
There are memorable phrases (and narrative plots and situations) throughout.
"Now, well, nothing much at all mattered. Time has caught up with us all."
"Nothing happened, of course, except a terrific hum, several dozen cases of very fast-moving cancer among the scientists and technicians who were too close to the primary accelerator grids, and the plug being pulled on the universe. Though we didn’t know that last bit for almost a hundred years."
"My greatest fear, the one that keeps me awake most often, is that it is we survivors who vanished. Everyone else is there, moving forward at one second per second, but only our time has stopped, an infection that will make us see a glacier as fit driver for a water wheel, and even the dying of the sun as a flickering afternoon’s inconvenience."
"Him? What the hell was a him? What the hell was I thinking? Animals were bedeviled with y-chromosome carriers. Humans, blessed by evolution and intelligence, had moved beyond that particular genetic disorder. Everybody knew it. There hadn’t been a natural-born male human since the days of Herad the Great—she’d put the last of the poor, damned mutants mercifully to death back the first of Years Before."
“No one wants truth, Charlie. They want certainty. They want forgiveness. They want love. Truth is like a dead city, a million watery graves. It doesn’t compromise and it gives nothing back.”
"He never was a churchgoing man, McAllen, but anyone who’s stood when the bullets fly or watched over the herds when the wolf packs are hunting down the moon knows better than to disbelieve. Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world."
"Chance is God’s reminder to us that order is not one of the forces of the world."
“Innocence always was a recipe for disaster.”
The book includes one unforgettable essay about the cancer. I was immediately reminded of Christopher Hitchens Mortality.
Hitchens: "It’s quite something, this chemo-poison. It has caused me to lose about fourteen pounds, though without making me feel any lighter. It has cleared up a vicious rash on my shins that no doctor could ever name, let alone cure. (Some venom, to get rid of those furious red dots without a struggle.) Let it please be this mean and ruthless with the alien and its spreading dead-zone colonies. But as against that, the death-dealing stuff and life-preserving stuff have also made me strangely neuter. I was fairly reconciled to the loss of my hair, which began to come out in the shower in the first two weeks of treatment, and which I saved in a plastic bag so that it could help fill a floating dam in the Gulf of Mexico. But I wasn’t quite prepared for the way that my razor blade would suddenly go slipping pointlessly down my face, meeting no stubble. Or for the way that my newly smooth upper lip would begin to look as if it had undergone electrolysis, causing me to look a bit too much like somebody’s maiden auntie. (The chest hair that was once the toast of two continents hasn’t yet wilted, but so much of it was shaved off for various hospital incisions that it’s a rather patchy affair.) I feel upsettingly denatured. If Penélope Cruz were one of my nurses, I wouldn’t even notice. In the war against Thanatos, if we must term it a war, the immediate loss of Eros is a huge initial sacrifice."
Lake: "Chemo is an entirely different chamber of horrors than surgery. You find new fields of pain and loss there, novel revelations to feed your burgeoning faith in cancer. There are needles, of course, but you have rapidly grown accustomed to them. The drugs aren’t so bad the first time or two. But where surgery dropped you swiftly into a hole which then took a month to climb out of, chemo lowers you slowly, inch by inch, week after week, into a hole which you may never climb out of. Starting with your dignity and ending with your sense of self, chemo takes everything away from you. Those mornings of yours grow later and later. You begin to miss work and misunderstand your spouse and children. The smallest things become difficult and the largest things become impossible. You never knew how large a thing standing in the shower could be. You can’t drive, and you don’t have the energy to be a passenger for long, so you stop going out even when people are willing to give you rides. You stop seeing your friends unless they make the time to come to you. Your kids avoid you because you smell funny, like sweat and puke and chemicals. Your spouse doesn’t hold you at night anymore because they are afraid of somehow hurting you."
In their framing of God, I found both basically equivalent. Jay Lake: "There is no devil mocking you. God didn’t give you cancer to punish you. Colon cancer has come to you through a combination of losing the genetic lottery, cosmic rays, and perhaps too much bacon in your younger days."
Jay Lake's final text on this book, an essay on cancer ("The Cancer Catechism") is reason enough to buy the book. I won't forget it and even if I dearly hope I'll never need to actually use this help myself, if I do come with cancer one day, this is definitely the first piece I'll read and will learn from.
February 19, 2016
So I finally finished this book. Like all books of short stories, it had some I loved and some I really didn't get into. The only time I've read Jay Lake before was the novella "Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh" which I found extremely squicky but I figured wasn't representative of his larger body of work. So this is really my first exposure to his writing and based on this I would read other his stuff. Not 100% in love with everything I've seen so far, but the writing is great and he's able to do a lot in a very short time in some of his stories.
Not related to the book at all though, I was saddened by his concluding letter to us all. I empathize with (and applaud the courage of) his Christian friend who shared the gospel with him in his last days. I would encourage anyone who might be reading reviews from little ol' me to think about this kind of thing before you're on your deathbed, if you even get a chance to be on one before you die. The God who created the universe (means he's in charge) has told us that there is only one way to heaven and that's to trust in what Jesus did for us and repent (means to be truly sorry) of all the wrongs we've done. Because no one can go to heaven and be with God unless they're perfect and no one's perfect. So Jesus died, even though he did no wrong, to take the punishment for all the bad things anyone's ever done (no matter how seemingly insignificant) so that when we die we can exchange our less-than-perfect "resume" for his perfect one and be accepted into heaven. All we have to do is accept that gift. Feel free to PM me or read the Bible if you have questions. =)
Not related to the book at all though, I was saddened by his concluding letter to us all. I empathize with (and applaud the courage of) his Christian friend who shared the gospel with him in his last days. I would encourage anyone who might be reading reviews from little ol' me to think about this kind of thing before you're on your deathbed, if you even get a chance to be on one before you die. The God who created the universe (means he's in charge) has told us that there is only one way to heaven and that's to trust in what Jesus did for us and repent (means to be truly sorry) of all the wrongs we've done. Because no one can go to heaven and be with God unless they're perfect and no one's perfect. So Jesus died, even though he did no wrong, to take the punishment for all the bad things anyone's ever done (no matter how seemingly insignificant) so that when we die we can exchange our less-than-perfect "resume" for his perfect one and be accepted into heaven. All we have to do is accept that gift. Feel free to PM me or read the Bible if you have questions. =)
March 10, 2019
A few excellent selection, and a solid story collection, but most were not to my taste. The author knew for a few years that he had terminal cancer, and this frame of mind comes through in the stories as a collection.
November 20, 2021
Read a long time ago.
Before Jay Lake died of cancer, he compiled this book of thirty-two of his best short stories, ranging from gritty speculative fiction to steampunk to Lovecraftian weirdness. From the moment I read the title story, I was hooked. "Last Plane to Heaven" follows a band of mercenaries sent to the Russian steppe to recover a Soyuz capsule. They find an Australian aborigine who dreamed herself into space, and now must dream herself away from the soldiers who are after her. The narrator learns he is dreaming his own destruction (and all the others are doing the same to themselves) thanks to the power of the girl, but once he understands that, he is able to join her and her quest for freedom.
The other stories in this book are just as powerful and fascinating. In "The Women Who Ate Stone Squid," an all-female crew discovers a lost civilization on an uncharted planet. Their lowly pilot is sent to explore it, but her love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels may be clouding her into believing that she is a warrior facing down giant squid people. In "The Woman Who Shattered the Moon," an aging, despotic African scientist is given parole forty years after she destroyed the moon. She returns to her ruined stronghold with no regrets, but realizes she is too old to rebuild her forces and begin again.
Before Jay Lake died of cancer, he compiled this book of thirty-two of his best short stories, ranging from gritty speculative fiction to steampunk to Lovecraftian weirdness. From the moment I read the title story, I was hooked. "Last Plane to Heaven" follows a band of mercenaries sent to the Russian steppe to recover a Soyuz capsule. They find an Australian aborigine who dreamed herself into space, and now must dream herself away from the soldiers who are after her. The narrator learns he is dreaming his own destruction (and all the others are doing the same to themselves) thanks to the power of the girl, but once he understands that, he is able to join her and her quest for freedom.
The other stories in this book are just as powerful and fascinating. In "The Women Who Ate Stone Squid," an all-female crew discovers a lost civilization on an uncharted planet. Their lowly pilot is sent to explore it, but her love of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian novels may be clouding her into believing that she is a warrior facing down giant squid people. In "The Woman Who Shattered the Moon," an aging, despotic African scientist is given parole forty years after she destroyed the moon. She returns to her ruined stronghold with no regrets, but realizes she is too old to rebuild her forces and begin again.
November 26, 2017
I didn't love every story in this collection, but the ones that spoke to me touched me powerfully. Lake creates very real, very complex characters and worlds within just a few pages
September 2, 2022
Dobrih ovdje ima priča, Lake je pisao odlično, ali peticu dajem za njegov Afterword na kraju i sve što je morao proživjeti na kraju i imao hrabrosti o tome pisati.
October 15, 2014
The final collection of short stories from Jay Lake, a SF/Fantasy writer who recently died of cancer.
Full disclosure, I received an ARC of this book free through Goodreads' "First Reads" program. I don't believe that's affected my review.
I also feel that I need to point out that, aside from the occasional short story I may have read in an anthology, my only experience with Jay Lake's work in the past was not positive. I read his novel Mainspring, and although I thought the concept was great, several of the storytelling choices did not agree with me and thus, overall, I did not like the book. However, even there I can acknowledge that the prose was well-crafted, and that others might have liked it a lot more than me.
I had a similar, although less intense, reaction to this book. It's good, but too much of it doesn't run towards my tastes. One might think that I'm trying to be extra-kind out of respect for his recent passing, but the truth is, unlike Mainspring, I can't even point to anything that I feel could have been done better... it really all did come down to a difference in tastes. Not everything appeals to everyone.
Structurally, the book is divided into sections... SF in one section, Steampunky-mixed genres in another, and fantasy in another. I actually went back and forth on how I felt about this. Because my interest is largely in SF, and fantasy, generally, leaves me a little cold (this was perhaps part of my negative reaction to Mainspring). And the SF section is the very first section, and rather short. The stories in it were generally good, and most of my favorites are in that section, although some I have read before and thus their impact was lessened. After that section was over, I was worried it was going to be a slog for somebody of my tastes to get through the rest, since I have no real hope of running into the type of stories I like most.
As I continued, I started to think maybe it was a good idea after all, that I could just relax my expectations and enjoy stories for what they are. By the end, I wound up somewhere in between... there were stories I enjoyed more than I thought I would, but it was a little bit of a notable stretch of "not for me" stories.
Even in the stories I didn't enjoy for the plot, though, I could appreciate the craft, the prose is detailed and mostly provides good mental images (although there were a couple where I have to admit I didn't get a good idea of what the world was supposed to be... some of these are set in worlds he's already established in novel form, so this may be why). Despite the circumstances in which they were written, the stories are not death-obsessed... it doesn't shy from the theme when appropriate, but it's not overwhelming. It's only with the last work, more of an essay about life with cancer, that you'd have any idea what happened (assuming you had never heard of Jay Lake before reading the book, and skipped the foreword).
Short stories are a tricky genre, and there are usually two distinct camps. There are short stories which feel like a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end of their own that satisfies like a novel, but on a much reduced level. And there are short stories that just briefly explore a character or setting but very little seemingly gets resolved, and in the end feel like teasers for longer works.
My personal taste runs towards the first category, but a large number of the stories in this volume are in the other. Some of my favorite stories in this work felt like they got cut off right when they got going.
Which, in a way, is perhaps itself a fitting tribute for an author like Jay Lake.
My favorites were probably "Hello, Said the Gun", "Permanent Fatal Errors", "The Starship Mechanic", "Grindstone", the title story, and I think there was one in the horror section I quite liked, but honestly, I can't remember the title or circumstances. I generally disliked the angel-focused interludes, although one or two weren't bad.
Anthology collections are hard to rate on the star-scale, since they're ALWAYS a mixed bag. If a novel had the same proportion of "stuff I like" and "stuff I didn't care for" it would probably get a two, but that rating's unfair and even misleading for a short story collection, where you're often skimming through stuff that's not your tastes. So I'll give it a three.
Full disclosure, I received an ARC of this book free through Goodreads' "First Reads" program. I don't believe that's affected my review.
I also feel that I need to point out that, aside from the occasional short story I may have read in an anthology, my only experience with Jay Lake's work in the past was not positive. I read his novel Mainspring, and although I thought the concept was great, several of the storytelling choices did not agree with me and thus, overall, I did not like the book. However, even there I can acknowledge that the prose was well-crafted, and that others might have liked it a lot more than me.
I had a similar, although less intense, reaction to this book. It's good, but too much of it doesn't run towards my tastes. One might think that I'm trying to be extra-kind out of respect for his recent passing, but the truth is, unlike Mainspring, I can't even point to anything that I feel could have been done better... it really all did come down to a difference in tastes. Not everything appeals to everyone.
Structurally, the book is divided into sections... SF in one section, Steampunky-mixed genres in another, and fantasy in another. I actually went back and forth on how I felt about this. Because my interest is largely in SF, and fantasy, generally, leaves me a little cold (this was perhaps part of my negative reaction to Mainspring). And the SF section is the very first section, and rather short. The stories in it were generally good, and most of my favorites are in that section, although some I have read before and thus their impact was lessened. After that section was over, I was worried it was going to be a slog for somebody of my tastes to get through the rest, since I have no real hope of running into the type of stories I like most.
As I continued, I started to think maybe it was a good idea after all, that I could just relax my expectations and enjoy stories for what they are. By the end, I wound up somewhere in between... there were stories I enjoyed more than I thought I would, but it was a little bit of a notable stretch of "not for me" stories.
Even in the stories I didn't enjoy for the plot, though, I could appreciate the craft, the prose is detailed and mostly provides good mental images (although there were a couple where I have to admit I didn't get a good idea of what the world was supposed to be... some of these are set in worlds he's already established in novel form, so this may be why). Despite the circumstances in which they were written, the stories are not death-obsessed... it doesn't shy from the theme when appropriate, but it's not overwhelming. It's only with the last work, more of an essay about life with cancer, that you'd have any idea what happened (assuming you had never heard of Jay Lake before reading the book, and skipped the foreword).
Short stories are a tricky genre, and there are usually two distinct camps. There are short stories which feel like a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end of their own that satisfies like a novel, but on a much reduced level. And there are short stories that just briefly explore a character or setting but very little seemingly gets resolved, and in the end feel like teasers for longer works.
My personal taste runs towards the first category, but a large number of the stories in this volume are in the other. Some of my favorite stories in this work felt like they got cut off right when they got going.
Which, in a way, is perhaps itself a fitting tribute for an author like Jay Lake.
My favorites were probably "Hello, Said the Gun", "Permanent Fatal Errors", "The Starship Mechanic", "Grindstone", the title story, and I think there was one in the horror section I quite liked, but honestly, I can't remember the title or circumstances. I generally disliked the angel-focused interludes, although one or two weren't bad.
Anthology collections are hard to rate on the star-scale, since they're ALWAYS a mixed bag. If a novel had the same proportion of "stuff I like" and "stuff I didn't care for" it would probably get a two, but that rating's unfair and even misleading for a short story collection, where you're often skimming through stuff that's not your tastes. So I'll give it a three.
October 25, 2014
Last Plane to Heaven by Jay Lake
Sadly this is purported to be Jay Lake's last book due to his demise. I only use the purported since I still see books by V.C. Andrews and she has been deceased for years. This is a collection of Jay Lake short stories. I have made it known in the past, I am not a fan of short stories. This book was not an exception. I liked several of the stories very much and then they were over. There were others I didn't like at all. I would prefer to remember Jay Lake for his outstanding trilogy on Copper Downs.
I would suggest reading Green and Endurance and Kalimpura. All three books deal with empowering women and defying the status quo. There is a body of literature that suggests that if women were in charge there would be fewer wars. I don’t think this is just due to the heighten sensibilities of women, nor do their lack of interest in macho posturing. I do think there would be less conflict because when they do throw down the gauntlet, they follow it with massive overkill. Green exemplifies that role with her temper and actions.
This book is worth reading as it shows another side of Jay Lake. It shows some whimsy and in some cases a depth of creativity that might be beyond bizarre.
Jay Lake's untimely demise is a blow to literature. His mind drifted to realms that are daunting in their characterizations and scenes.
RIP Jay Lake.
Web Site: http://www.jlake.com/2010/08/14/writi...
Sadly this is purported to be Jay Lake's last book due to his demise. I only use the purported since I still see books by V.C. Andrews and she has been deceased for years. This is a collection of Jay Lake short stories. I have made it known in the past, I am not a fan of short stories. This book was not an exception. I liked several of the stories very much and then they were over. There were others I didn't like at all. I would prefer to remember Jay Lake for his outstanding trilogy on Copper Downs.
I would suggest reading Green and Endurance and Kalimpura. All three books deal with empowering women and defying the status quo. There is a body of literature that suggests that if women were in charge there would be fewer wars. I don’t think this is just due to the heighten sensibilities of women, nor do their lack of interest in macho posturing. I do think there would be less conflict because when they do throw down the gauntlet, they follow it with massive overkill. Green exemplifies that role with her temper and actions.
This book is worth reading as it shows another side of Jay Lake. It shows some whimsy and in some cases a depth of creativity that might be beyond bizarre.
Jay Lake's untimely demise is a blow to literature. His mind drifted to realms that are daunting in their characterizations and scenes.
RIP Jay Lake.
Web Site: http://www.jlake.com/2010/08/14/writi...
May 7, 2016
"When editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden bought this story ...., he told me it was like reading a novel packed into a few thousand words. That might have been the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my writing."
-- Jay Lake
My children gifted this book to me for Christmas. I'll never know why they chose it, because like me, they had never heard of Lake or read him. I didn't know until about halfway through this collection that I had discovered a "new" author that would fervently pique my interest in short sci-fi fantasy and that, like so many of his fans, I would come to mourn the loss of him to cancer at so young an age.
I did not particularly care for the title story of this collection and it nearly put the book down after rereading it as Gene Wolfe suggests in his foreword. I have two recommendations:
1) If you like these stories so much that you read the entire collection, reread Wolfe's foreword. I think you'll find truth in his statement that "reading short stories takes a certain tough-mindedness."
2) Take the leading quote in this review (from Lake's own forward to his story titled The Speed of Time) to heart. Even the shortest of these stories is no casual endeavor. Lake can build a world in a paragraph and his characters' internal dialogues reveal very complex motivations. And unless you're better read than Lake and thoroughly familiar with milieu I would guess that you will often be sent a googling.
I believe I will read Mainspring next.
-- Jay Lake
My children gifted this book to me for Christmas. I'll never know why they chose it, because like me, they had never heard of Lake or read him. I didn't know until about halfway through this collection that I had discovered a "new" author that would fervently pique my interest in short sci-fi fantasy and that, like so many of his fans, I would come to mourn the loss of him to cancer at so young an age.
I did not particularly care for the title story of this collection and it nearly put the book down after rereading it as Gene Wolfe suggests in his foreword. I have two recommendations:
1) If you like these stories so much that you read the entire collection, reread Wolfe's foreword. I think you'll find truth in his statement that "reading short stories takes a certain tough-mindedness."
2) Take the leading quote in this review (from Lake's own forward to his story titled The Speed of Time) to heart. Even the shortest of these stories is no casual endeavor. Lake can build a world in a paragraph and his characters' internal dialogues reveal very complex motivations. And unless you're better read than Lake and thoroughly familiar with milieu I would guess that you will often be sent a googling.
I believe I will read Mainspring next.
December 29, 2014
Jay Lake died in June of 2014. It was a tragic loss but not a surprise, since Lake had made his experiences with cancer public. Last Plane to Heaven, edited by Lake himself, is a reminder of just how much the speculative fiction world lost.
I have always loved Lake’s prose, but I had trouble with his novels. This collection of thirty-two stories shows him, mostly, at his best and strongest. As with his novels, even when a story is, by my lights, less than successful, it is still a fascinating read. Lake put a brief introduction to each story. In several cases these often humorous introductions are as interesting as the story. Fair warning, though; several of these introductions discuss the effect of his cancer and the treatments on his writing; be prepared.
Because there are thirty-two stories, I am not going to comment on all of them... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
I have always loved Lake’s prose, but I had trouble with his novels. This collection of thirty-two stories shows him, mostly, at his best and strongest. As with his novels, even when a story is, by my lights, less than successful, it is still a fascinating read. Lake put a brief introduction to each story. In several cases these often humorous introductions are as interesting as the story. Fair warning, though; several of these introductions discuss the effect of his cancer and the treatments on his writing; be prepared.
Because there are thirty-two stories, I am not going to comment on all of them... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
April 9, 2015
This is an odd collection, but in a way that is perfectly representative, as much of Jay Lake's work rides the jagged line between the ridiculous and the sublime. It also has one of the more unusual introductions I've encountered, where Gene Wolfe either insults the readers or indulges in some humor that I failed to appreciate. It is both a career retrospective and a swan song, as the project was put together during the terminal stages of Lake's colon cancer. The intro paragraphs that lead each story can be particularly poignant. It is ironically a fantastic collection to start with for anyone new to Lake's writing; if you are already a fan it wraps things up with a bittersweet ending.
[NB: Jay Lake and I were acquaintances, and I edited some of his non-fiction for the Internet Review of Science Fiction.]
[NB: Jay Lake and I were acquaintances, and I edited some of his non-fiction for the Internet Review of Science Fiction.]
July 6, 2016
This is Jay's last short story collection. I was never a rabid fan of Jay's writing -- I mean, I'd read his Green series and enjoyed it, but it wasn't something I'd ever freak out about. But I stumbled across his blog not long after I'd read Green and followed along since he seemed like a nice guy. And then his cancer came back. And then MY mom was diagnosed with colon cancer. And I watched him write about and struggle with his decline and defiantly rage against the dying of the light for the sake of his daughter and it broke my heart. This is his last collection of short stories. It feels like his last will and testament for me, and that by reading it, he's really gone, and I'm not quite willing to accept that. Watching him deal with his cancer helped me help my mother deal with hers...even though she won the genetic lottery he lost. It feels terribly unfair sometimes.
October 6, 2015
It's a while since I've read any Sci-fi so I was curious to see how I would find this, a combination of Sci-fi and fantasy from an author who died before this collection was published. Well, it was certainly different! The Sci-fi I found difficult to follow - like cryptic crosswords I suspect you need a lot of practice and patience to get a proper understanding of the genre. The so - called "steam, punk and fairies section" was ok - I did enjoy "the Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen" in particular- and the Descent into Darkness was my favourite section with echoes of H P Lovecraft in some of the stories. Lake's final chapter on the cancer that killed him was very moving but hard to read. All in all a book for the diehard Sci-fi fans rather than the casual dipper-in.
December 22, 2015
The introduction to this collection was so off-putting I almost didn't get any farther. I would encourage you to skip it, because the book is nothing so aggressive/macho and was actually enjoyable.
Other than that it was short stories, mostly enjoyable. I did learn I hate not knowing how long short stories are before I read them, so that was educational. They range across several genres. One I recognized; turns out it was in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. It ends with a (fairly depressing) essay about cancer, which the author was dying from. So be warned, that's a bit of a downer.
Other than that it was short stories, mostly enjoyable. I did learn I hate not knowing how long short stories are before I read them, so that was educational. They range across several genres. One I recognized; turns out it was in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. It ends with a (fairly depressing) essay about cancer, which the author was dying from. So be warned, that's a bit of a downer.
March 18, 2015
I had read some Jay Lake before and I remember liking what I'd read. After I learned of his recent passing and the publication of his final collection, I decided to check it out.
This book is jam-packed with great stories, great ideas, great scenes. He doesn't limit himself to any specific genre so he tackles everything with the same vibrant gusto. Because he packs so much into so little (some stories are only two pages), the stories have resonating impact. His writing is also well-crafted, so it was not only exciting but a pleasure to read.
It is a shame, truly, that we will never hear more from this exceptional talent.
Highly recommended.
This book is jam-packed with great stories, great ideas, great scenes. He doesn't limit himself to any specific genre so he tackles everything with the same vibrant gusto. Because he packs so much into so little (some stories are only two pages), the stories have resonating impact. His writing is also well-crafted, so it was not only exciting but a pleasure to read.
It is a shame, truly, that we will never hear more from this exceptional talent.
Highly recommended.
January 4, 2015
this final collection holds more of Jay Lake's stunning prose than I can almost handle!
I would have given this 4 stars, as not all of these pieces worked for me, but the final harrowing pages are easily worth 6 or 8 stars, so I'll settle for only giving this 5 out of 5.
meanwhile, i'm digging my way through his oeuvre, still trying to figure out where I stand regarding this great writer, whether or not I actually like his work, and being really, really sad he's gone. RIP.
I would have given this 4 stars, as not all of these pieces worked for me, but the final harrowing pages are easily worth 6 or 8 stars, so I'll settle for only giving this 5 out of 5.
meanwhile, i'm digging my way through his oeuvre, still trying to figure out where I stand regarding this great writer, whether or not I actually like his work, and being really, really sad he's gone. RIP.
July 18, 2015
First thing is you have to is like short stories. This collection (like most collections) is an insight into the mind of the author as he explores ideas.
If you like to explore this is for you. Lake has a great imagination and a fine writing style. The stories are a bit unexpected, I suppose, but all in all that is also part of the fun. I have no preconceived notion of his work so this read takes me into uncharted territory. I like that!
If you like to explore this is for you. Lake has a great imagination and a fine writing style. The stories are a bit unexpected, I suppose, but all in all that is also part of the fun. I have no preconceived notion of his work so this read takes me into uncharted territory. I like that!
June 30, 2015
Read 22 pages and quit. I shouldn't even give it a star. I couldn't understand half of it. The writing was done to make the men sound like some wannabe badass and probably racist. I don't have time to read a book where I'm question every other sentence. Disliked how he talked about God and his vocabulary.
September 18, 2015
I hoped I would love this. The introduction by Gene Wolfe immediately assumes that the reader doesn't read many short stories, which is not true in my case. He also says that if you don't revere the title story that 'you've failed'. I'm sorry that Jay Lake died too young, and I'm sorry I admired some of these intellectually without not loving them wholeheartedly. But I don't think I failed.
January 18, 2026
Lake is a great writer, but many of these stories read as a bit half-baked. In some ways it feels like Lake is trying to do the "show-don't-tell" thing that Tiptree is so good at, but he can't achieve it at the same level. The science fiction stories are much better than the more fantasy-leaning stories.
January 11, 2015
This is not a five-star book. Five stars would mean I intend to reread it at some point, and reading it once--particularly the final section, "The End"--is too devastating to make it through again.
So long, Jay. You'll be missed.
So long, Jay. You'll be missed.
October 4, 2014
was VERY good - reminded me of why I enjoy good SF collections so much!
And the presentation/collection was very touching - with the last 2 essays being about his dealing with cancer and dying (he died right before the collection came out).
And the presentation/collection was very touching - with the last 2 essays being about his dealing with cancer and dying (he died right before the collection came out).
December 20, 2014
I thought being a collection of short stories might be enjoyable. Lane's catechism for cancer reflects the reality of living and dying with the disease. But overall, I found the material too dark to enjoy and had to put it aside
August 7, 2015
Jay Lake - Such a loss to the sci fi book world. These stories just whet your appetite for more. The last chapter, about the author's experience with cancer, is unfortunately not fiction and heartwrenching - so beware.
November 9, 2014
Enjoyed it,, A shame it is his last book
August 3, 2015
Hit and miss. Some stories I really enjoyed. Some not so much...
The title story was really good. If all stories were this good it would have been a five.
The title story was really good. If all stories were this good it would have been a five.
December 25, 2014
Written well, but I did not finish the last half ... the short stories got too dark, with too many soulless angels. I can see why Gene Wolfe likes him so much, as Lake is usually cryptic.
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