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Close Encounters with the Deity: Stories
Stated First Printing in Fine condition. The dust jacket is in Near Fine condition. Rubs at the outer tips and creasing at the head of its spine. Foreword by Isaac Asimov.
306 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1986
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51 people want to read
About the author
Michael Bishop
306 books105 followersMichael Lawson Bishop was an award-winning American writer. Over four decades & thirty books, he created a body of work that stands among the most admired in modern sf & fantasy literature.
Bishop received a bachelor's from the Univ. of Georgia in 1967, going on to complete a master's in English. He taught English at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968-72 & then at the Univ. of Georgia. He also taught a course in science fiction at the US Air Force Academy in 1971. He left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer.
Bishop won the Nebula in 1981 for The Quickening (Best Novelette) & in 1982 for No Enemy But Time (Best Novel). He's also received four Locus Awards & his work has been nominated for numerous Hugos. He & British author Ian Watson collaborated on a novel set in the universe of one of Bishop’s earlier works. He's also written two mystery novels with Paul Di Filippo, under the joint pseudonym Philip Lawson. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Bishop has published more than 125 pieces of short fiction which have been gathered in seven collections. His stories have appeared in Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the Missouri Review, the Indiana Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgia Review, Omni & Interzone.
In addition to fiction, Bishop has published poetry gathered in two collections & won the 1979 Rhysling Award for his poem For the Lady of a Physicist. He's also had essays & reviews published in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Omni Magazine & the NY Review of Science Fiction. A collection of his nonfiction, A Reverie for Mister Ray, was issued in 2005 by PS Publishing. He's written introductions to books by Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Pamela Sargent, Gardner Dozois, Lucius Shepard, Mary Shelley, Andy Duncan, Paul Di Filippo, Bruce Holland Rogers & Rhys Hughes. He's edited six anthologies, including the Locus Award-winning Light Years & Dark & A Cross of Centuries: 25 Imaginative Tales about the Christ, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press shortly before the company closed.
In recent years, Bishop has returned to teaching & is writer-in-residence at LaGrange College located near his home in Pine Mountain, GA. He & his wife, Jeri, have a daughter & two grandchildren. His son, Christopher James Bishop, was one of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre on 4/16/07.
Bishop received a bachelor's from the Univ. of Georgia in 1967, going on to complete a master's in English. He taught English at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School in Colorado Springs from 1968-72 & then at the Univ. of Georgia. He also taught a course in science fiction at the US Air Force Academy in 1971. He left teaching in 1974 to become a full-time writer.
Bishop won the Nebula in 1981 for The Quickening (Best Novelette) & in 1982 for No Enemy But Time (Best Novel). He's also received four Locus Awards & his work has been nominated for numerous Hugos. He & British author Ian Watson collaborated on a novel set in the universe of one of Bishop’s earlier works. He's also written two mystery novels with Paul Di Filippo, under the joint pseudonym Philip Lawson. His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
Bishop has published more than 125 pieces of short fiction which have been gathered in seven collections. His stories have appeared in Playboy, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the Missouri Review, the Indiana Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgia Review, Omni & Interzone.
In addition to fiction, Bishop has published poetry gathered in two collections & won the 1979 Rhysling Award for his poem For the Lady of a Physicist. He's also had essays & reviews published in the NY Times, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Omni Magazine & the NY Review of Science Fiction. A collection of his nonfiction, A Reverie for Mister Ray, was issued in 2005 by PS Publishing. He's written introductions to books by Philip K. Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Pamela Sargent, Gardner Dozois, Lucius Shepard, Mary Shelley, Andy Duncan, Paul Di Filippo, Bruce Holland Rogers & Rhys Hughes. He's edited six anthologies, including the Locus Award-winning Light Years & Dark & A Cross of Centuries: 25 Imaginative Tales about the Christ, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press shortly before the company closed.
In recent years, Bishop has returned to teaching & is writer-in-residence at LaGrange College located near his home in Pine Mountain, GA. He & his wife, Jeri, have a daughter & two grandchildren. His son, Christopher James Bishop, was one of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre on 4/16/07.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 20, 2013
I finished reading Close Encounters with the Deity this morning on the way to work. It’s an interesting collection of stories, but not as interesting as I’d hoped.
There are fourteen stories in the collection and I thought the first seven were only mildly interesting. If this were a novel I probably would have given up on it. But I give short story collections a little more leeway and the eighth story, “A Short History Of The Bicycle: 401 B.C. To 2677 A.D.” rewarded my patience. For some reason the notion of a man living on a planet populated by living bicycles captured my interest.
I don’t know if it was the stories or if something in my mood changed, but I found the second half of the collection much more to my liking than the first. Even the very odd “The Bob Dylan Tambourine Software & Satori Support Services Consortium, Ltd.” was entertaining.
It’s not that the stories in the first half were bad; it’s just that they didn’t grab my attention. The situations were novel and interesting; but generally I felt detached from the characters and the story. I just didn’t care what happened. This wasn’t the case for the stories in the second half of the collection. Even in “The Bob Dylan…” story, where I couldn’t connect with either Dylan or the narrator, I wanted to know where the story was going.
The last story in the collection, “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis; Or, The Astrogator’s Testimony”, is also the longest; at nearly 60 pages it’s almost a fifth of the collection and is really a short novel. The novella is told in a slightly detached manner, in keeping with it being formatted somewhat like one of the gospels. Even so, I had no problem identifying with the characters, even the alien insectoid messiah.
On balance I’m glad I read it.
There are fourteen stories in the collection and I thought the first seven were only mildly interesting. If this were a novel I probably would have given up on it. But I give short story collections a little more leeway and the eighth story, “A Short History Of The Bicycle: 401 B.C. To 2677 A.D.” rewarded my patience. For some reason the notion of a man living on a planet populated by living bicycles captured my interest.
I don’t know if it was the stories or if something in my mood changed, but I found the second half of the collection much more to my liking than the first. Even the very odd “The Bob Dylan Tambourine Software & Satori Support Services Consortium, Ltd.” was entertaining.
It’s not that the stories in the first half were bad; it’s just that they didn’t grab my attention. The situations were novel and interesting; but generally I felt detached from the characters and the story. I just didn’t care what happened. This wasn’t the case for the stories in the second half of the collection. Even in “The Bob Dylan…” story, where I couldn’t connect with either Dylan or the narrator, I wanted to know where the story was going.
The last story in the collection, “The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis; Or, The Astrogator’s Testimony”, is also the longest; at nearly 60 pages it’s almost a fifth of the collection and is really a short novel. The novella is told in a slightly detached manner, in keeping with it being formatted somewhat like one of the gospels. Even so, I had no problem identifying with the characters, even the alien insectoid messiah.
On balance I’m glad I read it.
February 7, 2013
An intriguing batch of weird speculative fiction stories, many of which touch on themes of religion. As with most short story collections, there are a few lesser lights, but overall, the stories are of high quality. One of my favorites was the last one which was formatted with chapters and verses like the bible, and was built around the idea of an insectoid alien captured and forcibly brought to Earth, building a religion in parallel to events from the new testament.
November 23, 2009
It may seem like a contradiction in terms to describe a short story as both literary and science fiction, but that is exactly what Michael Bishop has written here, a collection of literary science fiction stories.
July 21, 2024
Fantastic religion-themed SF short stories!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews