Corrupting Dr. Nice

Description

August Faison and his gorgeous young daughter Genevieve are rogues of the first water—seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of the all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.
Dr. Owen Vannice is far too unworldly and far too rich for his own good. A fabulously wealthy paleontologist who has just spent the last year, not to mention billions of the family fortune, doing research in the Cretaceous period, he now finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow.
Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. Now he works for the exploitative crosstime corporation which has turned his timeline into a tourist trap, complete with luxury hotels and junkets to countless versions of the Crucifixion.
When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed, for Genevieve is falling in love with "Dr. Nice" against her better judgment, and is even willing to double-cross her father to protect him. But even that isn't enough, for Dr. Nice is losing his innocence, while Simon and his revolutionary zealots seek to drive out the invaders from the future.
Skillfully interweaving screwball comedy with the paradoxes of time travel and satirical social commentary, Corrupting Dr. Nice is, in the tradition of its Hollywood forbears, a love story, one that is at the same time serious and funny, sweet-natured and cynical—sophisticated speculative fiction by an award-winning modern master.

"Lucid, humane, and mercilessly funny, Corrupting Dr. Nice is a peach. If there could be great date books like there are great date movies, this would be one. Dr. Kessel's self-deceiving lovers strive against a painstakingly realized social backdrop—in this case, one that also happens to be the ultimate metaphor for post-modernism. Brilliant." —Jonathan Lethem

"Brilliantly intelligent, light-handed, and warm-hearted—a dazzler." —Ursula K. Le Guin

"Time travel yarns have been a science fiction staple since the early days of the genre, but have worn a bit thin in recent years. Now John Kessel breathes new life into the sub-genre with his latest novel. Corrupting Dr. Nice follows a pair of hapless lovers from ancient Jerusalem to the twenty-first century in a deft homage to the 1941 Preston Sturges romantic comedy, The Lady Eve. Like Sturges, Kessel uses his deluded characters' antics as a vehicle for wicked observations on media saturation, consumer culture, and postmodern looniness . . . Corrupting Dr. Nice is suffused with gentle good humor. Kessel treats his characters with warmth and compassion even while he's putting them through the wringer." —The San Francisco Chronicle

---

August Faison and his gorgeous young daughter Genevieve are rogues of the first water—seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of the all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.
Dr. Owen Vannice is far too unworldly and far too rich for his own good. A fabulously wealthy paleontologist who has just spent the last year, not to mention billions of the family fortune, doing research in the Cretaceous period, he now finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow.
Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. Now he works for the exploitative crosstime corporation which has turned his timeline into a tourist trap, complete with luxury hotels and junkets to countless versions of the Crucifixion.
When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed, for Genevieve is falling in love with "Dr. Nice" against her better judgment, and is even willing to double-cross her father to protect him. But even that isn't enough, for Dr. Nice is losing his innocence, while Simon and his revolutionary zealots seek to drive out the invaders from the future.
Skillfully interweaving screwball comedy with the paradoxes of time travel and satirical social commentary, Corrupting Dr. Nice is, in the tradition of its Hollywood forbears, a love story, one that is at the same time serious and funny, sweet-natured and cynical—sophisticated speculative fiction by an award-winning modern master.

"Lucid, humane, and mercilessly funny, Corrupting Dr. Nice is a peach. If there could be great date books like there are great date movies, this would be one. Dr. Kessel's self-deceiving lovers strive against a painstakingly realized social backdrop—in this case, one that also happens to be the ultimate metaphor for post-modernism. Brilliant." —Jonathan Lethem

"Brilliantly intelligent, light-handed, and warm-hearted—a dazzler." —Ursula K. Le Guin

"Time travel yarns have been a science fiction staple since the early days of the genre, but have worn a bit thin in recent years. Now John Kessel breathes new life into the sub-genre with his latest novel. Corrupting Dr. Nice follows a pair of hapless lovers from ancient Jerusalem to the twenty-first century in a deft homage to the 1941 Preston Sturges romantic comedy, The Lady Eve. Like Sturges, Kessel uses his deluded characters' antics as a vehicle for wicked observations on media saturation, consumer culture, and postmodern looniness . . . Corrupting Dr. Nice is suffused with gentle good humor. Kessel treats his characters with warmth and compassion even while he's putting them through the wringer." —The San Francisco Chronicle

---

Some Like It Cold and Other Stories

Description

Collected for the first time, three stories about time traveling "talent scout" Detlev Gruber, agent for future film studios sent into the past on missions to recruit actors and filmmakers to renew their careers in the future. But talented people lead troubled lives, and suppose these people don't want to come?

Set against the same background as Kessel's novel Corrupting Dr. Nice, the stories in "Some LIke It Cold" are mysterious, satirical, darkly comic looks at classic Hollywood in all its glory and exploitation. And they present vivid portraits of three of classic film's greatest figures: Marilyn Monroe, Preston Sturges, and Orson Welles.

"Kessel's writing, which recalls the best of such cutting-edge authors as Norman Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, while retaining its own acidic elegance of style, is nothing less than brilliant."
--Austin American-Statesman

"Witty, daring and intelligent, Kessel produces some of the best science fiction in the genre."
--Publisher's Weekly

“John Kessel is one of American SF’s finest writers . . . Occasionally dashing into whimsy, but in general employing a finely calculated combination of realism and satire, Kessel constructs stories of subversive eloquence, their full freight of meaning exploding in the mind a while after reading has ended.”
—Nick Gevers, Locus

---

Collected for the first time, three stories about time traveling "talent scout" Detlev Gruber, agent for future film studios sent into the past on missions to recruit actors and filmmakers to renew their careers in the future. But talented people lead troubled lives, and suppose these people don't want to come?

Set against the same background as Kessel's novel Corrupting Dr. Nice, the stories in "Some LIke It Cold" are mysterious, satirical, darkly comic looks at classic Hollywood in all its glory and exploitation. And they present vivid portraits of three of classic film's greatest figures: Marilyn Monroe, Preston Sturges, and Orson Welles.

"Kessel's writing, which recalls the best of such cutting-edge authors as Norman Spinrad and Philip K. Dick, while retaining its own acidic elegance of style, is nothing less than brilliant."
--Austin American-Statesman

"Witty, daring and intelligent, Kessel produces some of the best science fiction in the genre."
--Publisher's Weekly

“John Kessel is one of American SF’s finest writers . . . Occasionally dashing into whimsy, but in general employing a finely calculated combination of realism and satire, Kessel constructs stories of subversive eloquence, their full freight of meaning exploding in the mind a while after reading has ended.”
—Nick Gevers, Locus

---

Good News From Outer Space

Description

As the calendar counts down the months to the year 2000, millennial fever takes hold in the United States. George Eberhart, reporter for the biggest tabloid in the world, is on the track of what might be the story of the century--he has evidence that there really are aliens on planet Earth.

---

The Year's Top Ten Tales of Science Fiction 2

Description

A collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Erosion,” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In “As Women Fight,” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In “A Story, with Beans,” by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal-eating bugs is considered. In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In “On the Human Plan,” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. In “Crimes and Glory,” by Paul McAuley, set in the author's Jackaroo sequence, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover. In “Mongoose,” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, set in the authors' Lovecraftian “Boojum” universe, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths. In “Before My Last Breath,” by Robert Reed, a geologist uncovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard. In “The Island,” by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it. Finally, “This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” by Robert Charles Wilson, is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was never published.

---

A collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Erosion,” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In “As Women Fight,” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In “A Story, with Beans,” by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal-eating bugs is considered. In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In “On the Human Plan,” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. In “Crimes and Glory,” by Paul McAuley, set in the author's Jackaroo sequence, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover. In “Mongoose,” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, set in the authors' Lovecraftian “Boojum” universe, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths. In “Before My Last Breath,” by Robert Reed, a geologist uncovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard. In “The Island,” by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it. Finally, “This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” by Robert Charles Wilson, is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was never published.

---

Corrupting Dr. Nice

Product Details

• Proviso: New
• Notes: Name brand NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
• ISBN13: 9780312865849

Description

---

In John Kessel's world, time travel has given humanity a great gift: the ability to exploit an almost infinite number of alternate pasts. And exploit it they have. Sightseeing tours to the crucifixion and front row seats at Caesar's assassination are just the beginning. But nice-guy Dr. Owen Vannice just wants to bring a dinosaur named Wilma forward for study. Then he meets August and Genevieve, a father-and-daughter con artist team, and together they land in the middle of a past revolt. "Entertaining, funny, and, best of all, highly serious," according to author Connie Willis.

---

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction November/December 2010

Description

Amazon is thrilled to offer Kindle fantasy and science-fiction fans the magazine that Stephen King calls "the best fiction magazine in America."

Founded in 1949, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine is the award-winning original publisher of such classics as Stephen King's Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Each bimonthly issue offers compelling short fiction by writers such as Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Bisson, along with the science-fiction field's most respected and outspoken opinions on books, films and science--plus a dash of humor from our cartoonists and writers.

---

Amazon is thrilled to offer Kindle fantasy and science-fiction fans the magazine that Stephen King calls "the best fiction magazine in America."

Founded in 1949, Fantasy & Science Fiction magazine is the award-winning original publisher of such classics as Stephen King's Dark Tower, Daniel Keyes's Flowers for Algernon, and Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Each bimonthly issue offers compelling short fiction by writers such as Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Bisson, along with the science-fiction field's most respected and outspoken opinions on books, films and science--plus a dash of humor from our cartoonists and writers.

---