The Complete Short Stories

"Honestly, I would just drop in wherever you want, because he did emerge almost fully formed as a writer of short stories. ‘The Voices of Time,’ as I say, would be early- 1960s: maybe actually 1960. It has so many of those key ideas: alienated figures trying to work something out—the mysteries of the universe—deep time—receiving signals from space—running around a deserted base going mad… It’s incredible. Then you come forward into the late 1970s and early 1980s, and you get things like ‘Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown,’ where every single word is footnoted. And the very playful, paratextual, formally experimental work that he does in the short story form. Then there are the Vermillion Sands pieces collected together as a sequence of stories set in an imaginary resort—a sort of Mediterranean beach resort of the future. People are just living lives of leisure, they have no work, and are playing around sculpting clouds in the sky and making singing statues… again, exemplary of a certain part of his vision. He said: the future is boring! People will have nothing to do! So they will entertain themselves by doing the weirdest things. So, yes. You can dip in and dip out. He started off as a short story writer and he is an expert in the form."