Thoreau's Microscope

Overview

A startling fictional form for real-world issues and developing tech

The politics and terrors of biotech, human engineering, and brain science are highlighted in this selection of short stories with Michael Blumlein's signature mix of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and wicked humor. The title piece, "Thoreau's Microscope," is a stunning mix of hypothesis and history, in which the author inhabits Thoreau's last days to explore the politics of impersonal science and personal liberation—a journey as illuminating as it is disturbing.

Reviews

"Blumlein has an exceptional vision, and he conveys it with exceptional talent." —Washington Post

"Blindingly brilliant . . . Blumlein is beyond any genre . . . a genuinely great writer." —Katherine Dunn, author, Geek Love

"A wonderful and disturbing writer." —William Gibson

"Offbeat and unpredictable . . . a talent that bears watching." —Publishers Weekly

"Disturbing. More!" —Joe Lansdale, creator, Hap and Leonard

"The title piece, original to the collection, creates a delightfully strange atmosphere of simultaneous intimacy and intellectual detachment in an autobiographical first-person narrative of how a doctor deals with the 'morbid curiosity' of experiencing his own cancer as both patient and professional." —Publishers Weekly

"Blumlein's voice takes on a degree of urgency here, but it only reminds us of the deeply humane urgency that his fiction has always exhibited." —Paula Guran, Locus Magazine

Author Biography

Michael Blumlein is a medical doctor and a respected SF writer, whose novels and stories have introduced new levels of both horror and wonder into the fiction of scientific speculation. His work as a cutting-edge medical researcher and internist at San Francisco's UCSF Medical Center informs his acclaimed stories and novels as they explore what it means to be truly—if only temporarily—human.