Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories

This collection is a veritable black hole of concepts; pulling you in and not letting you go. Few authors use this many original ideas in a single novel, and even fewer manage to work them out into this wonderful kind of detail, all the while grounding them solidly in back-story that makes sense. Some of his novel-length works suffer from weak spots here and there, but this collection is as near to perfect as I've seen.

This is a wonderful book of short stories that makes for wonderful, intimate moments with your partner. Drift off to the sound of that special voice...

The title of this review is Terry's Bisson's own description of his short stories (as found in this collection's Afterword). Many reviews of Bisson's works contend that he has a unique and unconventional outlook. While reviewers are hard-pressed to define such terms, it is certainly true that Bisson's stories are just a little off-kilter and intriguingly semi-surreal. But in the end, his strange settings and plot developments are all in service to solid stories of human relationships and universal struggles. A few of the stories in this collection stick with the unexpected simply for comic relief, most notably "The Coon Suit." But otherwise we get non-linear looks at social problems that Bisson sets up with bizarre near-future dystopias, taking on racism in "Next" and pollution in "By Permit Only" and "The Toxic Donut." In fact, Bisson tackles environmentalism in several tales here, with the most interesting being "Carl's Lawn and Garden" in which people somehow increase pollution, and its human costs, while surreally trying to save the natural world. Meanwhile, Bisson uses weird sci-fi mishaps to study how very human characters would cope. For instance, in "England Underway" the absurd happenstance of England floating across the sea and crashing into America allows a separated family to reunite; while the spooky "Over Flat Mountain" does nearly the opposite as a severe environmental disaster tears human communities apart. To top off the collection we get the extended sci-fi novellas "Necronauts" and "The Shadow Knows" in which Bisson explores how people would really deal with contacting worlds beyond our own. It's true that Bisson has a unique and unconventional vision, and you can dispense with trying to figure out what exactly that means by experiencing this unique and unconventional collection for yourself. [~doomsdayer520~]

Bears Discover Fire is the classic SF story, using SF/Fantasy themes perfectly to truly explore human emotional struggles. It's my favorite SF story right now, replacing "I have no mouth but I must scream", by Ellison.Bisson writes with a quirkiness that's quite endearing, and his characters always seem quite real(except on those short short short stories where 2-D characters suffice for getting his 'punchline' across). In short, this is a great book.

This is a collection of short (often very) stories. Many, like the title story are based on a single conceit -- everything else is the same, except, well, bears discover fire. And instead of hibernating, they're camping out in the medians of interstates. Or in "England Underway," England starts moving around Ireland, swings past Bermuda and comes to rest off the East Coast of the U.S. The best comparison I can make is to Steven Wright jokes. "Press Ann" can't really be described here, but is now one of my all-time favorites. Bisson admits he sometimes writes "odd mainstream works" that get passed of as fantasy and SF. While only a handful of his works "count" as true fantasy or SF, they are no less enjoyable.