Showing results for "The Riddle" in Satire

This collection of short stories encompasses 20 years of work by Howard Fast, including some of his best-known and most treasured tales. Not merely fantasy or science fiction, these "Zen stories" explore the world’s mysterious and unanswerable questions, big and small, and the results are at once bizarre, humorous, chilling, and poignant. An American general shoots down what appears to be an angel during a Vietnam War battle, a celebrated author becomes a hunted man, and a mouse is granted human thought and emotion by a group of alien beings.

When ordinary potter Efim Hawkins accidentally revives Honest John Barlow—a slick, sharp-witted man preserved from centuries past—Barlow awakens to a society in catastrophic decline. Overpopulation has exploded. Education has collapsed. The average intelligence has plummeted. And the masses, countless and unquestioning, march forward under a system that rewards ignorance and conformity. Where others see chaos, Barlow sees opportunity.