Odd Corners: The Slip-Stream World of William Hjortsberg

In 1971, when William Hjortsberg first published Gray Matters, reviewers mentioned Borges. And in 1972 came Symbiography, a novella about a man who dreams for a living. He is in fact a best-selling dreamer. Before Mad Max (1979) and Neuromancer (1984), back in the days when reality was either “real” or chemical, Hjortsberg set about to create a post-holocaust fiction, (mis-termed, we think, “science” fiction), that anticipates the Virtual, the Punk, and the Meta. As readers it is thrilling to realize how perfectly timed this work is for our day, fresher even, somehow, than it was thirty years ago. Odd Corners collects Gray Matters and Symbiography together with two stories never before in book form. It is a complete cyberworld, courtesy of William Hjorstberg.