Going Harvey in the Big House

By Douglas Smith

Aurora Award Finalist story from a multi-award winning author.

"Doug Smith is, quite simply, the finest short-story writer Canada has ever produced in the science fiction and fantasy genres, and he's also the most prolific. His stories are a treasure trove of riches that will touch your heart while making you think."
—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids and FlashForward

"A great storyteller with a gifted and individual voice."
—Charles de Lint

"One of Canada's most original writers of speculative fiction."
—Library Journal

DESCRIPTION:
The Builders had made the House generations ago, to shelter the remnants of humanity from the poisons of the Outside. The Inners, the direct descendants of the Builders, now rule the House. The House protects the People, and the Inners protect the House. And Smoothers are the arms and legs of that protection.

Big G is a Smoother, ensuring that the daily activities of the House are not interrupted by “Harveys,” citizens who suffer violent mental breakdowns in the claustrophobic House. But when Big G discovers a strange photograph of blue and white swirls of nothingness when responding to a Harvey call, it leads him to a woman and a world within the world he thought he knew. And a world outside it as well.

REVIEWS:
"I first read this story nearly a decade ago. ... The images and the power of the story have stayed with me all this time. That’s one of the strongest recommendations I can give."
—Kristine Kathryn Rusch, award winning author

"Well conceived, but as always, it’s Smith's characters that drive the story. Big G is pitch perfect. Every aspect of his personality is just spot on. ... he is completely there and three-dimensional and his reactions and motivations are plausible. It works! The ending is just right. It couldn’t have been any other way..."
—SF Crowsnest Reviews

"Fed into my natural fears, suspicions, and all-round disillusionment with authority...culminating eventually in sweat-soaked nightmares about a post-apocalyptic world."
—Cicada Magazine

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Doug is an award-winning author of speculative fiction, with over a million words of fiction sold and over a hundred short story sales to professional markets in thirty countries and two dozen languages.

He has published three short story collections: Chimerascope (ChiZine Publications, Canada, 2010), Impossibilia, (PS Publishing, UK, 2008), and just recently, La Danse des Esprits (Dreampress, France, 2011).

Doug has twice won Canada's Aurora Award for speculative fiction, and have been a finalist for the international John W. Campbell Award, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's Bookies Award, and the juried Sunburst Award.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Douglas Smith
• Release date: Mar 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458028976

Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of Rasputin and Former People, which was a bestseller in the U.K. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has written for The New York Times and Wall Street Journal and has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, National Geographic, and Netflix. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U.S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. He lives with his family in Seattle.