State of Disorder

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:
When James Mackaby, respected scholar, husband and father, accepts a dinner invitation from an old rival who has fallen on hard times, he has no idea that revenge is on the menu. During this singular evening, three very separate and very different dinners will take place, all at the same time, all in the same place, all with the same guests.

And by the end of the last course, no one’s life will ever be the same again.

REVIEWS:
"Masterful."
—Ideomancer Magazine

"A neat twist on time travel and quantum physics."
—Publishers Weekly

"Smith explores the possibilities for revenge and manipulation inherent in time travel. The claustrophobic atmosphere of this tale heightens its devilish suspense and draws favorable comparisons to Poe’s tales of trapped, desperate protagonists."
—Tangent Online

"A chilling story of three dinners in the same place and time, and a very satisfying ending (A++)."
—Fantasy Book Critic

"A stunning piece of work."
—Kim Mohan, editor, Amazing Stories

"Smith invokes both Stephen Hawking and Edgar Allan Poe ... a successful marriage of bold imagination and finely-crafted details, which results in a chilling page-turner."
— Rainbow Dragon Recommends

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: Apr 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458143686

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.