Music After Midnight: Collected Visions of Wonder

This book constitutes a “do-over”, a second try at gathering up “best-of”. To that end, there is an underlying organization at work in the Table of Contents. No random sampler box of chocolates, this; the stories are grouped together with some purpose.

The first batch – “The Clouded Hour” through “Logbook” – are intimate stories, small-town tales and very personal encounters. The idea is to grow outward from there, in scope, leading to the second batch – from “Sisters” to “Song of Aveyron” – still very personal stories, but told against expanded backdrops.

From there, the third group – “With Diamonds” to “The Local Gods” – focus on character, and how circumstances can challenge it. This comes to a head with “Closing Time” through “A Public Burning”, stories about one particular character – someone I hope my reader will find both chilling and thought-provoking – whose path is paved with moral reckoning.
This groundwork laid, the next group moves up to Big Questions, which my heroes Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison and Arthur C. Clarke bravely took up time and again. These include “Map Planet” through “Joy to the World”. Then there’s civilization itself, scrutinized from “Mandarin’s Redux” through “Menagerie”.

Finally, there’s a batch of “After Midnight” stories – tales that find hope in hopelessness, music in the darkness. “The Cellar” to the book’s conclusion, “Forest Glen Sonata”.

Or, of course, you could always just pick the book and let it fall open, and read whatever’s there.

In any case, I hope I’ve gotten it right with this do-over – and that I am, with these 50 stories in Music After Midnight, offering my very best.