Tom Waits penned and sang the immortal lines referenced in the title: "Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk." He had it right. How else explain the bizarre twists of fate that shape our lives, so well captured in this collection of eighteen stories? As diverse in style as they are in theme they all share a deep sense of irony about the human condition. The settings range from a neuroscience lab (in the award-winning tale of "The Heart Of A Rat") through earthquake-shattered San Francisco to a bar on Bourbon Street. And the harsh realism of stories about discovering the sordid details of a friend's demise or the life of a stripper contrast with poignant and fantastic tales of actually meeting God hiding in a southern town, designing and creating one's ideal mate, and trading in one's body for a newer model. God may have been drunk, but he had a sense of humour-albeit a very dark one.
About the Author: Ken Stange is a writer, visual artist, and occasional scientific researcher. He also taught psychology for many years at Nipissing University, including a course on the Psychology of Art and Creativity. He works in many forms and likes to mix his media. His works include poetry, fiction, arts journalism, scientific research reports, computer programs, philosophical essays, and visual art. His literary works include ten books of poetry and fiction, as well as hundreds of literary periodical publications. He recently won the Exile/Vanderbilt prize for short fiction. He calls all his books "hypotheses" because of his interest in the integration of the sciences and the arts. His book, A Smoother Pebble, A Prettier Shell, published by Penumbra Press, was a collection of his art works integrated with poems and an extended essay on the relationship of science to visual art. For almost a decade he has been devoting much of his energy to work on a major book (The Secret Agents) on the similarities and differences of creativity in the arts and the sciences-an excerpt of which appears in Mercury Press's anthology Imagination In Action. He also has had articles in computer magazines, written commercial software for test evaluation, been an 'Arts' columnist, as well as published in refereed scientific journals on empirical aesthetics, statistics, and computer research applications. He has presented papers at numerous international conferences, most of which relate to creativity, and has recently given a TEDx talk on "Redefining Creativity". He was the founder and editor of the literary magazine Nebula from 1975 to 1984 and currently edits the reincarnated Nebula as an 'unperiodical' Internet publication committed to work that bridges the 'Two Cultures' of science and art. Having always been interested in the interface between the visual and literary arts, as well as the boundary between science and art, the computer seemed the perfect medium with which to explore these colourful 'grey' areas. So his visual art always contains textual elements. These digital works are collaged together from digital photographs, mathematical experiments with such things as fractals, free-hand (or 'free-mouse') drawing, and image manipulation tools-with the textual element as a sort of glue. As a digital artist he has had numerous juried and curated exhibitions of his prints, and his work is represented in numerous public and private collections. More info at: KenStange.com