Other Places (Conversation Pieces) (Volume 51)

Finalist for the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award

Life unfolds in strange ways. You may encounter people from your past living in your former apartments, or realize you have a penis as you engage in war-dreams, or find a planet filled with ghosts that look exactly like the ghosts back home. Is it possible they are the same as the ghosts back home? Wherever you travel, you’ll have tough decisions to make about the aliens you may have harmed and the aliens who may harm you. Other Places, Karen Heuler’s latest story collection, follows travelers as the familiar becomes strange, and the strange becomes life.

Review

Heuler's prose illuminates the strangeness of both her characters and her settings. Establishing elaborate themes and morals is no easy feat in such short narrative arcs, but Heuler does it admirably, quickly laying the groundwork for her myriad of worlds, cultures, and travelers.

Publishers Weekly