A marvelous collection of wickedly apocalyptic stories by a two-time Nebula Award winning author. Three forlorn people huddle in a mausoleum of the frozen dead; they are the sole survivors of a germ-warfare attack that has wiped out the western United States. Their only food supply—the frozen corpses around them. Then, without warning, the refrigerators lose their electricity, and the dead begin to thaw... Rumors spread that occupants of abandoned cars along a desert highway have been abducted by mammoth birds who hunt people as smaller birds hunt worms for their young. But a college professor decides that might not be such a bad fate... A little old man in New York's East Village breeds strange animals to feed an overpopulated, food-short world... In a temple of hallucination, promiscuous love leads to manacled torture and a plaster-bound groin... The ultimate shark story... Supposedly the next best thing to a woman is a sheep, but there may be consequences... A psychopathic hangman discourses with his captive human pendulum... These stories by Edward Bryant, reminiscent of Ballard's Vermillion Sands, envision a bleak and forbidding future for man—one in which unheeded warnings have been fatefully fulfilled: too many people, not enough food, not enough work, useless leisure, and the fear—or memory—of cataclysmic war. His characters live in a chilling world where human values have been either smothered or violently destroyed—a world that is, even now, terrifyingly possible. "Whether our ultimate destination is utopia, dystopia, or Armageddon, we know the curve is headed somewhere. That's a truism. I suspect the curve is directed downward—perhaps completely off the graph. Consider this book a chart; these stories, coordinates." Contents: Adrift on the Freeway • (1970) • short story Among the Dead • (1971) • short story Dune's Edge • (1972) • short story File on the Plague • (1971) • short story Introduction: Loci • (1973) • essay Jody After the War • (1972) • short story Love Song of Herself • (1971) • short story No. 2 Plain Tank Auxiliary Fill Structural Limit 17,605 lbs. Fuel-PWA Spec. 522 Revised • (1972) • short story Pinup • (1973) • short story Sending the Very Best • (1970) • short story Shark • (1973) • short story Tactics • (1973) • short story Teleidoscope • (1973) • short story The Hanged Man • (1972) • short story The Human Side of the Village Monster • (1971) • short story The Poet in the Hologram in the Middle of Prime Time • (1972) • short story The Soft Blue Bunny Rabbit Story • (1971) • short story Their Thousandth Season • (1972) • short story