spuytenduyvil

Harry Steven Lazerus has a remarkable range of mastery: science fiction, slipstream, and traditional popular fiction. Thirteen Tales From The Hippocampus, a brilliant debut collection of short fiction, offers riveting plots and memorable characters, including the protagonist of “Becky,” Calvin Williams, who has fallen in love with the au pair robot he had a hand in designing. Diverse as these tales are, each offers a penetrating view not only of human nature’s foibles and failures, but also a good look at our triumphs.

      Miriam Kotzin, author of Country Music

 

What astonishes the reader most of all in reading Harry Steven Lazerus’s brilliant new short story collection, Thirteen Tales from the Hippocampus, is the stories’ imaginative range.  Lazerus is both an intuitively gifted story teller and a deeply rational scholar and thinker, and he makes terrific use of these catalytic resources in creating unforgettable characters and circumstances, amidst highly diverse settings. Whether it’s the trans-species emotional intensity of “Felis Sapiens,” or the historical resonance of “The Man Who Executed Socrates,” or the familial insight and empathy of “Leo the Lion,” all these stories will keep your eyes glued to the page while stirring the depths of your heart. In sum, a most auspicious debut,

bringing a combination of Ray Bradbury and Anton Chekhov to mind!

      Lee Slonimsky, author of Bermuda Gold