Helpful Score: 1
This collection of short stories has nothing to do with magic school, despite the title. Don't expect any Harry Potter type stories here. In fact, quite a few of the stories seem experimental and, as a result, incomprehensible. Some, however, are worth reading. You probably won't want to keep the book, though. The stories worth reading are:
"Condillac's Statue": A man puts memory-less mature brain tissue into a statue and through sensory inputs gives it smell, hearing, and sight in an effort to see what decisions it makes about the things it sees/etc. An unexpected result ensues.
"Big Sam": She marries a man who eats a lot more as winter gets nearer, and gets increasingly difficult to wake up. Cute story.
"The Man Who Could Not See Devils": If everyone around you could see the supernatural and you couldn't, would you be at a disadvantage ... or not?
"Ringing the Changes": scifi. People have learned how to move consciousness from one body to the other and do so as a "vacation". Only this time it goes wrong and they're having quite a time getting people back into the correct bodies.
"Morning Glory": An exploration into the intelligence (or possibility of such) for plants, and tantalizing hints about how plant intelligence may mimic the collective human society's intelligence.
"The Devil You Don't": Posits beings from another plane of existence who 'eat' the energy that provides luck/unluck. Throw in a concerned Lucifer and you get a funny, but thoughtful story.
"Condillac's Statue": A man puts memory-less mature brain tissue into a statue and through sensory inputs gives it smell, hearing, and sight in an effort to see what decisions it makes about the things it sees/etc. An unexpected result ensues.
"Big Sam": She marries a man who eats a lot more as winter gets nearer, and gets increasingly difficult to wake up. Cute story.
"The Man Who Could Not See Devils": If everyone around you could see the supernatural and you couldn't, would you be at a disadvantage ... or not?
"Ringing the Changes": scifi. People have learned how to move consciousness from one body to the other and do so as a "vacation". Only this time it goes wrong and they're having quite a time getting people back into the correct bodies.
"Morning Glory": An exploration into the intelligence (or possibility of such) for plants, and tantalizing hints about how plant intelligence may mimic the collective human society's intelligence.
"The Devil You Don't": Posits beings from another plane of existence who 'eat' the energy that provides luck/unluck. Throw in a concerned Lucifer and you get a funny, but thoughtful story.
