Paul Clayton

What if you had access to a time machine and could go back to visit a deceased love... one more time. Would you? In 1962, Bobby Newman's Grandpa, a basement inventor, loses his wife to cancer, then begins to lose his mind to grief. While tuning up his not-yet-perfected time machine for one last visit with his wife, he ends up going the wrong way... into the dystopian future of 2025. Inexplicably, he sends the machine back. Fourteen-year-old Bobby uses it to lead Mom and Dad on a mission to find Grandpa and bring him back. But Grandpa has other ideas... This volume brings together five of Paul Clayton's most ambitious stories to date, stories that juxtapose a familiar America of the very recent past with ominous new versions of the country now coming into focus. Clayton's concern is with ordinary people-their innate wisdom and persistent foolishness, their capacity to do good or harm, and their resiliency-with what happens when time travelers from the 1960s arrive in a city dominated by criminal gangs and corrupt politicians, or when a woman opts for a new procedure to avoid losing her cancer-ridden husband, or when a soldier in Vietnam is granted a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give his elevator speech, or when a man, illegally alive, attempts to stay that way... Clayton shows how people make choices that, collectively, point civilization in new directions, be it toward forcible reclamation of vast tracts of land as primeval wilderness or elimination of those deemed to be nonproductive 'useless eaters.' This is a first-rate collection of stories by a serious writer.-Stephen Gallup, author of What About the Boy?

Escape From the Future and Other Stories

The Untold Story of the Lost Colony of Roanoke

White Seed

Alex has fled a broken marriage and a society on Earth grown hostile toward men. Landing on the mining planet, Kratos, known to its male work force as "Boyz Wurld," he hopes to lose himself in hard work, drinking, and the illusion of female companionship provided by sexbots. Will that be enough? In time, Alex finds himself longing to Talk to a Real, Live Girl. Predictably, there aren't many on Kratos. Then he finds Traci, as well as the dream of a new beginning back on Earth-a normal life-if only the forces controlling Kratos will permit it.A genuine love story, Talk to a Real, Live Girl explores consequences of a #MeToo movement run amok, and of adaptations brave individuals may be forced to make.

And Other Stories

Talk to a Real, Live Girl

Meet Frankie Baxter. She's trying to make ends meet and keep the boat afloat for her three kids. She's harassed, sometimes impatient, but she's a fabulous mum. So imagine her distress when Henry, her youngest child, goes missing... Henry returns safely accompanied by a stranger, Cora, a fairy godmother who starts to change the Baxter family's lives in the best of ways. So why do things suddenly start going wrong? Is Cora fulfilling their dreams - or is she the start of a nightmare? Funny, terrifying and a real page-turner, The Hoax puts a whole new slant on psychological thrillers...

The Hoax

Chief Calling Crow and the peaceful Muskogee, who lived in what is now Georgia and South Carolina, are enslaved by Spanish conquistadors, but Calling Crow refuses to submit and stages an incredibly strong and ultimately victorious rebellion. Original.

Paul Clayton

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