Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
Authors: Pat Murphy
The Falling Woman
Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel
“A lovely and literate exploration of the dark moment where myth and science meet.” —Samuel R. Delany
“Murphy’s sharp behavioral observation, her rich Mayan background, and the revolving door of fantasy and reality honorably recall the novels of Margaret Atwood.” —
Publishers Weekly
“Murphy’s convincing modern setting is a marvelous foil for her frighteningly alien Mayan ghost, and the archeological material, besides being fascinating in its own right, is put to excellent use in the plot.” —
Newsday
The City, Not Long After
“A grand adventure.” —
San Francisco Chronicle
“In Ms. Murphy’s skillful hands, the showdown between art and power takes on mythic dimensions… . No one comes out of this confrontation unchanged, including the reader.” —
The New York Times Book Review
Points of Departure
“There is something of Borges’s absurdist fables and of the fey, fog-haunted feel of Celtic myth to [
Points of Departure
]. This collection reverberates with the sound of the author’s unmistakable voice, a poetic blend of the everyday and the never-never.” —
Elle
“Brilliant, passionate, and dangerous as only the clearest visions can be … Murphy creates seamless blends of ideas and emotions, holistic works where genres mingle so the reader does not stop to ask if this is sf, fantasy, or horror… . These tales unite the power of a force of nature with the subtlety of the human heart.” —
Locus
Wild Angel
“A charming adventure.” —
The Denver Post
“A delightful cross-genre mix with elements of mystery, western and fantasy/adventure infused with a feminist sensibility.” —Rambles.net
“Faithful to the spirit of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan tales and Rudyard Kipling’s
Jungle Book
, this [is the] story of a young girl’s courage and resourcefulness.” —
Library Journal
Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
“Set on a cruise ship that blithely steams through the Bermuda Triangle, this savvy romp buttresses its nonstop action with quantum-mechanical insights into the nature of the universe and postmodern noodling about the nature of writing and reading.” —
The New York Times Book Review
“This cerebral equivalent of a roller-coaster ride … is replete with absorbing ponderings on the nature of reality and the nature of the novel… . The questions of who is in charge, who is real and whether the answers to those questions matter will leave readers pleasantly dizzy.” —
Publishers Weekly
“A paean to the potentialities of imagination, foaming quantum uncertainties, and the sheer plasticity of human reality.” —
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
The Shadow Hunter
“The clash of prehistoric shamanic traditions with future technology makes for a gripping tale—the first novel written by this Nebula Award-winning author.” —
Publishers Weekly
The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
Pat Murphy
2. IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH THE BEASTS
7. THE BEGINNING OF A CORRESPONDENCE
17. PROFESSOR SERUNCA’S WAGON OF WONDERS
21. HAVE YOU SEEN THE ELEPHANT?
Mary Maxwell’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
Max Merriwell’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
Pat Murphy’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
ADVENTURES IN TIME AND SPACE WITH MAX MERRIWELL
Afterword to
Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell
Afterword to
Bad Grrlz’ Guide to Reality
FOR EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
—MARY MAXWELL
FOR MARK TWAIN
—MAX MERRIWELL
FOR OFFICER DAVE
—PAT MURPHY
2. IN THE MOUNTAINS WITH THE BEASTS
7. THE BEGINNING OF A CORRESPONDENCE
17. PROFESSOR SERUNCA’S WAGON OF WONDERS
21. HAVE YOU SEEN THE ELEPHANT?
Mary Maxwell’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
Max Merriwell’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
Pat Murphy’s Afterword to
Wild Angel
1850
Oh, what was your name in the States?
Was it Thompson or Johnson or Bates?
Did you murder your wife
And fly for your life?
Say, what was your name in the States?
—Popular song of the 1850s
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
; Mark Twain
R
ACHEL MCKENSIE SAT ON THE GROUND
beside the canvas tent that was her temporary home. She was writing a letter to her sister, using a flattopped granite boulder as a writing desk. For just a moment, she had paused to appreciate the beauty of the California foothills.
The spring air carried the sharp scent of the pines and the sweet green smell of new leaves. A few feet from the tent, a brook flowed through a tumble of boulders. Her daughter Sarah stood by the water, playing with pebbles. Barely a toddler when Rachel and her husband William had started the long overland journey west, Sarah was walking confidently now. She was three years old—small for her age, but bright and alert, fearless in her acceptance of the wilderness world through which they traveled. As Rachel watched, the child laughed and held her hands out, showing her mother a white pebble that she had found in the streambed. “Mama!” she said. “Mama, look!”
William was farther downstream. The shallow metal dish that he used to pan for gold was leaning against a boulder and his broadbrimmed hat was pushed back on his head. He was talking with a blond man who had just ridden down the trail that led out of the mountains. It was, Rachel thought, the same man they had seen riding up that mountain trail with a companion earlier that day. The man had his friend’s horse tied behind his own. Rachel wondered idly if the man and his friend had a claim higher in the hills.
William was asking the man about gold—Rachel was sure of that. The year was 1850, just after that precious metal had been discovered at Sutter’s Mill. In the California foothills, men always talked of gold. Rachel and her husband, like so many others, had come west to find their fortune.
Rachel shook her head, chiding herself for her idleness. It was time that she stopped daydreaming and prepared the midday meal. She corked her bottle of ink and set it and the pen on top of the letter to keep the paper from blowing away. Then she stood and shook out her long skirts. Just as she turned her head toward the tent, a gunshot echoed up the valley.
William lay on the ground at the blond man’s feet. William’s hat had fallen beside him and a dark stain was spreading across his blue-cotton shirt. Rachel froze, staring at her fallen husband. In that moment, the blond man turned toward her, lifted his rifle, and fired.
The bullet caught Rachel in the chest and sent her staggering. As she fell, she cried out—a wail of pain and surprise. On the long journey west, she had worried about Indians and wolves, about stampedes that would trample them and flooding rivers that would carry their wagon away. But now that they were in California, she had thought her worries were over. How could this be happening now?
She could feel hot blood seeping from the wound in her shoulder, wetting the rocky ground beneath her. The sunlight was warm on her face; the world seemed unnaturally bright and clear. In the distance, the blond man left his horse and began climbing the slope toward her. She could see her daughter, standing by the stream. The little girl was gazing up at her, eyes round in sudden fear.