Psychoshop

This is a posthumous collaboration by two of SF's greatest writers, Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny. Bester had completed half of the manuscript before his death in 1987, and then Zelazny finished it off before his own passing in 1995. In his introduction to this strange mix, Greg Bear calls the work an improvisational duet, and he is, as usual, right on the mark. This isn't so much a coherent novel as a story passed between two of the genre's more stylish writers. Fans looking for The Demolished Man or Nine Princes in Amber will be disappointed. Instead, what they'll find is the tale of Alf Noir, a reporter who travels to Rome where he finds a 3,000-year-old shop that trades in the strange dealings of the mind. Not only is the shop not what it seems, but its proprietor, Adam Maser, is not what he seems. And soon Alf will come to realize that there is something unusual about himself as well. --Craig E. Engler