Trampoline: An Anthology

Kelly Link , Editor  - published August 2003

Greer Gilman’s novella “A Crowd of Bone” won the World Fantasy Award.

  • Trampoline and Alex Irvine’s “Gus Dreams of Biting the Mailman” were nominated for World Fantasy Awards.
  • Susan Mosser’s “Bumpship” was reprinted in The Year’s Best SF.
  • Christopher Barzak’s Dead Boy Found” was reprinted in The Best New Horror.
  • Karen Joy Fowler’s “King Rat” and Richard Butner’s “Ash City Stomp” were reprinted inThe Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror.

Read stories:

Multi-author interview. (An interview with Greer Gilman. And an older interview.)

Trampoline pictures

Reviews

  • “No unblinkered, gloveless reader can resist the stream of associations unleashed by Ford’s story and the rest of Trampoline: influences as disparate as science fiction, magic realism, pulp, and Twilight Zone morality plays.”
    — Village Voice
  • “In short, Trampoline is yet another unique source of powerful, exciting, new approaches to fantasy and interstitial fiction. It is flexible enough and fresh enough that I hope it proves to be the beginning of a series. It occupies its own rather beautifully fragile place in the fantastical fiction milieu.”
    — Jeff VanderMeer, Locus Online
  • “The editor should be commended, not only for an intriguing compilation…but that she manages to stay out of the way of it. The only thing that intrudes here is her taste in the story selection and ordering. There’s no tiresome manifesto here, no chest-beating about movements or genres or rants against publishing mediocrity and how some merry band of rogues is going to revolutionize anything. She understands that the role of editor is to let the work speak for itself.”
    — SF Site
  • Washington Post

Trampolines everywhere. Trampoline news alerts.

Trampoline, an anthology of mostly original fiction. Perhaps the first of an occasional series, perhaps the one and only of its kind. We’ll see.

20 stories ~ 140,000 words ~ 10 men ~ 10 women
Does not contain a manifesto.
Cover painting by Shelley Jackson.

Trampoline: an elastic mattress-like contrivance on which acrobats, gymnasts, &c. leap.

Trampoline: an original anthology edited by Kelly Link, the award-winning author of Stranger Things Happen, and co-editor of the zine, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Trampoline: twenty astounding stories by Christopher Barzak, Richard Butner, Alan DeNiro, Carol Emshwiller, Jeffrey Ford, Karen Joy Fowler, Greer Gilman, John Gonzalez, Glen Hirshberg, Samantha Hunt, Alex Irvine, Shelley Jackson, Beth Adele Long, Maureen McHugh, Susan Mosser, Ed Park, Christopher Rowe, Dave Shaw, Vandana Singh, and Rosalind Palermo Stevenson.

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For a mere $17 you and your friends around the world can read the finest fiction we’ve been able to find collected in one solid, easy to throw across the room, bouncy package.

Story selections have appeared (and maybe disappear) online. A roundtable interview is now bouncing across hypertext. All over the country home insurance companies will inquire, “Do you have a Trampoline?”

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Ok, but who are these people? — photos, biographies, links to websites and blogs, news on
trampolining activities (parties and readings?), and maybe some other bouncy fun.

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Table of Contents

Christopher Rowe, The Force Acting on the Displaced Body

Ed Park, Well-Moistened with Cheap Wine, the Sailor and the Wayfarer Sing of Their Absent Sweethearts

Shelley Jackson, Angel

John Gonzalez, Impala

Samantha Hunt, Famous Men (Three Stories)

Alex Irvine, Gus Dreams of Biting the Mail Man

Greer Gilman, A Crowd of Bone

Alan DeNiro, Fuming Woman

Maureen McHugh, Eight-Legged Story

Dave Shaw, King of Spain

Susan Mosser, Bump Ship

Vandana Singh, The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet

Glen Hirshberg, Shipwreck Beach

Jeffrey Ford, The Yellow Chamber

Beth Adele Long, Destroyer

Carol Emshwiller, Gods and Three Wishes

Christopher Barzak, Dead Boy Found

Rosalind Palermo Stevenson, Insect Dreams

Richard Butner, Ash City Stomp

Karen Joy Fowler, King Rat

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From the first line theory of reading:

T he little creek behind my trailer in Kentucky is called Frankum Branch.
R amnath Mishra’s life changed forever one morning,
A ll this started when my father told my mother she was a waste.
M argaret, do you see the leaves?
P ristine silence was the law in the gleaming white halls of The Center for the Reification of Actual Probability.
O ne day when I was in the first grade Scott Arnold told me he was going to wash my face with snow on my way home from school.
L ately, Walter has been hard to live with.
I t’s the start of a brand new life, Johnny.”
N b. No story begins with the letter N. Is that odd? Should we be worried?
E xclusion Rights for minors?

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A partial index of this anthology.
A poem, not connected to this anthology.

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Available in all good book stores, libraries, coffee shops, Chuck e Cheese, and State Fairs. O