Download or read book The Whole Mess and Other Stories written by Jack Skillingstead and published by Fairwood Press LLC. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ​What does it mean to be human in a universe of shifting, sometimes terrifying realities? Eighteen stories from Jack Skillingstead’s second decade of publishing feature intense and surprising explorations of who we are, who we wish to be, and who we can’t be. In “The Whole Mess” a genius math professor solves a multiverse equation only to find himself pursued by ancient Masters across the many iterations of his could-have-been lives. “Straconia” gives us a Kafkaesque world where all the lost things go, including people who must first find themselves before they can find a way back home. “Tribute” looks at a post-NASA space race that goes nowhere—until an unlikely pair of marooned astronauts find each other and the future. ​Also included in this collection is “The Writing Life,” a self-reflection on memory, ambition, and imagination in the formation of one writer’s journey.