The Fiction Factory — Jack Dann

First dates with Jesus, dinosaurs falling out of the sky, and a famous painting that eats art critics are among the quirky stories found in this collaborative collection. Each piece was written by Jack Dunn and one or more coauthors, and the joint creations are 18 highly entertaining and cutting-edge genre stories, many of them award-winning or award-nominated. Employees are drafted by corporations in the Nebula Awardâ€"nominated story "High Steel," and the first manned landing on Mars is imagined in "The God of Mars," just two examples of the futuristic flavor of the collection. Short, clever essays by the coauthors, among them Susan Casper, Gardner Dozois, and Gregory Frost, introduce each story and provide insight into the friendships, conflicts, and story conferences involved in collaborative writing.