In this masterful collection of horror stories, George Zebrowski divides these nineteen tales into personal, political, and metaphysical terrors-stories to scare you individually, stories to frighten you as a social animal, and stories that should terrify the entire human race. In "I Walked with Fidel," a young man encounters a once politically powerful zombie; "Jumper" focuses on a young woman with a dark and troubled past, while in "The Coming of Christ the Joker," the lighthearted banter of a celebrity TV talk show becomes something far more serious. "A Piano Full of Dead Spiders" is an eerie story of genius, its demands, and its delusions; in "Passing Nights," the truth behind a recurring nightmare is revealed; "The Soft Terrible Music" depicts a man who must hide his past even from himself. And in the title story, the novella "Black Pockets," Zebrowski asks: What happens to a man when his desire for revenge becomes all-consuming? With an introduction by Howard Waldrop and an afterword by the author, George Zebrowski reveals himself in Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts as a writer who can play on our more disturbing emotions even as he impels us to deeper thoughts.
"Zebrowski splits his eerie excursions into three realms: the personal, the political and the metaphysical, leaping deeper into existential unease each time. . . . This collection is a brilliant Baedecker to the blackest realms within us."
Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
