MELCHIOR À LA CARTE

With a life as wild as his fiction, the award-winning sci-fi screenwriter and novelist serves up an ?addictive? anthology of short stories (Andrew Kaplan, author of the Homeland novels).   A larger-than-life character before picking up the pen, Ib Melchior fought the Nazis as a counterintelligence officer and decoded Shakespeare?s tomb. He was an actor in Paris and a Nordic student of Viking history. He honed his craft at the dawn of television?s ?golden age? in the 1950s, imagining the realms beyond as a writer and director of some of the most memorable science-fiction cult films of the 1960s, including Robinson Crusoe on Mars and The Time Travelers.   In this rich volume, Melchior draws on all these life experiences to deliver a literary epicurean?s smorgasbord of short fiction?historical, speculative, and visionary. One story explores a woman?s reawakening in post-war Europe; others investigate the war zones of Iraq; expose the backstage havoc of a television quiz show; and cover the life-and-death challenge in a dystopian future?and more. Melchior serves up an addendum of ?desserts? in which he reveals the inspiration for each story, from the debatable identity of the Bard, to a Gestapo dog, to Hans Christian Andersen. Featuring twenty-one stories in all, Melchior À La Carte ?is more than a potpourri of delicacies?it is a feast of literary delights, reminiscent of the tales told by those master storytellers, Conrad and Maugham. In short  . . . Melchior?s book is a must have? (S. L. Stebel, author of Spring Thaw).   ?The Racer,? featured in this collection, was adapted twice for film as Death Race 2000 and Death Race.   ?An extraordinary storyteller . . . always provocative and wise, as he lays out the stuff of which dreams are made.? ?Mann Rubin, screenwriter of The Best of Everythin