Alien Fringe is a fantastic collection of stories: a novella about contact with aliens, plus stories about backpackers who tempt death in Asia, a dark-skinned beauty in a Java massage parlor, and more. Alien Fringe is a must for the new fiction reader; it adventures into places so vivid, so achingly beautiful that the reader feels as though he or she has been there.
In Alien Fringe:
--Michael, a San Francisco psychologist, has flashes of otherworldly insight---communications that are too intelligent to be human, but when he tries to tell an eager lover, she thinks he's losing it. Meanwhile, an investment banker comes in for help with a drinking problem, and, over time, Michael learns that his client has ties to a network of brutal white-collar crime. Then, just when he's beginning to understand what lies behind the bitingly critical alien telepathy, Michael nearly drowns in dangerous surf and his life begins to unravel amid the heady strains of fresh love, higher orders of being, and the secret doings of a criminal elite.
--When a small town businessman sneaks photos of two women nude-bathing at a mountain swimming hole, they decide to get even.
--During the last years of dictatorship in Indonesia, a young man who tends door at a massage parlor in Jakarta grows sick with desire for a beautiful, fierce-eyed Indonesian prostitute.
--A college student who plants redwood trees during the Vietnam War loses his job and gets caught up in a swirl of revolutionary sentiment among the battered old houses of a north coast fishing village.
--An artist who backpacks through SE Asia with a writer tempts death by rooming with a native Moslem woman beside a lake in Sumatra.
--Befriended by a community of outcasts, a woman struggles to find a home amid the newly rich of Media Gulch in San Francisco. When pangs of hunger lead to unexpected mystical insights, she and two friends hatch a scheme to get work on a fishing boat.
Alien Fringe costs $5.00 and is available in various formats. It can be found in the sci fi section of SynergEbooks at www.synergebooks.com (also in the short stories anthology section).
Excerpt
p 34 He puts his arms around her from behind and she leans around to kiss him, her tongue quickly entering his mouth. Kayla isn't shy about her desire. She was married for ten years and seems to know more about sex than he does. She has the advantage in a sense, and enjoys talking while they're mingled. She asks what he fantasized about sexually when he was younger. She persists in teasing it out of him then embarks upon it in ways that stretch the bounds of role-playing, her way of making light of his more controlled behavior. She says he's never really naked. Despite her contour, she's in better shape than he is. She plays games to help him concentrate on their arousal; she chided him once when he was about to peak too early.
p 52 There are other lights reflected in the window, floating pale and whitish. Different somehow. And then he sees them, their forms only visible within the pale of memory. Thinner than he, with delicate hands and feet, larger-than-normal heads; big eyes. They're watching in the direction of Rodney. Somber, studied; they're allowing Michael to see them. They don't seem to care. It takes him a while to grasp just what he's seeing. He tries it again, feeling as though he's being guided in doing so.
There seems to be some kind of discussion going on among them, a communication of thought with the quiet awareness that he's right there, watching. They hold as such, until they seem sure he understands, until a subtle kind of tension has abated. Then they're gone as if they faded into the peals of the conversation and the clinking of glassware around him.
Professional Reviews
Mainstream Fiction Reviews, Jane Toombs
This collection of mainstream, philosophical stories and poems is imaginatively done. If you're looking for a well-written non-genre book, by all means try Alien Fringe. The stories will stay in your mind long after you finish reading them.
Kim's Reviews, Kim Gaona
Alien Fringe by G. LoBuono is a highly entertaining collection of fiction. For the Fiction Collector Alien Fringe is a must. On those dreary days when you want to curl up in front of the fire and read, you'll be able to pull down one of your favorites. Escape reality and imagine the world as it could be, one unbelievable challenge after another.
The AL-EX Project (ALternative EXistence) is my first foray into light science fiction, written under the name of C M Donaldson (my real name) with a tale that tells of what happens when our main character aims to explore the dream state and manipula
MONSTROSITY n. 1. That which deviates greatly from the norm in appearance or structure. 2. The quality or character of being abnormal; hideous; frightful; shocking.
