Christopher DeWan's HOOPTY TIME MACHINES is a permission slip to adventure, an escape from the staid, workaday world, a passport to wistful, fabulist places, each one filled with peculiar dreams and wild awakenings. The stories include fairy tale heroines, introspective superheroes, and a whole menagerie of myths and monsters, but at their heart, each one is deeply human, and at least a little bit heartbreaking. "One of the most anticipated small press books of 2016."
Advance Praise for Hoopty Time Machines:
"Absurd, heartbreaking, terrifying, outrageously funny—the stories in Christopher DeWan's Hoopty Time Machines are all of these things, often all at once. Reading the book is like staring into a spiderwebbed mirror, the perfect vessel by which to understand our fractured, absurdist world. There are hints of Barthelme, Vonnegut, and Calvino to be found here, but make no mistake: DeWan is something gloriously new." – Nathan Ballingrud, author of North American Lake Monsters
"Like Barry Yourgrau went on tour with sad, lyrical stand-up routines—funny, sharp, playful zingers of stories that reach right out to grab a reader." – Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
"Hoopty Time Machines is much like a bag of M&M's, in that it's nearly impossible, once you've opened it, not to consume it down to the last morsel, and fast. It is less like a bag of M&M's in that you never know what you'll find beneath the candy coating: a peanut or an amphetamine, a rosary bead or a thumbtack." – Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination
"Christopher DeWan's Hoopty Time Machines is that rare story collection that is both a total blast to read and a complete philosophical package. These abrupt, funny, vigorous stories—involving urban legends, minotaurs, little mermaids, chupacabras, and changelings—contain in their brevity vast depth and import. These are stories to read, reread, and perennially enjoy." – Sharma Shields, author of The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac
"An absolute delight from the first page to the last: it's like that scene in Singin' in the Rain, only with ideas instead of puddles." – Ben Loory, author ofStories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
"Hoopty Time Machines is a wide-ranging tour of lives … sometimes funny, often tragic, usually bizarre, and always interesting." – Ramona Ausubel, author ofSons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty
"Reading the stories in Christopher DeWan's Hoopty Time Machines is the experiential equivalent of standing on a cliff breathing in the rich and glinting air coming off a long-travelled ocean. From stories of fairy tale heroines lost in the suburbs, to the more reflective, poetic side of Godzilla, to the poignant habits of the last man on earth, the brilliant waves keep coming. There's a tang to it, unsettling humour, a wiseness, implacability—and a hint of danger. In short,Hoopty Time Machines is a book that will fill you with a sense of the oceanic. Breathe it in." – Helen McClory, author of On the Edges of Vision
