The Shape of the Final Dog and Other Stories

Best known as the screenwriter of Blade Runner, Fancher debuts with a volume of unclassifiable, sometimes surreal, but largely disappointing short fiction. In “The Black Weasel,” an unemployed bathroom attendant leaves New York in the company of a dull-witted drifter whom he turns into a sideshow attraction at a carnival. In “The Crab’s Welcome,” a 10-year-old boy who dreams of meeting the talking crab star of his favorite TV show becomes the go-between for an artist and the female mail carrier he wants to paint. “The Climacteric of Zackary Ray” puts an actor whose career is on the skids in a small California town whose menacing citizens regard him with suspicion. In the most purely entertaining story, “Dead Man Flying,” a journalist interviews reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes, back from the dead and as stubbornly eccentric as ever. Saving the best for last, “The Shape of the Final Dog” is a surprise variation on Blade Runner sure to please fans of the film. With stories that stretch from Red Hook to Brentwood to rural Mississippi, and from the 1940s to the near future, Fancher creates a world that operates on a slightly skewed plane of reality, but his style, evoking but not advancing the prose of the hard-boiled era, makes the book feel dated. Agent: Steve Fisher, APA. (Sept.)