Magic Street
Check out Waterbaby a story OSC wrote as a warmup to Magic Street
rson Scott Card has the distinction of having swept both the Hugo and Nebula
awards in two consecutive years with his amazing novels Ender's Game and
Speaker for the Dead. For a body of work that ranges from science fiction to
nonfiction to plays, Card has been recognized as an author who provides vivid,
colorful glimpses between the world we know and worlds we can only imagine.
In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack
Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home . Discovered abandoned
in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and
goes from family to family -- a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous
characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from
most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot understand how unusual he
is until the day he sees, in a thin slice of space, a narrow house. Beyond it is a
backyard -- and an entryway into an extraordinary world stretching off into an
exotic distance of geography, history, and magic.
Passing through the skinny house that no one else can see, Mack is plunged into a
realm where time and reality are skewed, a place where what Mack does seems to
have strange effects on the "real world" of concrete, cars, commerce, and conflict.
Growing into a tall, powerful young man, pursuing a forbidden relationship, and
using Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as a guide into the vast,
timeless fantasy world, Mack becomes a player in an epic drama. Understanding
this drama is Mack's challenge. His reward, if he can survive the trip, is
discovering not only who he really is . . . but why he exists.
Both a novel of constantly surprising entertainment and a tale of breathtaking
literary power, Magic Street is a masterwork from a supremely gifted, utterly
original American writer -- a novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight,
challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels.
Copyright © 2005 Orson Scott Card
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