Paul Di Filippo is one of the best writers working in the genre today, and this collection proves it again. Highly recommended.

Prior to reading _Strange Trades_ I knew Paul Di Filippo as an author of wonderfully bizarre short stories. They don't always make sense, but they're wonderful just the same. This collection collects typically bizarre Di Filippo stories, but these are coherent, well-written stories. Truly, a masterful collection.

My favorite story is the novella "The Mill", set in the distant future on a planet where humans work in a mill for the benefit of alien overlords. The story brilliantly shows us the toil and struggle of the workers and their dedication to their masters.

The other stories are all equally good. 'Karuna, Inc.' is the tale of an evil cadre of businessmen out to take over an ecologically-minded firm with the help of their undead revenants. 'Spondulix' tells the fascinating story of how a sandwich maker created a form of underground currency.

My attempts to laud this collection don't do it justice. It's a fabulous book. Hands down my favorite collection from 2001. If you have any interest in short science fiction you must buy this collection immediately. Highly recommended.

Strange Trades, Paul Di Filippo's fifth collection of short fiction, is one of the most satisfying SF single-author collections I have read in some time. As the title announces, the stories are concerned with people at work. Di Filippo explores a variety of science-fictional jobs, some strange due to technological advances, others due to marginal or experimental economics, others because they're set in unusual milieus.

One of Di Filippo's favourite themes is people living on the edges of society, or in the cracks. In several stories in this book, he depicts, with sympathy, a cooperative economy built in those "cracks." One story, "Harlem Nova," mentions Levi-Strauss' term bricoleurs, for "a class of people who live as scavengers, living on the odds and ends the rest of society discards." And the heroes of "Harlem Nova," "Spondulix," "Karuna, Inc." and maybe even "Conspiracy of Noise," four of the best stories in the book, are to one extent or another bricoleurs. In particular, "Karuna, Inc.", one of my favourite stories of the year 2001: dark because of some real tragedy, and because it features some truly (even cartoonishly) evil villains, but also optimistic, in its view of basic human nature, and in the depiction of the title corporation, with its mission:

"the creation of environmentally responsible, non-exploitive, domestic-based, maximally creative jobs... the primary goal of the subsidiaries shall always be the full employment of all workers... it is to be hoped that the delivery of high-quality goods and services will be a byproduct..."

Di Filippo also indulges in some classical SFnal extrapolation. "Agents" looks at computer-based personality simulations which handle interactions in the "net," and at what might happen if one such "agent" became autonomous. "Skintwister" and "Fleshflowers" follow the career of Dr. Strode, a very talented "peeker": a man who uses psychokinetic powers to heal people by manipulating them at the cellular level. "SUITs" is a mordant and effective fable about robotic security personnel.

The other stories are perhaps less easy to fit into categories. "Kid Charlemagne," as the author acknowledges, is a story strongly influenced by J.G. Ballard's Vermilion Sands stories: it's set in an isolated lush resort, and features the inevitably doomed romance of a mysterious musician and a spoiled rich girl. "The Boredom Factory" is a cynical fable that is pretty well described by its title. And "The Mill" -- well, for one thing, "The Mill" is my favourite story in this book: I read it and loved it in Amazing Stories back in 1991, and I loved it as much on rereading it just now. It's a long story that in some ways seems reminiscent of Jack Vance. The Mill is a series of factory buildings devoted to producing "luxcloth," which is bought by the immortal Factor for interstellar distribution. In the background are such nice SFnal ideas as the interstellar milieu into which this colony planet obscurely fits, the true nature of the Factor, the "luxcloth," and so on. But the centre of the story is the close depiction of the circumscribed society of the factory villages. This society seems real, and its eventual fate is well-portrayed, the characters are sympathetic and worth reading about, and the concluding scene is truly moving.

I recommend this collection of stories very highly. Di Filippo is a compulsively engaging writer -- witty and imaginative, and fond of his characters, so that they are fun to spend time with, and fun to root for (mostly!). This book delivers on its implicit thematic promise, offering a nice distribution of SFnal explorations of people at work, even while collecting stories from all phases of the author's career. Excellent stuff.

A highly recommended gift pick for the discriminating science fiction reader who seeks literature as much as adventure, Paul Di Filippo's Strange Trades provides an unusual collection of eleven stories which empathize the moral and spiritual realms of employment and jobs. A range of odd circumstances evolve on various job sites, from a corporation which cares about people over products - with a sinister overtone - to a doctor's search for personal gain from his position.

If I were Tim Robbins in Robert Altman's 'The Player' I might pitch a well-read exec like this: Imagine a biopunk version of William Gibson's 'Burning Chrome'. But I'm not. Briefly, I have a love/hate relationship with science-fiction. Love the genre, hate most of what I find out there. Most science-fiction is poorly conceived and/or poorly written. Di Filippo is different. As a writer, his prose is as tight as his ideas are original. 'Ribofunk' is an excellent collection of short stories connected by a shared dystopian world where genetic engineering has been taken to the extreme. What it means to be human has changed as 'splices', individuals possessing a blend of human and non-human DNA, have become the norm. Animal antlers, fish gills, insect limbs and a host of other add-ons can be acquired in shops for reasons ranging from fashion to military functionality. One's human rights are determined by the possession of no less than 51% human DNA. These and many more provacative premises are cleverly explored throughout 'Ribofunk'. Each story stands on its own. Taken together they form a strange kaleidescope of a future that seems much closer and more plausible with each new 'biotech' headline.

How I wish this writer would do some more of his speculative SF. This collection of short stories is some of the most innovative and well conceived stuff available without a prescription. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who likes writers like greg egan or neal stephensen.

This is a very entertaining, very engaging book. Fantastic, creative use of language combined with amazing insight into the possibilities of nanotechnology, cloning, genetic manipulation and better living through chemistry. The book and stories are fun but have depth and emotion. I reread this in 2001 after reading it 5 years ago and I was amazed at the perceptive forward vision that the author had in some of these stories originally published 10 years ago.

This is rather a weird book, but pretty good. I think the three stories kind of go in descending order from best to worst. The first is highly entertaining, even if it is rather pointless, but, as often happens, there's some irritating moral ambiguity here. In this case, the protagonist meets a lesbian schoolmistress who helps him out, but the last time we see her consists of him discovering her sexual orientation and being pissed off at her--and then she's never heard from again. That annoyed me, because it was the most interesting aspect of the story. The second tale is still more problematic. The protagonist is an incredibly egocentric, white-supremist, Swiss professor, and while his points of view are certainly not ENDORSED, you don't really get the impression that they're being condemned, either. Very odd. I did like the touch of comparing things to plants and animals and then parenthetically providing their Latin names. That was cool. The story was fairly entertaining, but, as with all of these, there's rather a pointless aura around it--you don't get the impression that anything's really happening. The third story was the weakest, I think. The portrayal of Whitman was quite good, Dickinson less memorable. And, although the back cover informs us that they meet Alen Ginsburg, don't expect any sort of meeting-of-the-minds. Yes they meet Ginsburg, as well as a number of other twentieth-century poets, but they're not really detailed in any way--they're all fairly anonymous children. And the way they meet them is really unspeakably bizarre. I have to admit, it made absolutely no sense, and it was never explained. Also, the ending was less than happy. You really have to get used to Philipo's idiosyncrasies, but if you can, you'll find a quirky and though-provoking, if somewhat flawed, work of fiction.

I had read Ribofunk 5 years or so ago and enjoyed it and reread it this summer and enjoyed it even more. When it was finished I wanted more so I sought out The Steampunk Trilogy. The book was engaging and funny from the very start. Very, very clever language and style and very funny. I was particularly impressed with the life the author bestowed upon the many historical people who were incorporated into the story. After reading the books I even discovered that the Hottentots Venus' pickled "friend" is indeed at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. As a New Englander I also loved the fact that two of the stories take place in Massachusetts. When will you be in Snipe Harbour again, Paul Di Filippo?

and you've got to approach this book with an open mind. Moralistic he is not. Wildly imaginative, outrageous, he is. STEAMPUNK took me to the most bizarre places I've ever been, literarily speaking. And Di Filippo details his worlds to an amazing degree. Loosen your collar and enjoy the ride. Clearly this is a book the author had a blast writing. It's hard to believe anyone would pick this up and not enjoy him/her/itself.

An enigmatic and convoluted (snakelike, one might say) book, but eerily relevant and oneirogenic. Cyril Prothero and Polly Peptide join forces (and other things) when their respective lovers turn up missing. They encounter the mysterious Doctor Wu, Maxwell's Demon, Sophia, snake cults, voodoo, information theory, DNA, kinky sex, designer drugs, rock-and-roll, crytography, cyber-immortality, imperialism, gnosticism, bagism, fagism....all coiled up in this slithy tome like a slippery Joycean dragon. The cover art alone is worth the price of intromission. All I am saying is give this book a chance, because if you don't know by now, it ain't the meat it's the motion. (Hey, hey Paul, I can hear your heartbeat for a thousand miles!)

An immensely entertaining book. A test of cultural literacy (if you have to flip to the endnotes you failed). Lacks the depth and sophistication, especially when dealing with historical matters, of Pynchon. Reminds me more of Madison Smartt-Bell or Robert Anton Wilson than Pynchon. Good enough to buy a copy for a friend.

The general theme of information saturation, and the characters Di Filippo constructs to deal with it work very well. You'd be hard pressed to find a more frenetic paranoid book than this, and Di Filippo seems to work better in a novel than in his short stories.

You need to read this book. If you don't, you should just go back to living in a cave of your own self-imposed isolation. Di Filippo manages to take crazed, madman thoughts and make brilliantly constructed views of the human mind. Reading them is easy as they are rock and roll on the printed page, but at the same time they will stay with you for generations.

Paul Di Filippo has collected several of his sci-fi short stories with rock and roll undertones. Combining music, hard sci-fi concepts, and everyday average or below average people (some of which do live in a trailer park, hense trailer park sci-fi)is not an easy task, but Di Filipo pulls it off nicely. The stories are fast pased, light, and whimsical. Perfect for a lunch break.

Don't bother to open these little doors. I buy every book and article that I can find by Paul, He is usually the most stimulating, interesting, inovative and fun author. He was number one on my list.
This collection is terrible in many ways. The stories and either boring, or unintersting and a couple are disturbing .
It is ok to disturb your reader, but there are stories that make you think that Paul is so disturbed that you do not want to support him anymore by buying his books.
Maybe this is just a collection of the stories that he wanted to through away but was published anyway.
It will probably take me a year to buy another one of his books( That is a long time, since I buy about 3 books a day and he publishes about 3 books an hour.)

Reportedly Di Filippo brews his heady potions whilst seated with headphones on, blasting music so loud it can be heard across the room. Probably the man listens to everything from Glenn Gould to the Stones; his stories reflect that kind of eclectic, roving intelligence. He's not afraid to poke gentle fun at the SF genre, and his skill at writing is impressive: he's a shape-shifter in writer's form. That is, one story will have you thinking "Harlan Ellison," another "Gene Wolfe," another "Samuel Delany," etc. So, yes, it's weirdly discomforting not to be able to pigeonhole these tales. But it sure seems to me that if you're looking for a hugely enjoyable, multi-faceted and unpredictable collection...this is it.