Wandering Realities
Contains award winning stories
“Two-Dog Dose”—best short story of 2014, Association for Mormon Letters
“A Strange Report from the Church Archives”—second place, Irreantum fiction contest
“Avek, Who Is Distributed”—first place, Four Centuries of Mormon Fiction Contest 2012
“When the Bishop Started Killing Dogs”—second place, Four Centuries of Mormon Fiction Contest 2012
What others are saying
“Wandering Realities gathers together much of the Mormon-themed short fiction of perhaps Mormondom’s best living writer,” says Michael Austin. “The collection is strange, wonderful, eye opening and amazing. It is a book of revelations and spiritual gifts from an immensely talented author to his religious community, which has long needed somebody to show us how strange and wonderful (and strange) we can actually be.”
“Wandering Realities is perfectly satisfying, a treat from beginning to end,” says Steven Evans. “It is alternatively touching and funny and poignant, with horrors and wonders. Steven Peck is a gift to Mormon literature, and any opportunity to read his stories is not to be missed.”
“This collection is one of the freshest, most engaging, and most entertaining contributions to Mormon literature that I’ve seen in a long while,” says Jonathan Langford. “Steve Peck is an alien. . . . That’s the only explanation I can come up with for how, in this set of 16 stories, he so consistently manages to provide such startlingly different, yet at the same time deeply insightful, perspectives on the culture and religion he has adopted for his own.”
Peck’s highly imaginative stories run the gamut from Mormons reverting to a medieval society on Mars to a bishop who is killing the neighborhood dogs. These stories not only entertain and delight, but they challenge and provoke as well. This collection includes several award-winning stories, including:
“Two-Dog Dose”—best short story of 2014, Association for Mormon Letters
“A Strange Report from the Church Archives”—second place, Irreantum fiction contest
“Avek, Who Is Distributed”—first place, Four Centuries of Mormon Fiction Contest 2012
“When the Bishop Started Killing Dogs”—second place, Four Centuries of Mormon Fiction Contest 2012
“Every story Steven L. Peck writes seems to lead Mormon fiction in exciting and innovative new directions,” says Scott Hales. “I hate hyperbole, but Peck might be the Moses of Mormon letters in the twenty-first century.”
Wandering Realities “may be the book of the year,” says Andrew Hall. Peck is “perhaps the most interesting contemporary author of Mormon fiction.”
“Peck is the best LDS science fiction writer currently out there,” says Steven Evans. “Wandering Realities is an immensely enjoyable and powerful collection of short fiction, one that highlights both the possibilities and inevitabilities of Mormonism.
Citation for Two-Dog Dose Winner of AML 2014 Best Short Story in Collection
In “Two-Dog Dose, ” Steven L. Peck explores the meaning of empathy and loyalty through a wrenching moral dilemma. Lorin and Karl have been friends since their days as roommates at BYU. Now, in their old age, Karl is on the brink of losing himself in the fog of dementia and informs his friend that he’s “invoking the pact”—a pact that will require Lorin to decide if the strength of his word and the power of his friendship is enough to endure the horror of helping his best friend die. Through beautiful language and obvious affection for landscape, Peck describes a friendship that has endured over decades, and despite differences of belief. There is pain here in Peck’s unflinching portrayal of a desperate situation: we feel it; we believe it. And, through a beautifully symbolic and cathartic baptism near the story’s end, we emerge changed from having vicariously lived through it. Peck’s “Two-Dog Dose” represents the very best of Mormon storytelling, and the Association for Mormon Letters is pleased to honor it with the 2014 award for short fiction.
