Boundary Problems

March 2014 · Freehand Books

In his confident debut, Greg Bechtel offers ten magnetically charged stories of physics, paranoia, sex, conspiracies, and magic — our world distilled and transmuted. Carjacking amnesiacs, small-town cabbies, and accidental gunrunners, all struggling to make sense of the strange, often surreal events that overtake them. Here, on the boundaries between the possible and the impossible, lie fear and wonder, transcendence and obsession . . . and perhaps even a hint of grace.

More Info

Get The book

Available for order through your local independent bookstore or through these and other online booksellers worldwide.

Order Here:

Ebooks:

 

Advance Praise for Boundary Problems

Each of Greg Bechtel’s stories is a perfect little puzzle-box: one marvels at their perfect geometries while anticipating that dazzling moment where every piece slots flush. These finely-crafted, emotionally resonant tales will stay with me a long, long time.

Craig Davidson, author of Cataract City and Rust and Bone

Here is beauty and strangeness on every page. In these finely written stories, people meet, connect for a moment in time, then vanish like quantum particles. Sometimes, in the best tradition of Philip K. Dick, reality itself seems to be unraveling. But Bechtel is too canny to restrict himself to any genre conventions—these are stories about how we live now, and he’s figured out that we’re all leading science fictional lives.

Daryl Gregory, author of Pandemonium and Raising Stony Mayhall

From tarot cards and junk mail and theoretical physics, Greg Bechtel weaves mirror worlds of the complex and precarious lives we live now. This audacious, astonishing debut collection reminds us that in a world stripped of the magical, we can find magic again where it’s always been, waiting for us to remember we need it: in stories.

Thomas Wharton, author of The Logogryph and Icefields

Boundary Problems is a chaotic collection with comic touches, a paranoid Pynchonesque mix-tape of hosers and hipster cafes, office jobs and summer camp confessions, lit theory and online porn.  Boundary problems?  No problem for Greg Bechtel; his debut is wild, sly, and magnetic.

Mark Anthony Jarman, author of 19 Knives and My White Planet

Where magic meets physics, Bechtel writes in the dynamic margins of possibility.  Boundary Problems is a mind-bending vacation from the ordinary.

Saleema Nawaz, author of Bone and Bread and Mother Superior
 

Full List of Online Reviews

The lists below include links to all the reviews I’ve found online (so far). If you’re curious about the range of differing reactions to Boundary Problems and its various stories—and there is a range—this is the place to check. Also, please feel free to add your own reviews to Amazon, Chapters, Goodreads, and all the rest. I’m always curious to hear how readers respond to the book.

Magazines & Newspapers
Book Blogs
Additional

News, Interviews, and Media

Like with the reviews, I’ll probably just keep piling stuff in here whenever it comes out (or goes up). One day, perhaps it will make for a neat little archive. And in the meantime, well, it’s interesting to keep track, right?

 

Additional

For an up-to-date list of Greg Bechtel's appearances for Boundary Problems, be sure to keep an eye on the front page for the latest. If you're unsure of anything, contact Greg directly.