Jack Dann has been a writer of note for more than 30 years. His earliest short fiction appeared in the 1970s, a decade during which Dann produced an average of three stories per year, including two Nebula-nominated tales "Junction" (1973) and "The Dybbuk Dolls" (1975). Dann's first novel Starhiker was published in 1977, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon (1982), declared it a superb book, poised to be an award-winner. (Starhiker did not bring in the hoped-for prize despite Bradley's generous acclaim.) In the '80s -- Dann's middle period and arguably his most fecund -- he released his second novel The Man Who Melted (1984) and wrote more than two dozen science fiction, magical realism, and speculative fiction short stories, a body of work that received approximately 16 award nominations. His successive novels High Steel (with Jack C. Haldeman II, 1993), the Nebula-winning The Memory Cathedral: A Secret History of Leonardo Da Vinci (1995), and The Silent (1998), a historical novel about the Civil War, demonstrate that Dann's wellspring of creativity is seemingly limitless. His prolificacy is impressive.

Such a copious amount of published work is not Jack Dann's only claim to fame. He is a poet and a consulting editor for Tor Books. But more significantly, Dann is widely known as an editor and co-editor of more than 30 fantasy, horror, and science fiction anthologies. His own work has been collected in three anthologies: Timetipping (1980), Visitations (2003), and Jubilee (1995).

Jubilee is a comprehensive collection of Dann's classic short fiction, showcasing the writer's versatility. The assembled tales span the years 1978 to 2001, and cover a broad spectrum from science fiction to alternate history to fantasy to speculative fiction. They are seventeen of Dann's most popular and ambitious works, fourteen of them nominated for various writing awards.

One such work is the Nebula-nominated "A Quiet Revolution for Death" (1978), a story where analytical thinking of the right brain is outmoded in favor of the creative and pleasure-seeking thought processes of the left brain, where children permissively play "feelie," adolescents have sex with prostitutes, and death is looked upon as a welcome "ally." Another is "Camps" (1979), the Locus-nominated, reality-shifting story of the very ill, hospitalized Stephen, whose Demerol highs send him into an "ice blue dreamworld" where he dreams of being a Jew in a concentration camp. He recites his visions to his nurse, Josie, a former World War II nursemaid and one of the first servicewomen to enter the camps. Somehow, Stephen's dreams are eerily reminiscent of Josie's past.

A central theme recurs in many of Dann's stories -- that of the individual wishing to trip through various levels of human consciousness to achieve transformation of the mind or soul. Tales like the rousing "Going Under" (1981), a speculation of the RMS Titanic as a modern-day thrill ride where passengers opt to go down with ship and die or choose to reserve a lifeboat and live, and the mind-bending "Marilyn" (2000), a Vietnam veteran's dream "synthesthesia" in which beautiful Marilyn Monroe is a sexed and winged apparition that can transfigure into its terrifying monster opposite succeed in exemplifying Dann's idea of transcendence and "conceptual breakthrough" (as termed by John Kessel, author of Jubilee's introduction "Jack: Out of the Box").

Peace of mind and preservation of the balm of companionship are dramatized in the gentle, emotive "Tea" (1988). This Locus Award nominee tells of an aging and lonesome Jewish woman named Lorelei who shares tea and her Wednesday afternoons with her neighbor Viktor Fleitman, a nearly blind elderly man with unsettling connections to the "ash and bone and emptiness" of the Holocaust. As in "Camps," the past -- specifically the horrors experienced by Jews during World War II -- plays a critical role in the characters' present. It isn't a history over which they obsess; it doesn't stymie or break them. Yet, the knowledge of its infamy lingers, never to be forgotten and undoubtedly reckoned with one day. Dann's coda on this point is moving:

And Lorelei knew . . . that she would never question [Mr. Fleitman] about his past. . . . Whatever he had been, whatever terrible things he might have done, were part of the dead, desolate country that was the past. . . .

But there was little enough [of life] left to give and share.

It would be enough if she could just sit on the balcony and talk and laugh and sip tea . . . and share the life-giving, afternoon sun.

It was all there was left, and for these few Wednesday afternoon moments before God summoned her and Mr. Fleitman to His own judgement, it would be enough.

These celebrated narratives are artful and complete, and so too are some of the "non-nominated." In the phantasmagorical "The Black Horn" (1984), retired judge Stephen Steiner contemplates the "wreck of his life" of the last 40 years. A unicorn on the beach helps him make a decision. "The Extra" (1993) shifts the "here and now" of middle-aged movie extra Michael Nye back to 1972, when he was a "gangly," pimply-faced, 22-year-old. In revisiting his past, Michael makes love to the iconic Sandra and meets up with his best buddy, Greg. But, there is peril looming in this "palpable world of radiant colour and emotion. . . ." Forgetfulness is overwhelming Michael, and he fears that he may "disappear into this loop of time and cheat the future." The manner in which Dann treats this classic time-travel convention -- in particular, the way he has Michael straddling between time dimensions -- shows Dann at his humble best.

Yet, all is not triumphant in Jubilee. There are several stories that are not as well conceived as the aforementioned, stories that leave the reader befuddled and conflicted. Given that Dann's writing has been compared to literary luminaries like Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, and Jorge Luis Borges, one may be smote by the gods for such a heretical opinion. But, such comparisons set high expectations, and when an author's work is sometimes awkward, overworked, or disappointing, such declarations seem like overstatement or puffery.

"Kaddish," a Locus Award nominee in 1990, is a case in point. It opens provocatively, with its protagonist, Nathan, sitting in the prayer-room of his synagogue saying the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. He's remembering his deceased wife and son. Nathan's grief envelops him, making him feel like a "simulacrum of himself, a dead thing trying to infiltrate the routines and rituals of the living."

On this day, unable to face the demands of his career as a financial planner, Nathan borrows his friend's speedboat and takes off in the direction of the "eternal horizon ahead" to escape "the bondage that had been his life." After a span of high-speed motoring, the boat runs out of fuel, leaving Nathan to float in high sea swells and burn in the blistering sun. Predictably, Nathan's mind begins to play tricks on him, and he's uncertain of what he sees. Are there really sharks and dolphins, barracuda and tarpon surfacing in the water? Are there prayer books bobbing next to the boat? Is there blood in the water and lightning in the sky?

As Nathan's situation intensifies, Dann's prose begins to slip into sentimentality. It seems as though Dann feels the need to ratchet up his description the deeper Nathan gets mired in his torment. Phrases such as "Nathan could feel the sea pulling him toward death and its handmaiden of unbearable revelation" and blocks of text like "And as if turned to stone, he gazed into the past. But not far into the past. Not far enough to savour a moment of comfort before the tsunamis of guilt and grief" call attention to the floridity of Dann's writing than focus on Nathan's genuinely compelling journey of self-discovery.

And when Dann switches suddenly without segue from Nathan's seafaring adventure to Nathan's return to the synagogue where he's experiencing the "divine presence" of the Shekhinah, the bride of God, "Kaddish" looses momentum and becomes obscure.

Likewise, the 1996 Nebula-winning "Da Vinci Rising," a 61-page excerpt from the novel The Memory Cathedral, suffers at times from ornate, eyebrow-raising prose and misused, untimely language. These lapses do not discredit the story in total, but they do impede one's progress through this capacious tale.

"Da Vinci Rising" takes place in Florence, Italy, during the 15th-century. Leonardo Da Vinci, the unprecedented inventor, painter, sculptor, and architect, has promised Lorenzo de' Medici that in two weeks' time he'll be prepared to launch his great "flying machine," an invention that will "carry man in the air like a bird. . . ." A series of mishaps, design flaws, and accidents send Leonardo and his apprentice, Niccolo Machiavelli, back into his studio to rethink and redesign his "Great Bird." When his device is perfected, it's put to use in ways Leonardo cannot control. "It was as if his invention now had a life of its own, independent of its creator."

While Dann's narrative combines history with fiction, speculation with fact in an intriguing and creative manner, one gets the feeling that Dann is trying just a bit too hard to write artistically. For instance, there's the line: "But [Leonardo] was falling through soft light, itself as tangible as butter." And then, there's the mind-warping "Yet ideas for his great Kite seemed to appear like chiaroscuro on the painting of his dream of falling, as if it were a notebook."

Also, Dann's word choice is often at variance with existing 15th-century parlance. "Notebook" wasn't invented until 1579, 60 years after Da Vinci's death. "Biplane" was coined circa 1874; its cousin, "triplane," in 1909. The word "contraption" wasn't used until the early 19th-century. "Shrapnel" comes from General Henry Shrapnel (1761-1841), a British army officer who invented a type of exploding, fragmenting shell during the Peninsular War (reference taken from Online Etymology Dictionary). "Cirrus" and "binge" didn't become part of English vernacular until the mid-1800s. Admittedly, these details may strike one as picayune, but when an author writes a period piece, he or she must stay true to the language of the times. To do otherwise is to risk authenticity.

And finally, there is the collection's title story. Both Mr. Blackford and Peter Lindsay are weighed down by the loss of their wives -- Blackford's to another man; Lindsay's to death. In segments that skit back and forth from Blackford in Greece to Lindsay in Australia, the men undergo fantastical and transformative experiences having to do with dreams, "fish creatures," "finned angels," and a beckoning "ocean . . . with green rainforest fingers." And for both, the "scrim of one reality [unravels] into another."

As the title suggests, the phenomenon of the jubilee is underway. Specifically, a jubilee is a sensory reaction to wind and water currents that results in mass assemblages of toads and fish. Symbolically, it represents the Hebrew law of jubilee, a year of emancipation to be celebrated every 50 years. Dann's complex story is an amalgamation of the specific and the symbolic.

And that is why "Jubilee" gets muddied. Dann is trying to do too much in one story. The imagery is overwrought in areas, the shifting in point of view from omniscient in Blackford's sections to third-person in Lindsay's is disorienting, and in its 40 pages, there are some 88 "as if . . ." constructions: "as if Greece was a nervous sleeper . . ."; "as if I could find solace . . ."; "as if the atmosphere had suddenly changed . . ."; "as if panic could be dissolved . . . ." These circumstances combined tend to distract and draw one out of what could have been great and captivating storytelling.

For Dann fans, Jubilee is an essential purchase. For the uninitiated, time and money may be better spent perusing the Internet for Dann-related material. Many of Jubilee's stories are available on-line; in fact, an audio version of "Marilyn," starring John Heard and newly titled "Marilyn or the Monster," can be downloaded at Seeing Ear Theatre.

Or, better yet, why not wait for Dann's new novel, Second Chance to be published? It's the story of what happens to James Dean after his car crash. It promises to be a bold and daring narrative that examines fame and the nature of icons, and major characters include Dean, Marilyn, Elvis, JFK, RFK, and Jack Kerouac. As author Barry Malzberg has said (in "An Interview with Jack Dann"), "This novel is about everything."

While Jubilee may not be about "everything," its stories are "living bits of [Dann's] experience and memory. . . ." A kind of alchemy, Dann avows. And if some of its "magic" comes alive for you, then maybe, Dann hopes, his "fantasies, dreams, and nightmares" -- the "fictional flesh of [his] musings" -- will "become part of your experience and sense memory."

Amy O'Loughlin is an award-winning book review columnist and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in American History, Worcester Magazine, The Boston Book Review, Calyx, and Moxie. She is a contributor to the anthology of women's writing Women Forged in Fire and the upcoming reference work The Encyclopedia of the World Press. Her previous publications in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive. To contact Amy, email AmyOL@aol.com.