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Gary K. Wolfe Reviews The First Law of Thermodynamics by James Patrick Kelly
James Patrick Kelly (PM Press 978-1629638850, $14.00, 128pp, tp) August 2021. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series, which began in 2009 with titles by Kim Stanley Robinson and series editor Terry Bisson, has become a reliable literary loot box, now up to its 27th volume with James Patrick Kelly’s The First Law of Thermodynamics. My immediate thought was, it’s about time – not only because Kelly is clearly outspoken (what author wouldn’t want to claim that?), but because his body of work, dominated by short fiction and the occasional provocative essay or argumentative anthology co-edited with his pal John Kessel, seems ideally suited to the mixed-appetizer format of these short collections. In this volume, we get three short stories, two one-act plays, the customary waggish but insightful interview with Bisson, and a truncated bibliography of Kelly’s work (which sends you to his website for more detailed lists). While it is not nearly as much an overview of Kelly’s fiction as his three early Golden Gryphon collections or the more recent The Promise of Space and Other Stories, it’s not supposed to be. Much of the appeal of these PM volumes is that they convey something of the feel of meeting up at a bar with a favorite author (or even one new to you) and getting a sense of what they’re about, both in and out of their fiction.
