Book excerpt: DIV“The General Zapped an Angel was written for fun, and offers me a chance to smile at the absurdity of human existence. Therefore, these stories of fantasy and science fiction are among the most serious writing I have done.” —Howard Fast/div DIVNearly forty years after the publication of his first story, “The Wrath of Purple,” in the science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, Howard Fast returned to the genre with a set of nine supremely entertaining tales. In this collection, a Vietnam general shoots down what appears to be an angel, a man sells his soul to the devil for a copy of the next day’s Wall Street Journal, and a group of alien beings bestow a mouse with human thought and emotion. Fast, one of the bestselling authors of the twentieth century, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and profit-at-all-costs capitalism, issues that are still relevant today./divDIV /divDIVThis ebook features an illustrated biography of Howard Fast including rare photos from the author’s estate./div