"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)
Nearly 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 best-selling authors of
the twentieth century, skewers war hawks, oil speculators, and
profit-at-all-costs capitalism, issues that are still relevant today.