Reddit mentions of Life During Wartime

Mostly Shepard was a short-story writer. Ellen Datlow, the great editor, recently told me that his fiction is all in probate right now, so it will be some time before an authoritative retrospective is released.

But Eternity and Other Stories is my favorite. Without giving anything away, it's got a story about soldiers who go into a mountain (trust me it makes sense when it's read) that blew me away.

He's also got a story called Limbo which appeared in The Dark: New Ghost Stories which was incredible.

The first I ever read was Life During Wartime, but that was so many years ago I'm not sure how well it's held up.

Shepard drifted between magical realism and sci-fi/fantasy, sometimes grounded in a kind of invented local folk story. He has a few collections, some of which have repeats. I can't read a lot of genre stuff because, while the ideas may be great, the writing is pedestrian.

Never had that problem with Banks or Shepard--who was a phenomenally gifted writer.