Clayton (In the Shape of a Man, 2013, etc.) updates the story of Rip Van Winkle in this social novel.

In 2015, a backhoe at a construction site in Philadelphia unearths a coffin containing the long-slumbering Van Ripplewink, who went into the ground at age 17. He emerges half a century later without seeming to have aged—although he has grown quite a long beard. As he stumbles through the streets of his old neighborhood, called the Avenues, he’s confused as to why the cars look different and so many stores have changed their names: “He passed a little nail salon he had never seen before, an African and Caribbean food store, the Sahara Restaurant where Wong’s Chinese restaurant had been.” Perhaps most confusing to him is the fact that all the residents now appear to be African-American or Vietnamese. After he receives a salutatory beating from a group of local youths, he’s picked up by Charles Davis, an engineer for the city’s gas company, who attempts to help the teenager get oriented. With additional assistance from his own niece, Mignon, and a member of the local homeless community, Honest John, Van attempts to make sense of the new world in which he finds himself. The only problem is that it doesn’t make that much sense to anyone else: in post-Ferguson America, racial tensions are high, and the poverty in inner-city neighborhoods like the Avenues makes it easy for anyone to get caught on the wrong side of the law. Clayton uses the character of Van, with his outsider naiveté, to look into the complex issues surrounding race and justice in America. His prose is workmanlike but observant, with an eye for the decaying conditions of the neighborhood, from the kitchens of overcrowded apartments to the detritus-strewn homeless camps. Although the novel’s inciting incident (and its nod to Washington Irving’s famous oversleeper) suggests a work of satire, it’s actually quite naturalistic and takes its subjects of racism and blight quite seriously. Van ends up being the least interesting character in the cast, and by the time his story resolves in the final pages, readers may have nearly forgotten that there’s anything unusual about him at all.

A serious novel with an amusing premise.

Clayton (In the Shape of a Man, 2013) delivers 14 sci-fi tales.

These eclectic stories feature many of the political riffs and future-shock themes found throughout classic sci-fi; they’re also loaded with enough tragic irony to satisfy die-hard Twilight Zone fans. Some of the best include “Dog Man,” about Steve “Cap” Crowley and the other residents of Penn’s Village Nursing Home, plagued by a cat with a sense for who will die next; “Day, or Two, of The Dead,” in which benign zombies visit from another dimension to bond with loved ones (or failing that, annoy former acquaintances); and “A Working Man,” which reveals a future not unlike that of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where frequent, pointless hookups are the norm—until a rugged loner teaches the lovely Lenina what “gentleman” means. For the grandly comedic finale, “2038: San Francisco Sojourn; The Wrath of God” features Christ returning to find the law-abiding (and prescription-medicated) populace infantilized by left-wing policies run amok. Everyone must wear safety helmets at all times, and fast food meals come with condoms. Disgusted, Christ begins incinerating transgressors, only to be outdone by rapping, nuke-obsessed North Korean President Kim Young Moon. Elsewhere, author Clayton lovingly hints at his influences in clever, poignant stories. “Remembering Mandy” offers shades of Philip K. Dick, as Henley, last survivor of World War III, prepares to sell the memories of his wife to a corporation in exchange for eternal youth. Clayton’s cybernetic humans, enfeebled outcasts and future societies parade maniacally from his fertile imagination; Henley, for example, has “an auto-heart, Mylar veins, sponge lungs and a CPU-driven spleen and kidney.” Shorter tales, like “The Triumph,” “The Thing in the Box” and “About Our Cats,” are stunningly compact, envisioning fascinating scenarios readers will want to explore further. Overall, a cutting wit drives commentary on everything from race and religion to father-son relationships and the elderly. One too many portrayals of young people as texting-happy dolts, however, might date this volume in years to come.

Hot, glowing sci-fi nuggets.

A young GI goes to fight in Vietnam, in an originally self-published first novel.

Carl Melcher dislikes army life from the start but after a while comes to depend on its traditions and routines. A quiet and somewhat bookish kid from Philadelphia, Carl was drafted when he broke up with his girlfriend, flunked out of the state university, and lost his college exemption. After basic and infantry training on the West Coast, he shipped out with the 4th Division in 1968 and landed in Pleiku Province in South Vietnam. Like everyone else in B Company, Carl is literally counting the days (365 of them, to be exact) until his tour of duty ends and he can go home. Not quite as weird as M*A*S*H, Company B has its share of eccentrics and characters: Gene-the-Doc, the company medic, is a conscientious objector who turns Carl on to Hermann Hesse, while Carl’s squad leader Ron preaches that the war is a plot to rid Asia and America of their surplus populations. After a relatively cushy assignment at base camp, Company B gets sent into “the boondocks,” where jungle patrols, mortar bombardments, and sniper attacks are the order of the day. Later, posted to guard a floating bridge in a quiet provincial town, Carl comes to know the Vietnamese and falls in love with a village girl named Chantal. Clayton has a good feel for the mundane basics of army life—the paperwork, petty rivalries, endless succession of eventless days broken by sudden eruptions of chaos—and he writes de profundis from the perspective of the troops for whom the war is a daily chore without any overriding strategy or meaning. Although he survives, Carl is essentially unchanged at the end and exhibits no real emotions save the relief that comes at the end of the day.

Intriguing but flat: Clayton, whose debut was a 2001 Frankfurt e-book Award Finalist, paints a portrait of external features and invests them with little by way of depth, development, or nuance.