International-award-winning stories of life and love in the midst of planetary decline. In Planet Earth , Nicholas Ruddock moves nimbly through a range of styles--from conventional to flash-fiction to his unique mastery of the long sentence--in stories exploring themes of love and passion, all with an awareness of our species-specific carelessness burning up the world. This collection showcases a gifted writer at the top of his game, each story fresh and unexpected: the time Mario Vargas Llosa sucker-punched Gabriel García Márquez at a theatre in Mexico City inspires a young Marxist couple's violent act of revenge in Toronto years later; an anxious young man finds solace in the employ of Prince, the musician; we get a haunting glimpse of Toronto's polio epidemic at its peak in 1953; a young Canadian student bears witness to the Algerian protests and police violence in 1961 Paris; a pair of naïve young women find themselves involved with a mysterious circus troupe in Nice. These provocative but contemplative stories are paradoxically positive and quick-witted, with a humorous fondness for humans and all our failings.