A dead man is cut back alive so he can support his family members in ‘The Happy Man’; sometimes he slips right into a zombielike state while his spirit is normally tortured in Hell. In ‘Vanilla Dunk,’ potential basketball players are given the skills of old-time superstars like JORDAN and Wilt Chamberlain. And in ‘Forever, Said the Duck,’ stored computer personalities system to break free of their owners. In these and additional stories in this striking collection, Jonathan Lethem, writer of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, draws the reader a lot more deeply into his strange, memorable world-a trip that there may be no easy return.