Card Fictions: Seven performance pices with an ordinary deck. Written and conceived by Pit Hartling.

Price: $35.00
Author: Pit Hartling
Illustrator: Photographs by Michelle Spillner
Publisher: ??
Pages: 94 pp
Published: 2003
Difficulty: Medium - Advanced

The Author - At the age of seventeen, Pit won second prize in the category of cardmagic at FISM in Tokio. Since then he has become a member of the legendary Spanish, "Escuela Magica de Madrid" and lecturing and performing all over Europe (in Sweden october 2002), the US, Japan and Australia. Together with nine of his best friends, he forms the German magic and comedy team known as "The Flicking Fingers" where he performes under the alias Heinz. Pit Hartling makes a happy living from magic at his home in Frankfurt/Germany.

FINGER FLICKER
Only one finger is used for one of the coolest demonstrations of precision and skill with a deck of cards. Easy to perform with any deck, anywhere, anytime. Finger Flicker may easily become a modern classic.

MASTER OF THE MESS
A lesson in routining: Complete face-up/face-down chaos magically returns to order. While not easy to perform, Master Of The Mess is one of the most emotionally convincing and memorable handlings of "Triumph" to date.

Method And Style And The Performing Mode
This essay describes a psychological strategy that allows you to do all sorts of secret, method-related business quite openly without the need for directing attention elsewhere. Your spectators will see what you are doing, but, done correctly, crucial actions will be edited out by the spectator's perception making their memory of your performance "impossible".

COLOR SENSE
This unusual phenomenon of feeling colours through a table has never faild to fascinate everybody who has seen it. Color Sense effectively replaces sleight-of-hand with memory work and psychology to achieve a seemingly impossible effect.

HIGH NOON
Providing what many consider the perfect climax to Paul Harris' wonderful "Reflex", High Noon is a real reputation maker. Done in the right situation, this is the pice they will remember for years to come.

CINCINNATI PIT
From a shuffled deck, the performer stacks four perfect poker hands in less than ten seconds. Solid dramatic structure and simplicity of plot makes Cincinnati Pit one of the most powerful demonstrations of card control for the professional performer.

Inducing Challenges
This essay tries to indentify some of the mechanisms that causes challenges. It allows you not only to avoid beign challenged, but more importantly to induce challenges you are well prepared to meet. Spectators spontaneous challenges can lead to some of the strongest moments possible in the performance of Close-up magic. This essay shows how this can be made to work for you.

TRIPLE COUNTDOWN
The most impossible pice in the book. Three selected cards are found at three named positions under impossible conditions. The performer never touches the deck after the numbers are named, the spectators can change their numbers up to the last moment. Triple Countdown can be performed with a borrowed shuffled deck.

UNFORGETTABLE
A true performance piece in three phases. Demonstrating the amazing effect a certain drink has on the performers memory, he instantly and repeatedly recalls the order of a thoroughly shuffled deck. The playful presentation and dramatic structure truly makes this routine "unforgettable"

Hi,

you could have simply posted the link to the site!????

http://www.Card-Fictions.com

Greetings Frankfurt Germany,

Stefan

Each day I wish that less people get to know this wondeful book.
I have told it personally to Pit in an email. this is one of the finest publications around.
Pit has a way of screening for you the real powerful stuff and serve it on a hot plate.
I don't like doing card tricks anymore, but after reading this book I had to do some of the ones described again.

moreover, this is not your average self publication book - i.e. comb binding with photocopied pages. this is a beautiful publication on glossy high quality paper with a hard back.
I just wish more books will be published like this, in contents and appearance.

nuff said...

Nir

I guess I should add, that I am not a friend of Pit or biased in any way. the only common thing we have is that we both live in Germany (I am originally from Israel)
I felt the need to say this, as many "reviews" on the Café are very biased and are usually done by either the author himself, a friend of the author or the magic shop/dealer that sells them...

enjoy...

Hi Nir,

have we ever met?? I on the other hand am a realy close friend of Pit!

So mayby we did meet somewhere!

Just curious

Stefan

I never met pit as well...
do you know what went through his mind that he decided to publish this book???
he is crazy... some things are too powerful to publish - and for that price... man...

Hi Nir,

well Pit is a really generous person and there is still enough left in his arsenal to blow you away

Some of the stuff is really old like unforgetable which went through many changes, others like master of the mess is realytivly new! Finger Flicker was acktually something Pit showed me like around '94 but then it was just the first phase! The last two phases just came in the last 6 month!

Cheers,

Stefan

How many of his 7 tricks require a faro?

Per,
Thanks for the info about Pit's book. Since this is posted as a "review," what are your views about its contents and format?
DaveS

Hi David,

actually just two of the routines require a faro ( well that's not really true since these routines require more the one! )

Cheers,

Stefan

Tis ok. I ordered the book today from H&R magic books. I'm looking forward to its arrival!

Hands down, the best card book of 2003!!!

Color Sense is Brilliant...

Jeff

I'm getting this very soon also. I can't wait.

Faro shuffles, like perfect faros, because I cant do them.

Pit is a great performer. I ordered his book as soon as I knew it was going to come out. The ideas are clever, the tricks are great, the two essays are valuable, the printing is in high quality, the cover looks really cool, the credits are in details....... what else you want?

Any word on whether Pit will ever release his "Ultimate Coincidence" effect? My jaw dropped to the ground when I saw it in The Little Green Lecture.

Actually if you read Mnemonica you can get a rough idea of how it's done. I have part of it figured out but I am still fooled by most of it. This is the type of trick that I want figure out but would be disappointed if I ever really did figure it out. It fools me every time I watch it.

What is the ultimate coincidence?

An amazing 3 card revelation!! Bold and magicial!

Hi guys,

and by now it is new and improved!

Pit laid of the effect for a while but recently we had some real clever ideas and Pit just started to perform it again! I doubt he will release it, at least for a while!

Greetings from Frankfurt

Stefan

Ok you've convinced me, I've only heard great things about this book. I'm getting it.