Edward Bear and The Very Long Walk

I seem to be encountering a lot of bears lately. A couple friends of mine are working on stories about bears. I am discovering that I like stories by Elizabeth Bear. And recently I heard a delightful reading on Escape Pod of “Edward Bear and The Very Long Walk,” by Ken Scholes. It begins [...]

I Bought A Little City

Another delightful story from the New Yorker Fiction podcast is “I Bought A Little City,” by Donald Barthelme. Donald Antrim has just the right accent for a story about a man who buys Galveston, Texas.  As the narrator strolls about, enjoying his new purchase, he thinks,
What a nice little city! It suits me fine.
It suited [...]

Unique Visitors

I’ve encountered “Unique Visitors,” by James Patrick Kelly four times now, and each time I’ve had a different reaction.

The Edge of Nowhere

What is it with me and talking dogs? In The Edge of Nowhere, by James Patrick Kelly, three sinister talking dogs show up, looking for a book that doesn’t exist. But then it’s doubtful that anything or anyone in Nowhere exists.

Burn

Have you ever heard the theory that giving away content can encourage people to buy? Well, it worked on me. After I listened to James Patrick Kelly read “Burn” on Free Reads, I bought a copy. In hard-cover. And a collection of his short stories, Strange But Not A Stranger, also in hard-cover. In “Burn,” [...]

Conversations With and About My Electric Toothbrush

The weirdest thing about going to the dentist and getting my teeth cleaned is, well, my teeth are clean afterward. For the next few weeks, every time I brush, I’m going to stare at my teeth and think, Where are the coffee stains? What is this alien whiteness?
What I really need to keep that whiteness [...]

The Unsolvable Death Trap

If you’re in the mood for a bit of dark humor, paranoia, and violence, you can get your fix from “The Unsolvable Death Trap.” In it, Jack Mangan paints a picture of a future New York, where the traffic is so bad rolling it up in the third dimension doesn’t help, corporate mergers have produced [...]

Dancing On Air

Like “Bullet In The Brain,” “Dancing On Air,” by Nancy Kress is another old favorite of mine. This Nebula and Hugo nominee from 1993 is a compelling glimpse into the competitive backstage of ballet: the injuries, the competition, the starvation, all showing the lengths (mostly) women will go to become ballerinas. They even use illegal [...]

Bullet In The Brain

Normally, I’m not all that interested in literary fiction. Most of what I’ve seen feels more like stuff you’re supposed to like, not stories you can like. The worse cases are go down like medicine that tastes so bad, you know it must be good for you. But on rare occasions, I’m surprised by a [...]

Trunk and Disorderly

First off, I want to thank Charles Stross for writing “Trunk and Disorderly” and Subterranean Press for making it available as a free Audiobook. Listening to it on the drive from Boston to New York makes Connecticut disappear. The hilarity begins when Ralph’s “clanky” girlfriend Laura walks out and his sister Fiona calls up. [...]