Good News from the Vatican

Stories Read:
"Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg

A disappointing week on the short story front! Much of my reading time was spent finishing Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle for an SFFaudio Podcast. We recorded that podcast this morning.

My overall reading time was also limited by my interest in everything going on at the Vatican. I've been reading quite a bit, listening to radio and podcasts... my mind and heart are over there, and sometimes you need to just follow your interest.

But how cool is it that the next story on my list was "Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg? It's a Nebula Award winner that Silverberg says he wrote very quickly so that he'd have a story in Terry Carr's first Universe anthology. I wouldn't call it a particularly deep story, but even though it's comic, it generates thoughts about religions and others as a few outside observers of a Papal Conclave see a robot elected Pope.

I will have plenty of reading time this week, some of which will be taken up reading "Parable of the Sower" by Octavia E. Butler for the next Good Story podcast. It will be a fun week. Upcoming is a Tim Powers novella called "A Time to Cast Away Stones", then some Hard SF - "Luminous" by Greg Egan. After that, stories by Connie Willis and Ursula K. Le Guin.