The End of the Affair

Stories Read:
"The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene

This one is on my novella list. It pushes the definition of "novella", for certain. The Penguin edition softcover I have runs 191 pages, and the audio version I have was 6.5 hours long.

That audio version, by the way, was as good as it gets. I was reading it in print, but had a two hour drive ahead of me. I was engrossed and didn't want to stop reading, so I looked it up on Audible. I am so glad I did that! They have a version of it in their A-List collection, read by Colin Firth. It's been a long while since I was this enthralled with an audiobook. The narrative style is perfect for reading aloud, and Colin Firth was an inspired choice to narrate. I did not pick up the print version again. 5 stars!

There was a lot of Catholic stuff in this short novel, which interested me greatly. Wikipedia says: "The End of the Affair is the fourth and last of Greene's explicitly Catholic novels." It doesn't list the other three, but I'll seek them out when I'm finished reading this list of novellas.

There are also two film versions of the book, and I know I contradict myself when I say that I'd like to see them, especially the 1999 film with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore. I'm not sure what to expect from these versions. I suppose the story could easily be bent to be a defense of the affair, as if we are all just helpless victims of the strong tides of our desires. The story is deeply reflective and extremely well-written. I can't imagine how those things would come across in film, and I wonder if the filmmakers succeeded.

My interest in the book was the characters, and their mindsets. How they justify things, how they know it must end, how their knowledge of the wrongness affects them, even as they try to convince themselves that it's right. How they think about God was especially intriguing. I was immersed from the first scene, which was a chance meeting between a man who had been having an affair with his mistress's husband, who suspects a thing or two.

I know next to nothing about Graham Greene, which is part of the fun of reading lists. I liked this quite a bit.

Next on the novella list is "The Alchemist" by Paolo Coelho. On the short story list, I have Vance, Wolfe, and Hamilton!

Death. On the Nile and Elsewhere.

Stories Read:
"Death on the Nile" by Connie Willis
"The Music of Erich Zann" by H.P. Lovecraft
"The Toy Theater" by Gene Wolfe

No novella this week, since I spent most of my reading time finishing Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. I enjoyed it! Will talk about it on the Good Story podcast this week.

I did read three more short stories from The List, though, and here they are:

First was "Death on the Nile" by Connie Willis, a Hugo Award winner (1994) for Best Short Story. And it's a good one, if you like Connie Willis' style. Two married couples are on a plane headed to Cairo for a sight-seeing trip. One of the wives spends the ride quoting facts about pyramids and such from tourist guidebooks, while the other was reading Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. At some point in the story, one of the men was struck with the idea that maybe they are dead, and we (the reader and characters) wonder till the end if it's true.

I found the story in one of the Isaac Asimov Science Fiction Magazine themed anthologies - this one called Isaac Asimov's Ghosts. Edited by Williams and Dozois.

Second is the horrific "The Music of Erich Zann" by H.P. Lovecraft. It's been reprinted a bunch of times since its original appearance in the May 1925 Weird Tales magazine. I read it in the Del Rey The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. I believe this is the first time I've read this. I think I'd have remembered it, because... yeah. Spooky.

Poor Erich Zann. He's not doing all that well when we first meet him, up on the 5th floor of an apartment building, playing loud and chaotic music on his violin. The main character finds the music intriguing until events cause him to run away screaming.

Last is a Gene Wolfe story called "The Toy Theater". I put most of the stories in The Best of Gene Wolfe on the list because I think Wolfe writes brilliant short stories, and I've been meaning to read this book for a while. Unfortunately, this particular one is so brilliant that I'm not sure I understand it. Ha. A guy flies from our solar system to another to meet the greatest puppeteer alive. The great puppeteer gives the guy a demonstration during which he handles five marionettes at once, at one point voicing all three of a trio singing a song. And then Wolfe doesn't quite explain it. Or maybe he does.

The next story up is "Turjan of Miir" by Jack Vance, which is great because Vance is such a clear influence on Gene Wolfe. A couple more Wolfe stories coming right up, too… but not before I read "The Toy Theater" again. If there's anything I've learned about Wolfe, it's that he rewards scrutiny.

Lists and Changes

Stories Read:
"Watching Trees Grow" by Peter F. Hamilton
"Semley's Necklace" by Ursula K. Le Guin

I want to be more eclectic in my reading, so I'm making a change. I created a list of 100 Novellas that I'd like to read, and want to work that in to this weekly post. Or should those novellas be in separate posts? I'll think about that, but include the first one here. You can find that list of 100 Novellas |HERE|. In there are all the novellas (and then some) that were in my original short fiction list, so I edited that to remove all those novellas. The result is |HERE|. Aren't lists fun? Yes, yes they are.

So, first up this week is a novella by Peter F. Hamilton called "Watching Trees Grow". It's the first story in his Manhattan in Reverse collection.

It opens in Oxford, England, in 1832. The Roman Empire never fell, there are Borgias in the Vatican, and technology is progressing at a quick rate. In 1832 there are electric cars and telephones, and a murder which is surprising because that kind of thing just doesn't happen any more. Edward, the main character, is dispatched to solve the crime. The murder is going to take over a hundred years to solve, but Edward is one of the upper class and can live virtually forever, so he's got plenty of time. Chapter Two of the novella takes place in 1853, and Chapter Three in 1920. With each chapter Hamilton describes technological and societal changes, and Edward continues his search for the murderer. There's some thought here about the effects of virtual immortality on people, especially while AI's and other technology are doing much of the work.

In the year 1920 (in orbit around Jupiter), a character says:
"If we have a purpose, it is to think and create; that's our uniqueness. Any nonsentient animal can build a nest and gather food."

And after 80 more years of change, Edward notes:
"I believe it was our greatest defeat that so many of us were unable to adjust naturally to our new circumstances, where every thought is a treasure to be incubated."

I think of a person who was born in the early 1900's and made it to the year 2000. What change that person witnessed! Imagine if that person lived to see 2100. Or 2200. A thought-provoking novella. I really liked it.

I find that I don't have a lot to say about the next story, an early one from Ursula K. Le Guin. In her introduction she says that it was written in 1963 and published as "Dowry of the Angyar", then in 1964 it was included as the Prologue of her first novel Rocannon's World. The story flips between Rocannon and an alien woman whose tale she is trying to understand. Rocannon says that she feels sometimes as if she "blundered through the corner of a legend, or a tragic myth" which she doesn't understand. Some interesting world (or myth) building.

Also interesting in her intro to this story is that she's put the stories in this collection (The Wind's Twelve Quarters) in publication order so that we can see her progress as a writer from "candor and simplicity" to "something harder, stronger, and more complex". Most writers are just repeating what others have done. A small percentage of authors take what's come before and actually build on it in a way that's superior and unique. Ursula K. Le Guin is one of that small percentage. She's always worth reading.

My hope from here forward is to get through one novella a week, and as many short stories as I can manage. So next up on the novella list is "The End of the Affair" by Graham Greene. On the short story list, I need to get a copy of "Death on the Nile" by Connie Willis. After that is "The Music of Erich Zann" by good old H.P. Lovecraft.

Forgiveness

Stories Read:
"Betrayals" by Ursula K. Le Guin
“Robot” by Helena Bell
“Immersion” by Aliette de Bodard
“Fragmentation, or Ten Thousand Goodbyes” by Tom Crosshill
“Nanny’s Day” by Leah Cypess
“Give Her Honey When You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu
“Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” by Cat Rambo

Eight stories this week: one novella from Ursula K. Le Guin, and the seven Nebula nominees for Best Short Story this year. Jenny and I will discuss those seven short stories in a podcast, so I won't talk about them here, except to say that Le Guin's novella is the best story I read this week.

"Betrayals" is the first of four novellas in a collection called Four Ways to Forgiveness. The other three are "Forgiveness Day", "A Man of the People", and "A Woman's Liberation".

"Betrayals" is a top shelf story about two older people named Yoss and Abberkam. At the opening, Yoss is reading a book that tells her that on a different planet there hasn't been a war for over five thousand years, and on still another, there has never been a war. She wonders what that would be like, and why she and the others on her planet spend so much time in conflict.

That thought sets into motion a beautiful story that brings Yoss and Abberkam together, despite their differences. Like the title of the collection suggests, it requires some forgiveness.

Next up: "Death in the Nile" by Connie Willis

This eight stories did a lot in getting me caught up to Jenny, but I'm still behind. And she tells me that April is poetry month! Which month is "fat fantasy" month?

Historical Fantasy and Hard SF

Stories Read:
"A Time to Cast Away Stones" by Tim Powers
"Luminous" by Greg Egan

Where does the time go? I've got two long stories today, both excellent, and I'm partway into a third that I'll keep for next week. I'm also nearly finished with a second read of Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, also excellent!

I'm a big fan of Tim Powers, and I feel lucky to have so much more of his work to read. I loved On Stranger Tides, Declare, and most of his short stories that I've read. The inspiration for his work is often historical, to which he adds a supernatural twist. In the introduction to this novella in his The Bible Repairman collection, he writes:

Sometimes it's one of the supporting-role characters that stays with you. In the lurid sagas of Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey, the tangential figure of Neal Cassady is ultimately the most memorable for me. And in the lives of Byron and Shelley, and then fifty years later the lives of the Rossetti family and the Pre-Raphaelites, it's the enduring figure of Edward John Trelawny that lingers most in my mind.

Powers goes on to say that Trelawny wrote an autobiography (Adventures of a Younger Son), which "for more than a hundred years was taken as factual and has only recently been revealed to be entirely a romantic fiction". Fascinating!

I know nothing of Trelawny, and only a bit about Shelley and Byron. Like most of Tim Powers' fiction, this is not a quick read, which is perfectly okay with me. It was a fantastic and magical romp around Mount Parnassus with very cool magic, some of which required one of Byron's toes. My favorite line:

His face went cold when he abruptly remembered that Zela had never existed outside his stories.

Greg Egan's "Luminous" is a different kind of story entirely. It opens with a scene that epitomizes cyperpunk - a man wakes up to find himself handcuffed in an uncomfortable position while a woman with a scalpel is cutting into his arm in an attempt to remove a chip that holds some powerful information.

"Powerful" isn't strong enough a word for that data, which is nothing less than the discovery of a flaw in the mathematical universe, which, in the wrong hands, could cause mayhem of "end of the universe" proportions. The rest of the story is fascinating in it's mathematical details which are expertly revealed as the protagonists avoid capture and attempt to get time on a supercomputer. I have a favorite line here too:

In spite of everything, I still wasn't ready to put a bullet in anyone's brain for the sake of defending the axioms of number theory.

Historical Fantasy and Hard Science Fiction. Heaven will be full of both those things.

Next up: "Betrayals" by Ursula K. Le Guin

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.

Love in Dystopia

Stories Read:
"Mazirian the Magician" (1950) by Jack Vance
"Speech Sounds" (1983) by Octavia Butler
"The People of Sand and Slag" (2004) by Paolo Bacigalupi
"The Only Death in the City" (1981) by C.J. Cherryh

I stuck with my story list this week, and loved how it turned out. All four stories shared a theme and a broad setting. The theme? Love. The setting? A dystopian future Earth.

"Mazirian the Magician" is the first story in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth series. I believe the first volume (that goes by two titles, The Dying Earth or Mazirian the Magician) is the only volume in the series that's a collection. The rest are novels. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on that. This is a science fantasy, which I define as a story set in a far future where much has been forgotten, and magic and science are indistinguishable. A jealous Mazirian hunts a "woman-creature" but can't catch her. The woman-creature is a product from the vats of Turjan, who Mazirian has shrunk and placed in a maze with a tiny dragon. Can a deal be made with Turjan to deliver the prey?

A taste of Jack Vance's style, which I enjoyed:

Mazirian unlocked the threebare except for a stone pedestal supporting a glass-topped box. The box measured a yard on a side and was four or five inches high. Within the box — actually a squared passageway, a run with four right angles — moved two small creatures, one seeking, the other evading. The predator was a small dragon with furious red eyes and a monstrous fanged mouth. It waddled along the passage on six splayed legs, twitching its tail as it went. The other stood only half the size of the dragon — a strong-featured man, stark naked, with a copper fillet binding his long black hair. He moved slightly faster than his pursuer, which still kept relentless chase, using a measure of craft, speeding, doubling back, lurking at the angle in case the man should unwarily step around. By holding himself continually alert, the man was able to stay beyond the reach of the fangs. The man was Turjan, whom Mazirian by trickery had captured several weeks before, reduced in size and thus imprisoned.

It's clear that Vance was an influence on Gene Wolfe.

Next is "Speech Sounds" by the great Octavia Butler. In an afterword to the story, Butler says that it "was conceived in weariness, depression, and sorrow. I began the story feeling little hope or liking for the human species, but by the time I reached the end of it, my hope had come back. It always seems to do that."

The setting reminded me a bit of her "Parable" novels. Post-apocalyptic, lawless, yet society keeps trying to move. The opening scene takes place on a bus: an argument between two men, both unable to speak, building up to physical confrontation while the other riders worry for their safety. This was a deserving Hugo winner for Best Short Story in 1984. (NOTE: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler is the next book up for discussion over at A Good Story is Hard to Find. It will be posted on March 21.)

Third up is "The People of Sand and Slag" by Paolo Bacigalupi. I found this in Wastelands, edited by John Joseph Adams. It deals with some genetically modified guards whose job is to protect a mine from intruders. Finding a dog in the mine is a surprising event because (1) no one has seen a living dog for long long while, and (2) how it could survive in the toxic environment of the mine? The discovery turns the thoughts of the guards inward, at least for a while.

Last this week is the best of them all. "The Only Death in the City" by C.J. Cherryh. What a story this was. I added the collection Sunfall to the story list after finding it on this list of Best SF Collections. I saw it there, I haven't read anything by Cherryh, ever, so I added the stories to the list. I'm glad I did! If this one is any indication of Cherryh's talent, I'll be reading plenty of her in the future.

Sunfall is a collection of related stories set in a far future where Earth is a wasteland but some cities still exist and have for thousands of years. This first story is set in Paris, which is walled and consists of levels. They keep building down, down as needed to make room for the living. A beautiful passage:

No one remembered the outside. No one cared. The City was sealed, and had been so for thousands of years.

There were windows, but they were on the uppermost levels, and they were tightly shuttered. The inhabitants feared the sun, for popular rumor held that the sun was a source of vile radiations, unhealthful, a source of plagues. There were windows, but no doors, for no one would choose to leave.

The inhabitants of the city experience reincarnation. Shortly after you die, you are born again in another part of the city. Children announce who they are when they are a year old, and they remember all their past lives, so they are essentially immortal. Into this world is born Alain, who has not been born before. His mother tells him that no matter how long he lives, he'll always be a youth compared to a woman he's fallen in love with. But that doesn't stop him. He plunges ahead, despite the warnings.

Truly a great story, beautifully written, my favorite so far this year. I look forward to the rest of the collection. There are 5 other stories in there:

The Haunted Tower (London)
Ice (Moscow)
Nightgame (Rome)
Highliner (New York)
The General (Peking)

This puts me at 32 stories for the year, but Jenny is at 36!

Next up on the list: "Good News from the Vatican" by Robert Silverberg. Ha! Great timing.

Two Classics, and Another Classic

Stories Read:
"The Overcoat" (1842) by Nikolai Gogol
"The Necklace" (1884) by Guy de Maupassant
"The Halfling" (1943) by Leigh Brackett

I love the irreverent tone of Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat". Here's the first paragraph:

In the department of -- but it is better not to mention the department. There is nothing more irritable than departments, regiments, courts of justice, and, in a word, every branch of public service. Each individual attached to them nowadays thinks all society insulted in his person. Quite recently a complaint was received from a justice of the peace, in which he plainly demonstrated that all the imperial institutions were going to the dogs, and that the Czar's sacred name was being taken in vain; and in proof he appended to the complaint a romance in which the justice of the peace is made to appear about once every ten lines, and sometimes in a drunken condition. Therefore, in order to avoid all unpleasantness, it will be better to describe the department in question only as a certain department.

Reminds me of Dickens. What follows that is the story of a man who works in that certain department and who is paid so little that he has to scrimp and save for a coat. He buys it, thinks it's terrific (which it is), but then it's taken from him. Tragic!

42 years after Gogol (a Russian) published "The Overcoat", Guy de Maupassant (French) published "The Necklace". In his story, a poor young woman borrows a diamond necklace so that she'll feel comfortable around rich people at a party. Like the main character in "The Overcoat", just wearing it lifts her self-esteem. She was part of society, and this necklace was the key. But then, she loses it. Dropped in the mud, stolen, no one knows for certain, but it can't be found. She and her husband borrow enough money to pay for a new one, then spend the next 12 years working day and night to pay for it. There's a zinger, though, right at the end.

Both of these stories made me consider the importance of things, and the difference between necessities and desires.

"The Halfling" by Leigh Brackett is also a classic, but of a different era. It was originally published in Astonishing Stories, Feb 1943. Early on, the story read like something Bogart and Bacall would be perfect for. A taste:

It was that kind of voice - sweet, silky, guaranteed to make you forget your own name. I turned around.

That feel didn't stick with the story all the way through, but it was a fun piece of Golden Age science fiction. The main character is a carnival owner, and the beings on display are from all over the solar system. The lady with the silky voice is a dancer with incredible, off-world skill, but she's after a carnival job for reasons that are not obvious.

At this writing, I'm at 28 stories, and Jenny has sprinted ahead with 33... I may need to quit my job! Whatever it takes.

Next up: "Mazirian the Magician", a novelette by Jack Vance.
 

None at All

It's the end of the week already, and I have read exactly zero short stories since my last post. None at all! Hopefully, Jenny was distracted by the Russian meteor and read little.

What did I do instead? I went to LTUE 31, a science fiction symposium, and had an excellent time. I figured I'd get some reading done there, but didn't do much at all. I came home with a short stack of books by some authors that were there - books by Howard Tayler, Tracy Hickman, Michael Collings, Michaelbrent Collings, Larry Correia, and Megan Whalen Turner. Lots of great things to read!

I also bought the eBook version of a collection called Space Eldritch, edited by Nathan Shumate at Cold Fusion Media. The description: "a volume of seven original novelettes and novellas of Lovecraftian pulp space opera." Yeah, baby. Most of the authors in the collection were at LTUE. Here's the table of contents:

Foreword – Larry Correia
“Arise Thou Niarlat From Thy Rest” – D.J. Butler
“Space Opera“ – Michael R. Collings
“The Menace Under Mars” – Nathan Shumate
“Gods in Darkness” – David J. West
“The Shadows of Titan” – Carter Reid and Brad R. Torgersen
“The Fury in the Void” – Robert J Defendi
“Flight of the Runewright” – Howard Tayler

So, yeah, I'll be reading that.

Of course, all this writing talk has rekindled my desire to resume some of my own creative efforts. Stay tuned!

On the reading front, I did listen to most of the Jurassic Park audiobook (by Michael Crichton) in preparation for the next Good Story podcast. I will finish that today. Crichton really was terrific. I marvel at his uncommon interest in so many different things.

Next up, same as last week: "The Overcoat" by Nicholai Gogol

Space, Magic, and a Hug for Harlan

Stories Read:
"Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely"
"Falling Off the Unicorn"
"The Ecology of Faerie"
"At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco's Homebrew Gravitics Club"
"Love in the Balance"
"The Tale of the Golden Eagle"

I finished Space Magic by David D. Levine this week, adding 6 stories to my total for the year. That's 25, Jenny! I've pulled ahead by a hair, but I understand that there's some travel in Jenny's future, and I've got some longer stories to read, like Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton for the Good Story podcast. And Footfall by Niven and Pournelle for the SFFaudio podcast. Those don't count in my total because they aren't short fiction.

Back to Space Magic, which was an inspired title for this collection. Levine is equally at home with space and magic. I reviewed this ebook at Library Thing, and here it is:

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David D. Levine and I are connected, but he doesn't know it. At the only Worldcon I've ever attended (LA Con IV, 2006), Harlan Ellison presented a Hugo Award to Levine for his short story "Tk'tk'tk". The image of Levine leaping for joy into the arms of Harlan Ellison is a bright memory of that wonderful week. That's why I was thrilled to see this collection available as an e-book. I thought I'd enjoy it, and I wasn't disappointed.

There are 15 stories included here, and they demonstrate story-telling skill in fantasy, science fiction, and the in-between. My favorite story in the collection is one of the in-between stories: "The Tale of the Golden Eagle". It spans a large number of years during which the enhanced brain of a golden eagle experiences much, from acting as the sentient control system for a ship to walking around in an android body. It's a 5-star story that originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in June of 2003.

Another standout is that Hugo winner - "Tk'tk'tk". A salesman goes to an alien planet to sell inventory management software of all things, and ends up being changed by the experience. Definitely an award quality story, but so was "The Tale of the Golden Eagle".

One more science fiction story I'd like to mention is "At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco's Homebrew Gravitics Club". I thoroughly enjoyed this fun story about a convention that takes place annually in Earth orbit. The group that gathers there is made up of people that met each other on the internet years before. Since then the group has grown, and there has been a lot of infighting and water under and over the bridge... this is a great setting, and I wonder if Levine has written any more about these folks.

On the pure fantasy side, there's "The Ecology of Faerie", a very moving story about a sixteen year old girl's encounter with faeries, and "Circle of Compassion", in which a priestess is ordered to send her spirit to an enemy camp to spy. And there's also the lovingly meta "Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely", in which a purple cartoon giraffe starts to wonder about his readers.

This is a very solid and diverse collection of stories that I enjoyed very much.

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Next up: "The Overcoat" by Nicolai Gogol

A Little More Than Halfway Through Space Magic

Stories read:
Nucleon
I Hold My Father's Paws
Zauberschrift
Rewind
Fear of Widths
Brotherhood
Circle of Compassion
Tk'tk'tk, all by David D. Levine

A very short post today - it's Superbowl Sunday, which is a holiday in my family equal to Thanksgiving. We're driving an hour to a friend's house where we'll eat food, drink a beer or two, and watch the commercials. And there's a football game on, I think.

I had hoped to finish David D. Levine's collection called Space Magic this week. Even though I'm enjoying it very much, I didn't get it done. But I did read 8 of them (including a re-read of the Hugo winning "Tk'tk'tk"), which puts me right back on pace. Twenty so far this year. Full review of Space Magic next week!

In the meantime, enjoy my favorite Superbowl commercial EVER:

Dealing with Entropy

Stories Read:
"The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick
"The Wind from a Dying Star" by David D. Levine
"The Guy with the Eyes" by Spider Robinson

How do I categorize "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick? Steampunk with talking dogs? The story appears in an anthology called Re-wired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel. So it's post-Cyberpunk... It also appears in an anthology called This is My Funniest: Leading Science Fiction Writers Present Their Funniest Stories Ever, edited by Mike Resnick, a book I clearly need to get my hands on. It is definitely funny.

The story takes place in a Victorian-like future, after a war between humans and artificial intelligences. The humans won. Sir Blackthorpe Ravenscairn de Plus Precieux (or "Surplus" for short) is a genetically engineered talking dog who, with his sidekick Darger, have a con in mind. Entertaining, funny, and very peculiar.

"The Wind from a Dying Star" is the first story in David D. Levine's collection called Space Magic. It's an interesting tale about some interstellar explorers that I thought were some kind of energy beings, but I found this note by Levine that tells me that the people in the story are "actually solid matter, a mix of biological and technological materials, though they use 'fields' to manipulate things and 'motivators' to get around." They are the further evolution of humans, actually, and I will read the story again in that context. I'll be reading the rest of this collection next week, hopefully, which hardly seems fair to Jenny! I received the eBook version of Space Magic to review over at LibraryThing as part of the Early Reviewers program, which makes me ridiculously happy.

Here's a quote I really like:
"Shared pain is lessened. Shared joy is increased. Thus do we refute entropy."
--Spider Robinson

That is a very short description of Spider Robinson's Callahan stories, and why I adore them. In world where we hear much bad news, these stories serve as a reminder of how we humans ought to treat each other. "The Guy with the Eyes" is the first Callahan story, published in Analog Science Fiction by Ben Bova in February, 1973. Callahan's Place is a bar where people bring their problems, and others are there to listen and share their pain. There are also puns. Ben Bova's Foreword in the paperback version of Callahan's Crosstime Saloon is called "Spider Robinson: The SF Writer as Empath". Indeed! Terrific stories. "The Guy with the Eyes" is five-star.

This puts me at 12 stories for the year so far. At this rate, I will reach only 168 and almost a half. I am pacing myself like Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France. Except without the drugs. Unless you count coffee as a drug, in which case I better schedule my interview with Oprah!

Planet Hopping, with Love and Without

Stories Read:
"The Bone Flute" by Lisa Tuttle
A World Out of Time by Larry Niven, contains "Rammer"

"The Bone Flute" is a short story by Lisa Tuttle that won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1982. One of the reasons I enjoy working through lists is that I'll read stories that I wouldn't normally read, and this one falls into that category. I'm not sure why, but the title "The Bone Flute" evokes "fantasy" to me, so I was surprised when the story opened in a bar on a space station. There the female protagonist watches a man perform an erotic dance, then meets him afterward. She's a trader, and is planning to make a trip to a planet that has had little contact with other worlds. Her attraction to the man is strong, so she offers to bring him along. The planet has a reputation of the most incredible music... and the rest is to be discovered for yourself. I found this story on Amazon for the Kindle for 99 cents.

Second up this week is "Rammer" by Larry Niven, which was part of a novel I read for a discussion on the SFFaudio Podcast. The novel is called A World Out of Time, and "Rammer", originally a stand-alone short story, was the first chapter of the book. Quick description: a man wakes up in the year 2100-something after being frozen in 1970. He's awakened by The State, who wants him to fly a spaceship alone to some potential colony worlds, then return.

For me, the short story was the best part of the novel, but, as Jesse and Tam pointed out to me on the podcast, the book is full of ideas, and that's great.

Since I read "Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, I've been very interested in the concept of ambiguity in fiction. This is an illustration of that concept. At the end of "Rammer", the main character says where he's going to go next: the galactic hub, and maybe the Clouds of Magellan. Then the story ends, leaving the reader a sense of wonder. The novel takes off from there, and though I liked the continuing story, I liked the sense of wonder the original story left me with better. I can certainly see the value in leaving the story just as it was.

A short update this week! I better do one of two things - get on the ball and read a bunch this week, OR employ Tam to send Jenny some thousand page Peter Hamilton novels. Great North Road, Jenny. Great North Road!

11 stories so far for me this year, and I'm loving every minute of it.

Next up: "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick

Some Sisters and Some Givers

Week 2!

Stories Read:
"Sister Emily's Lightship" by Jane Yolen
"The Giver" (1994) by Lois Lowry
"Slow Sculpture" (1970) by Theodore Sturgeon
"Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism" (2011) by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden

I dwell in possibility, Emily Dickinson writes in the first line of Jane Yolen's poet-meets-alien story called "Sister Emily's Lightship". In the story notes included in Sister Emily's Lightship and Other Stories, Yolen says she got the idea for the story after reading a Dickinson poem with a line about a "band of stars". A nice idea for a good story. I loved Emily's answer when asked by the alien about what she does in this world. "I tell the truth," she said. "But I tell it slant." This won the Best Short Story Nebula Award in 1998.

The Giver by Lois Lowry is a short dystopian YA novel that is one of the best stories I've read for a long while. In a review that I'm nearly finished with, I call it a "thought experiment". The story inspires a person to think about what things could be done to make sure that we humans treat each other better, what the consequences of those things might be, and ultimately what kinds of things are people willing to sacrifice to avoid pain. The society in the story is extreme. No pain allowed; but also, no joy. Puberty causes conflict, so the moment a citizen has "stirrings", he or she is put on pills to curb the effects. All kids are treated exactly the same. When they are little, they are given comfort objects, when they are a certain age, they are given a bicycle, etc. There's no room in this society for people that don't fit. Those people are "released", but no one in the society knows for sure what that means.

When Jonas turns twelve, he's given his life's work assignment. He's given a very special job - to receive society's past memories, full of the pain and joy they contain, and he'll see things for what they really are. He'll understand everything that the rest of society has been protected from. Terrific book. Very happy that my 12 year old daughter read and discussed it in school. In fact, she gave me this book for Christmas. How cool is that?

Theodore Sturgeon also expresses a sort of disdain for the society he finds himself in, or at least the main character in his famous story, "Slow Sculpture", does. It's a good story about an innovator who has devised a cure for cancer. He's visited by a woman that needs his procedure. The most striking aspect of the story is a very large bonsai tree in the courtyard of his home which becomes an object of contemplation for the characters. In that contemplation lies Sturgeon's point, which is something like: "Why don't people listen more to the smart people?" The solution offered is that the smart people ought to shape society the same way a bonsai tree is shaped. Slow sculpture. The story won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1970/71.

Last up this week is "Father Gaetano's Puppet Catechism" by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. Mike Mignola is the creator of Hellboy. I haven't read any Hellboy comics, but have seen and liked some of the art, and have seen and liked very much Guillermo del Toro's two movies. I listened to this one, since it arrived at SFFaudio for review. Nick Podehl narrated. I see that the description of the novella at Amazon says that it's an "illustrated novella", so I'll have to check out the art when I run across a copy. In short, it's a good novella about an Italian orphanage in World War II. Father Gaetano and the nuns at the orphanage, in an effort to connect with the children, makes use of a puppet stage that had been abandoned in the basement. He uses the puppets to teach Bible stories, first painting them to match the characters they are to portray. The problem is, these puppets come to life at night, like we know puppets do, and they take on the persona of the Biblical characters they were painted to resemble. It wasn't the best idea to paint one as the fallen angel Lucifer.

Alright Jenny - Goodreads shows you at 5 books, and I am now at 7 stories! Doing a touchdown dance that I designed my very own self.

The Devil, a Secret, and a Giant Robot

Week 1 of Scott's attempt to keep up with Jenny:

Stories Read:
"Young Goodman Brown" (1835) by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"The Secret Place" (1966) by Richard McKenna
"Farewell to the Master" (1940) by Harry Bates

Young Goodman Brown, what are you doing walking down a well-worn path in the woods with Satan? And Nathaniel Hawthorne, why would you send this poor guy out there? This is a terrific story that's full of ambiguity and symbolism. After thinking about it, my best interpretation is that Young Goodman Brown had a dream, and through that dream realized that not everyone's a saint. And he took it hard. The realization affected the rest of his life.

In 1966, Richard McKenna (1913-1964) won a posthumous Nebula Award for Best Short Story. The story was "The Secret Place", and it's first appearance was in Damon Knight's Orbit 1. I don't believe I've read a Richard McKenna story before, but I enjoyed this one. It was about a World War II soldier who was given the job of keeping his eye on an area of desert in Utah where a Uranium rock was found. Despite the military's efforts, no further treasures were found there. The soldier's job was to drive the property every day with a geiger counter, and to accomplish this the military gave him an office and a secretary. The secretary, though, had a strange connection with the property. When she went outside, she saw a completely different place.

We're watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) over at Good Story, so I thought I'd read the story that inspired the script. Harry Bates published "Farewell to the Master" in the 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction that also contained "Slan" by A.E. van Vogt. It's a ripping good tale from the Golden Age of Science Fiction. There are plenty of differences between this and the movie, but the giant robot was there (named Gnut, not Gort). The story opens with a guy taking photographs of giant Gnut, who had appeared out of nowhere in a ship with a guy named Klaatu a while back. The robot never moves... or does it? An entertaining story with a surprise or two at the end. I listened to this one from Blackstone Audio, read by Tom Weiner.

I am keeping pace with Jenny so far. I better up my game, though - at this rate, I'll read only 182.5 stories this year and that won't do! I better cancel that walk in the woods I had planned for tomorrow morning, and read a story instead.

Next up: "Sister Emily's Lightship" by Jane Yolen

Scott Lays Down the Gauntlet

I was texting (via Skype) with the good folks over at SFFaudio a few weeks ago: Jesse, Tamahome, and Jenny. I noted that Jenny was approaching 200 books read in 2012. 200! Being an envious sort of guy, I jokingly said, "I bet I could read 200 short stories in a year. Ha."

A few minutes later, that became "Hey! I bet I could read 200 short stories next year!"

After fierce negotiations with the brain trust behind Reading Envy, here I am. Terms will not be disclosed, other than my goal: To read as many short stories as Jenny reads books in 2013.

This blog likes a good list (and I do too), so I made a list of short stories that I want to read. It's cobbled together from a list of award-winning stories that I've been meaning to finish, the contents of some collections I want to read (like The Best of Gene Wolfe and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor), and some outside suggestions. After the list was complete, I randomized it because that's exactly the kind of thing I do. The result? A list of 313 novellas, novelettes, and short stories.

I'm sure I'll edit that list this year, and I won't stick exclusively to it, either. How could I, with things like Analog and Lightspeed Magazine coming out every month? And there are Hugo Award nominees to read this summer.

The contract says that I should post more or less weekly to keep Reading Envy up-to-date on my progress. I plan to comply because the stated penalty involves "No Books For Me" for a frightening length of time. *shudder*

First up? "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I'm hoping that Jenny hasn't started yet. Someone distract her with something shiny!
 
 
A few words about me: I'm Scott D. Danielson - I use the D in the middle because there are a few of us Scott Danielsons haunting the internet. I'm co-founder of SFFaudio, I co-host a podcast called A Good Story is Hard to Find, and I published a short story of my own a while back.

I'm on Twitter, Google+, and Goodreads. I'm also on Letterboxd - a bit like Goodreads but for movies.