"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one." – George R. R. Martin
For “Throwback Thursday” I have a less well known story by the short story master that they named the award after. This one is from his collection The Four Million, so called because it takes place in New York City, which had four million residents at that time. A young man is led by destiny to the door of a damsel in distress. It has his trademark twist at the end. Enjoy!
The Green Door by O. Henry (1906) – 2,679 words (about 11 minutes for the average reader)
Today’s story comes from the amazing Uncanny Magazine. In it a scientist who used his son to collect data for an AI prison, goes to that prison to make amends for how that data collection affected his son.
SuperMAX by Daniel H. Wilson (2023) – 7,914 words (about 32 minutes for the average reader)
I first read this classic story in high school. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1956. It is the story of a Jesuit priest who accompanies a mission to a remote star that expired in a supernova thousands of years ago. They are visiting the star system because a civilization lived there that was destroyed by the star’s explosion. But as the priest tells the story, he raises a surprising and important question.
The Star by Arthur C. Clarke (1955) – 2,432 words (about a ten minute read for the average reader)
Everyone is wringing their hands about the dangers of smartphones and social media. Attentions spans seem to be getting shorter and shorter. The response? Banning cell phones in schools. Some teenagers are reducing the social media they interact with and turning off notifications. My teenage nephew only uses SnapChat and has all other notifications on his phone turned off. People of all ages are trying to get their attention back.
At the same time, many are looking to get back into reading fiction. Numerous studies show that reading fiction increases the reader’s empathy. As George R.R. Martin once wrote, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” But how to start reading, or get back into it, when your attention has been hacked to pieces in our smartphone era? For a lot of people, reading a novel has become a real challenge. My suggestion is to start with short stories. These can be read online for free all over the internet. If you haven’t already, consider taking all the social media apps off your phone. Then when you pull out your phone for a quick hit of entertainment the next time you are bored, read a short story.
But how do I find good short stories to read? Funny you should ask… Starting tomorrow, each weekday at noon Eastern Time, I will be posting a short description of and a link to one of my favorite short stories that you can read online for free. These will be in a variety of genres but since my favorite is speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) they will be over represented. If you aren’t a fan of those kinds of stories, give these a chance. My focus on what I am choosing is good storytelling and good stories more than anything else.
My hope is that this will help a lot of people who wish to move away from having their attention grabbed by an algorithm that merely wants to monetize their eyeballs by enraging readers. Instead, exercise your empathy muscles by reading a short story every weekday during your lunch break. Perhaps this will be just the start you need to start reading more fiction.
I read this as member of my book club at my local library. We each read a different book on a particular topic. For the most recent meeting we read historical fiction that takes place prior to the twentieth century. I kind of cheated with this one. It is short stories and only some of them go that far back in time. But it seemed to be a hit when I told them about it.
The editor was able to get stories from a lot of well know contemporary authors of science fiction. The theme of the anthology was time travel love stories. The book’s title as a call out to the 1980 move Somewhere in Time was totally on purpose. There were sixteen stories in the book. Here are my brief synopses and ratings.
The average of these ratings give the book as a whole a rating of 4/5.
Once again, I was on the road for a soccer tournament. And once again, I was on the hunt for an audiobook to listen to during my drive. I dug into my list of novellas and came up with this one. It is has been on my list so long now, I have no record or recollection of why I added it.
A young woman’s boyfriend casually mentions that he is getting married… to someone else. The young girl is so devastated and embarrassed, that she quits her job where she works with her ex. Shortly after that, her uncle invites her to live in a small room over his used bookshop in Tokyo. Having nowhere else to go, she accepts. Naturally, her experience there and the space she has from her past mistakes gives her the room to grow.
As an American, there was a lot that I struggled to relate to. The main character feels a little too naive. But perhaps that is cultural. It certainly wasn’t enough to ruin a wonderful story. Between books and the love of her family, she starts to overcome her past. She also learns about her uncle’s past and their relationship grows. This is a sweet and relatable coming of age story set in another culture.
My rating: 4/5
I learned about this book through Locus Magazine. In February, they had their reviewers list their best books of the year. Archita Mittra included Orbital in her list. On one of my regular road trips to referee a soccer tournament, I listened to this winner of the 2024 Booker Prize.
The book covers a day in the life of four astronauts and two cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station. Each chapter is titled according to each of the sixteen orbits taken in a single day. Not a lot happens in this short novel. Much of the book is given to evocative and vivid descriptions of the views from the ISS. We also learn a bit of the back story of those on board and how they are dealing with life on the station as well as how they are relating to their family left down on Earth.
Unfortunately, this book goes nowhere. Nothing interesting or exciting happens on the station. There is no inciting incident. I kept waiting for something to go wrong and for those on board to work together to overcome it. Nada. Don’t misunderstand, the writing is incredibly powerful and descriptive. You feel like you are experiencing what it must be like to be in orbit. And those on board have rich pasts and incredibly supportive relationships with each other despite the politics of their countries. But there is no plot whatsoever. This book is everything that English teachers love and their students love to hate.
My rating: 2/5
This book was up for a lot of awards last year. Inevitably, I heard a lot about it. It was a finalist for the Booker Award and the Pulitzer Prize and won the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. My book club reads Black history or fiction in February and selected this book to read.
The easiest way to describe this book is that it retells the tale of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain from the perspective of the enslaved man Jim. In addition to the fact that he prefers to go by James, there is a lot of the story here that is not in Huckleberry Finn. Everett gives us a glimpse into what he imagines happened to James during the times he and Huck were separated.
I started to write that this book is a gut punch, but that is not quite right. It is more subtle, powerful, and longer lasting than that. The enslaved speak in slave dialect as a choice, in order to help disarm the slavers into thinking of them as stupid and helpless. And yet the hopelessness and fear of being enslaved is palpable. No matter what someone enslaved does, they are guilty. The story really brings home the powerlessness of their position. And yet, in the midst of such overwhelming adversity, James finds a way over and over to express his own agency. This is a stunning work.
My rating: 5/5
As I continue to transition to reading more short fiction (short stories and novellas), in addition to reading Clarkesworld Magazine each month I am trying to read at least one short story a day. As I am very interested in encouraging others to get into reading fiction regularly, starting in March I am going to do my best to post a review every day of the highest rated stories I have read. Some will be old, some more recent. Most will be speculative fiction of some kind. In addition to posting them here, I will also be posting them on my Facebook group, Instagram, and BlueSky. Now, on to my reviews of the fiction in this month’s Clarkesworld.
“Bodyhoppers” by Rocío Vega, translated from Spanish by Sue Burke (5,280 words) — A person wakes up in a new body and races to find their lover before they are both caught for pirating a body. The story starts in 3rd person point of view then transitions to 1st person before ending in 2nd person. It is so smoothly done you almost can’t see it. And it works seamlessly. An excellent blend of starting in the middle of the action and revealing the world as the story unfolds without losing or confusing the reader. (My rating: 5/5)
“King of the Castle” by Fiona Moore (6,280 words) — An angry, violent young man threatens his community while they search for a way to bring him back into the fold. The story takes place in the same world and after the events “The Spoil Heap” by the same author. I thoroughly enjoyed that story and the world. Unfortunately, this one fell a little flat for me. (My rating: 3/5)
“We Begin Where Infinity Ends” by Somto Ihezue (9,270 words) — Kids work to save fireflies by toning down the brightness of streetlights and learn the power of love and working together. This one has the depth and feel of a novel. It also has the feel of ‘eighties childhood like in Stranger Things or E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial where kids have their own space to do things without adults constantly hovering around. (My rating: 5/5)
“A Planet Full of Sorrows” by M. L. Clark (13,110 words) — When evidence of a dead alien race on another planet starts a space race to get there, the discovering scientists try to figure out how to stop it. The race is between three proselytizing religions that all have tacit government backing. A look at how capitalism complicates scientific efforts. (My rating: 4/5)
“The Hanging Tower of Babel” by Wang Zhenzhen translated from Chinese by Carment Yiling Yan (6,380 words) — A son cares for his father with Alzheimer’s disease who was mostly absent from his life due to his work in deep space. Reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise, which I read in high school. It too had an elevator to orbit like the Stairway to Heaven in this story. Poignant, heartbreaking, and bittersweet. (My rating: 5/5)
“Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents” by Louis Inglis Hall (3,560 words) — The history of six regents told through the coins minted for each. It is descriptions of six coins interspersed with the “history” around them. It is a clever premise, but not much is done with it. For me, it is not quite a story. But it does have a clever twist. (My rating: 3/5)
“Celestial Migrations” by Claire Jia-Wen (3,090 words) — Miners who ride celestial rays home for the lunar new year to see their son learn how the space creatures reproduce. The writing is not very clear for me. It’s like jumping into the midst of the story without enough being explained within the text. Despite the defect in the storytelling, it is a poignant tale of parents sacrificing for their son. But that is a big defect for me. (My rating: 2/5)
Average Rating: 3.86/5
For my trip to a recent soccer tournament where I refereed, I was looking for a novella that I could complete while driving. Since I would be driving alone, I only had my own tastes to consider. I keep a list of books I am interested in reading. I sorted to those I had tagged as “novella”. When I saw this one, it was an easy choice. I thoroughly enjoyed the author’s first novel The Mountain in the Sea. So I cued this up for my trip.
The book follows a park ranger who is fighting poachers to save the elephants she is an expert on. One hundred years after she is murdered, her uploaded mind is re-awakened to be inserted into the leader of a resurrected mammoth herd on the steppes of Russia. The hope is that her knowledge of elephant behavior can help the struggling mammoth herd to survive. But that is not the only challenge faced by the herd. With the resurrection of the mammoth has come the return of poachers who caused the extinction of elephants in the wild.
The audiobook is read by two narrators, one reading the parts about the park ranger and one reading the parts of the poachers and hunters. This is very effective as is the writing. The book delves into the struggles against elephant poaching and the market for ivory while also exploring what it would mean to be a human mind inserted into a non-human animal. It is a philosophical adventure that I thoroughly enjoyed.
My rating: 5/5