This story is a great example of a short story that doesn’t follow a narrative structure but succeeds anyway.
Its full title is Theories of the Point of View Shifts In AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long”
Nightmare Town is the title story in this collection by the Noir master. Having mostly watched movies adapted from Raymond Chandler stories, and pastiches of Noir by others, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
I was, however, preparing for a reading at a Noir night, and thought I ought to do some research before I wrote a story to fit the theme.
Wow.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammet”
My notes, on reading this story, simply say: “Wow”.
A List of Forty-Nine Lies is a pretty intriguing title, and the story delivers immediately.
My name is not Levi. I am not afraid. The machines that hover in swarms over the streets cannot read the thoughts inside my head.
I am not running from them. I have nothing to hide.
Continue reading “[Reading Room] A List of Forty Seven Lies by Steven Fischer”
But concentrating on that takes away from the exquisite, concise, clear writing, characterization and big ideas of the original material. He really is a tremendously good writer.
His stories contain big ideas, thoughtfully dealt with in crisp prose that I could read until the end of time.
This story was adapted into an early Twilight Zone episode. It comes from the early days of space exploration, when ideas were big and facts in short supply. Some of the assumptions in the story are suspect by today’s scientific standards, but that was never what these early sci-fi stories were about. (You know, unless they were written by Arthur C. Clarke, who also had a hand in inventing Radar, so he’s a bit of a special case.)
In this story three men in a space ship survey new planets, looking for new homes for the humans from the chronically overcrowded Earth. When they go down to investigate a particular planet, things start to get weird.
From that point on, the story is a purely about human nature and drama, with the space-faring backdrop becoming fairly unimportant.
That’s one of the things I find irresistible about science fiction. The writers hook you with the setting, with the gadgets and the ‘what ifs’, but then all the best stories end up being about the human condition.
They do what art is supposed to do: make life look a little bit strange, so that we can reassess our own position towards it. No matter which side of the political shouting match you’re on, it seems like that’s something our civilization could us at the moment, don’t you think?
What setting or story type could you use to reel in a reader who needs to see part of their own life with fresh eyes?
Occasionally, however, a book comes along that I really think you should know about. This week, it’s The Business of Being A Writer by Jane Friedman.
Jane has been around the business of writing and publishing for a while now and really knows her stuff.
Here’s the start of the review I posted to Amazon:
I read a lot of self-help and inspirational books, and writing advice (heck, I write some). Most of it is the “Woohoo! You can do this!” type necessary to psyching yourself up to do the difficult business of wrangling words and sharing them.
This book is not one of those books.
This book is your older, wiser, best friend who loves you, and sits you down to say,
“Girl, I believe you can do it if you want to–you know I do. But first, let me show you what ‘it’ really looks like… Continue reading “[Reading Room] The Business of Being a Writer by Jane Friedman”
I knew a man who only read non-fiction because he “didn’t see the point” of fiction. Would it surprise you to know that this man was one of the least empathetic I never knew?
I firmly believe that fiction is more powerful than non-fiction, as a way to help us understand each other’s truths. So I used Black History Month as an excuse to seek out short fiction by writers of color. I picked up this collection at my local library, and the first story in the collection has already confirmed my belief.
“I’d Rather Go Blind” is the story of a moment in a pre-teen boy’s life during the ‘hot and forbidding’ summer of ’67. In fact, that’s the opening line, Continue reading “[Reading Room] I’d Rather Go Blind by Jabari Asim”
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A 6-part journey through the short story.
Starts Jan 3, 2025
