John Scalzi keeps the introduction and the stories short in this collection of 17 2000-words-or-less stories (and one poem). He learned to write short articles under time pressure for a newspaper—and developed a style that was “…fast, punchy, and to the point.” He believes it to be one of his natural formats—along with the full-length novel, of course.
Your taste may vary, but here are a few that stood out to me as I sprinted through them:
“Alien Animal Encounters” is Scalzi’s first published story consisting of short interviews collected by a reporter from ordinary humans who own extraordinary pets.
“Pluto Tells All” was written after that ex-planet was stripped of its status in 2006. Pluto comes across as gossipy, defensive, and a little bitter. Credible.
“When the Yogurt Took Over” is about our favorite healthy breakfast dominating the home world. Guess those dieters weren’t eating it fast enough.
“Important Holidays on Gronghu” is a memo to employees of Earth’s embassy with guidance about how to and how not to celebrate various Earth and Gronghuan holidays. It does a nice job of profiling an alien culture indirectly.
The stories entertain and amuse, but lack the punch I expect from good flash fiction. As a collection, they show the author’s background in news writing. Most are in the form of actual brief documents such as news articles, memos, interview transcripts and the like. One might tire of this format if there were twice as many stories or the ones here were twice as long.
Oh, and the poem just doesn’t work for me. Sorry.
- File Size: 1050 KB
- Print Length: 104 pages
- Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
- Publisher: Subterranean Press (December 31, 2016)
- Publication Date: December 31, 2016
- Sold by: Amazon.com Services LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B01NCF8YH6
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Word Wise: Enabled
- Lending: Enabled
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Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#214,124 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #492 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Kindle Store)
- #44943 in Literature & Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #739 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)
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