Bored Now

My employer's computer network is down, the boys are at swimming, and I have nothing to do while I wait for IT to fix the problem. So here I am. Let's talk short stories (if I can get my kitty with the ponytail fetish OFF MY NECK! Down, Spike! Sure, it's all fun and games until you start to feel like your falling...)

I mostly hate them. What I lovely thing for me to say, I know, being a writer myself, but it's true. My curve isn't even 10% good for 90% crap (which is supposed to be like the Golden Rule of any genre). I like quite a bit less than 5%, I would guess. For instance: I have about five volumes of WOTF compilations, to check out the competition. The overwhelming majority of them I never get past the third or fourth paragraph. Out of all of them the only one I genuinely liked was In Orbite Medievali from Volume XVI. I've read it twice, and that's high praise from me. It's a really cool idea and the prose is very engaging. I'll name names here, that was Tobias Buckell (Toby in this anthology), and I already preordered his first novel on Amazon.

Other than that, the only story that made an impression was Beautiful Singer by Steve Bein. I could see someone making a really creepy movie out of this one. Or perhaps not; many really good Stephen King stories have ended up as deeply bad films. Imagine a really cool director with a great sense of visuals, particularly of color. Hmm, M. Knight Shyamalan?

At any rate, I also subscribe to Asimovs, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. ROF prints way too many myth and folklore retreads for my taste. I like them when they're brilliant like Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples, but few are brilliant. To be fair, I've read so much mythology and folklore myself I've probably burned out on it; there is nothing new to be said here for me. They are probably very interesting stories for people who don't know the source material so well. Wait, that sounds really conceited. You realize that mythology obsession is unhealthy and socially disruptive. Umm, like a Star Trek thing only without the social element of having other Trekers to share your obsession with. I'd have more friends if I read less books, right? OK...

Asimov's tends to run a little dry for my tastes, but there have been two good ones recently: Shadow Twin by Gardner Dozois, George R. R. Martin, and Daniel Abraham was really good. I kept thinking I knew where the story was going, but then it took a 90 degree turn. And it did this a couple of times! Very well crafted. The other I really liked was The Little Goddess by Ian McDonald. It had a mythology/religion back drop but used it to tell a really interesting story about a girl. I liked it immensely.

Mailman came. No SASE. Grrrr. Waiting...

Where was I? With FSF I usually make it through more of the stories, but there hasn't been much I think back on later. Nothing haunts me, and I like to be haunted. Spell by Bruce McAllister was pretty good, but I just read it last night so we cannot yet assess the long-term effects.

You know, I'm probably just way too picky, but it came to me recently that life is short, which is a cliche but you know what I mean. When I was 15 I used to read the same books over and over, and now I realize that even books I really like I might never get a chance to read again because there is so much else out there to be read. I don't have the patience for B-grade stuff when there are A's waiting for me (and yes we are grading on a curve here). The problem is finding the A's. They could be anywhere. I try to solicit recommendations from other readers, but that's often an iffy proposition, individual tastes widely vary.

But the next person to tell me I simply have to read The DaVinci Code is losing a limb. I swear. Amazon should do one of their redirects, "If you liked The Davince Code, you'll love Foucault's Pendulum!" And we could watch people's heads explode. Or something.

Ahh, Umberto Eco.