Re: Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse

In “Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse,” by Andy Duncan, Father Leggett, a priest in Savannah of the early 30s, receives a peculiar phone message taken by the church secretary. OCONNORS MARY PRIEST? CHICKEN! He meets Mary O’Connors, a little girl with a frizzled chicken she calls Jesus Christ. It’s the best name, you know. As […]

Re: The Last Stand of the Elephant Man

“Captive Girl” may have creeped me out, but when a story gets under my skin like that, there’s a writer who knows what’s she doing. So I went looking for other works by Jennifer Pelland, and was glad to find “The Last Stand of the Elephant Man“. Joseph Merrick (once known as the “Elephant Man” […]

Re: The Story of Love

“The Story of Love”, by Vera Nazarian, opens with an interesting passage offering the thesis that love unifies two opposites into something like steel. Then we meet Crea, who has just been beaten by her father, carefully, so as not to spoil her beauty. We learn that her father, Nahad, grieves for her mother, as […]

Re: Stars Seen Through Stone

Vernon is a small-time regional music producer who landed in Black William, Pennsylvania with his (now) ex-wife, Andrea, when their car broke down. Perhaps because he’s recounting events that happened ten years before the main action of the story, the opening passage of “Stars Seen Through Stone,” by Lucius Shephard, sounds stiff in its formality […]

Re: Kiosk

The Secret History of Moscow gave us a glimpse of the kiosks filling the streets. In “Kiosk,” by Bruce Sterling, we see into their hectic world. Borislav runs a little kiosk that’s so sucessful, a woman from the EU buys him out. His customers are heart-broken at the loss of the source of their hair […]

Re: Wikihistory

After struggling to like some of these Nebula-worthy stories, it came as a relief to stumble on a story that just plain made laugh. “Wikihistory” by Desmond Warzel is an amusing short about time travelers maintaining the wiki of the world’s timeline.Part of its charm comes from the way it turns Godwin’s Law on its […]

Re: The Fiddler of Bayou Teche

Come here, cher, and I tell you a story. The opening lines of “The Fiddler of Bayou Teche,” by Delia Sherman establish an intimate narrative voice, so clear you can hear her speaking inside your head. Better yet, read it out loud. Cadence is an albino girl who lives out in the swamp with her […]

Re: Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter

A xerox machine prints photos of the dead killed by Pol Pot until it drives away the people in the building. Right from the beginning I loved the mix of tradition and technology in the ghost story that opens “Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy),” by Geoff Ryman. After that, it says: Then we construct Pol […]