Tag: short stories

Categories
book reading reviews

Gates of Eden – Ethan Coen

Gates of Eden is a short story collection by Ethan Coen of the Coen Brothers movie-writing-directing fame. I bought it in around 2000 I think and as is much easier with books of short stories (and fairly easy for me with books of any kind) abandoned it after it didn’t seem to be quite what I thought it might be.

However my current practice is to have a short story collection on the go at the same time as reading whatever current novel I’ve got so that I’ve got an alternative if I’m not into the novel, but one which won’t involve having to keep up with two longer story-lines at once.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. I suppose I was hoping for something along the lines of the Coens’ better (or my favourite of their) films. In a way that’s what I got. Some of the stories were very dialogue heavy – there were several from first person POV and a few that were literally scripts – and the dialogue had that quirky interesting cadence to it. Also similar themes to some of the movies – people involved in the lower levels of the crime world, or just the odd corners of society. A couple were more a ‘slice of life’ from a Jewish-American perspective, which while interesting didn’t grab me because of the lack of a story per se.

So there was stuff to like here but I wasn’t overwhelmed. Mind you, if I saw the Big Lebowski today, for the first time, I’m not sure it would have as big an impact on me. What seemed quirky and fun when I was younger might seem a bit sadder now that I’m close to the Dude in age.

6/10 – mostly a curiosity or one for the Coens completist.

Categories
book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED Book 28: Pump Six and Other Stories – Paolo Bacigalupi

It’s been a while since I did a book of short stories. I got this book through Humble Bundle’s first ebook bundle. For those that haven’t heard of them Humble Bundle usually specialise in “indie” computer games. They sell based on a “pay what you want” basis with some money going to charity and the files are unencumbered by DRM. I bought one of their earlier bundles because I wanted to support the business model which I like (particularly the no-DRM part). Anyway I now have an extra 12 books on my TBR list so I thought I’d better read at least one.

I’d heard of Bacigalupi and already owned The Windup Girl, but hadn’t read him. All I really knew was that he was well regarded and could be broadly considered “steampunk”.

When you’re trying to review a collection of stories you naturally tend to look for themes or similarities. This is perhaps unfair to some of the individual stories but I’m going to do it anyway because otherwise I need to review each story in turn and I don’t have the time or the heart for that.

I suppose there are two things that stand out for me that came through in nearly all the stories. The first is that Bacigalupi’s style veers toward a lot of description of the background details. This isn’t something I always enjoy but I know that for some it puts you right there in that world and makes it feel rich and complete. The second is that the stories are almost all kind of morality tales. They take a trend that’s occurring in our current time and extrapolate it into a possible future and show the ill effects this might have, whether that’s patented GM crops in The Calorie Man or global warming’s effect on water conservation with The Tamarisk Hunter. Again, potentially this isn’t something I will always enjoy because it can veer toward preachy but I think it most cases it avoided being too directly that.

My favourites were Pump Six – the tale of a society in decline where no-one is any longer interested in the technology that supports their lifestyle, Pop Squad – the story of a future where the trade-off for constant re-juvenation is enforced infertility, The Fluted Girl – about body modification gone mad, and The People of Sand and Slag – about the effects of physical invulnerability.

7/10 – definitely a good collection, some gems here.




Categories
6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea – Ursula K. Le Guin (pages 8490-8703)

Some time around the middle of the year I started reading collections of short stories as a break from lengthier books. I’ve still got a few on the go but this is one I both started and finished this year[1].

I’d never read any Le Guin before but was aware of her reputation and had thought about reading one of her more famous novels. However I decided this would be a better way to discover if I liked her style or not.

There’s a range of stories here, all except one in a SciFi or Fantasy vein. A couple are little more than jokes. There’s one that’s a parable about gender roles. The final three – including the one the collection takes its name from – all take place in a connected universe. This irked me slightly whilst reading the first one. I like things to be self-contained. When the world is already alien and you’re having to learn about new technology, races, cultures and planets it seems to annoy me when some of that is not relevant to the current story. However I do acknowledge that this is a quirk of mine and in other contexts I don’t expect stories stripped down to just the essential for the current narrative.

I enjoyed these stories although it seems my favourites were the ones, according to the introduction that Le Guin was least happy with herself, or saw as less substantial. In particular the parable one, The Rock that Changed Things, she felt was a little too on the nose and preachy. I also enjoyed the jokes. The others contained things that were a little strange. Sometimes strange and beautiful, sometimes just odd.

She’s clearly a gifted writer but I don’t think I’ll go back to her for a while.

6/10 – Probably most enjoyable if you’re already a fan.

[1]Which leads to a dilemma about whether I ‘count’ the others if I finish them next year.
Categories
25 books reading

25 Books, book 7, Binary – The Vaccinator/Andy Warhol’s Dracula

This book is actually a slim volume containing two longish short stories – one from Michael Marshall Smith and one from Kim Newman. I bought it for the Smith one but have just finished both and so I’m including it in my 25 books list.

The Vaccinator

It’s hard to know what to say about this story. It’s about a guy living in the Florida Keys who hires himself out as a kind of hostage negotiator for a very particular kind of ‘kidnappings’ as he refers to them (you’ll probably know them by another phrase).

The main character is engaging – he’s one of those ultra-competent macho men that are up to any challenge. He’s not as entertaining as Stark – my favourite Smith character from Only Forward, but that would be a tall order. It’s fun and quirky and doesn’t take itself too seriously, though it’s not an outright comedy either. Worth checking out if you’re a fan or a Smith completist.

6/10

Andy Warhol’s Dracula

This is a vampire story set in the late 70s. It mixes a straight-forward narrative with excerpts from an academic paper on the life and work of Andy Warhol – who was a vampire. Or at least in this alternate world he was.

Considering that I’m such a huge fan of Buffy you might find it odd that I generally avoid vampire fiction whether in movie, TV or book form. There’s just so much of it and so much of it isn’t that original. Given that, and given that I didn’t really care for the interruptions to the story that the academic paper provides, I was a little surprised to find myself won over by this. Even more so because the writing generally was so ‘busy’ – the exact opposite of the kind of spare, simple prose I think I like. Florid descriptions and colourful word-pictures abounded.

In the end though it had an engaging main character and an intriguing concept. Johnny Pop is a vampire who at the outset kills a punk girl Nancy and frames her drug-addled boyfriend Sid for it. The story goes on to chart his rise in the 70s nightlife of New York as he creates the drug ‘drac’ which is a form of powdered vampire blood that allows you to feel the rush of being a nosferatu for a night.

This is an alternate reality where not only do vampires exist and are widely known about, almost accepted, but also is peopled with a wide variety of characters from fiction and celebrities from our world. I guess it makes sense – Warhol is someone who made art using figures from popular culture, someone who arguably ‘fed’ off the celebrity of others,  and so it’s fitting that in this world where he’s a literal vampire we bump into Travis Bickle and Tony Manero , as well as Blondie, Sid and Nancy and a whole host of others.

Spotting the references was fun – I had to look up a couple and I’m sure there’s ones I missed – but in the end it was the story that pulled me through. I did want to know what happened next.

8/10

Categories
writing

Stages of Eurofiction

I’ve signed up again for SlingInk‘s Eurofiction short story competition. Fourteen weeks, seven rounds and hopefully seven new stories. It all starts with the first round’s prompt revealed at midnight tonight.

Last year in the midst of this madness I wrote what follows about the two-week cycle of getting prompts, writing stories, submitting them and getting feedback and scores.

The Stages of Eurofiction

  • Stage one: procrastination. I’ve got loads of time, why rush it? My sub-conscious needs time to brew.
  • Stage two: head-scratching and brain-storming – this usually involves writing whatever drivel is going through my head until…
  • Stage three: an idea! This is one of the two enjoyable stages. Technically it’s not actually writing and usually happens away from the keyboard. It’ll last for anything up to five minutes before…
  • Stage four: disillusionment with idea. This stage usually does occur at the keyboard when I’m actually trying to write down my beautiful idea.

At this point I’ll usually go back to stage one and so we go around the loop a few times. Eventually though I’ll make it past stage four either because – I finally have an idea I’m happy with for more than five minutes or (more likely) deadline is looming. Which leads to

  • Stage five: exploring the idea. This is a stage where I pretend I’m a real writer and do things like write character bios, plot outlines, snippets of dialogue etc. In theory that’s what I do. In practice I usually spend a lot of time googling vaguely related topics as “research” (see also stage one)
  • Stage six: draft draft 1. Not to be confused with an actual draft, i.e. attempt at the story, this is a draft that I will almost certainly throw away. It’s filled with meta-commentary (i.e. the narrative will be interspersed with “omg how crap was that?”/”what a cliche – is that the best you can do Paul”). and what I call “general outline” (e..g I’ll write “and then he says something cool and then something interesting happens“) Draft draft 1 usually involves no more than 250 words that can actually be considered story, all of which will be scrapped.
  • Stage seven: Actual draft 1 (part 1). It’s probably less than 48 hours until the deadline now so I’ll make a concerted effort. If I came up with a useful outline in stage five I’ll use that as a guide. But it’s only a guide I can divert from it when I think of something better. Word count is now 500. Estimated word count to do justice to the story, 2500.
  • Stage eight: draft 1 (part 2). Deadline 24 hours away. Realise that the outline is crap and needs major re-organise. Realise that my part 1 is crap and needs re-writing. Promise myself I will do this just as soon as I have a complete draft 1. Word count surges up to 700 words.
  • Stage nine: Deadline 14 hours away. In desperation I’ve gotten up early to write. Still plugging away at draft 1. Crap outline is now fixed in stone as no time to change it. Curse the idiot who left me things like “he says something cool” to expand on. Wonder what the point is and why I ever thought I can write. My whole life is worthless, women will hate me and small children will point and laugh. By dint of great effort and pure act of the will force the word count up to 950.
  • Stage ten: Deadline 2 hours away. Have rushed home from work leaving important client hanging and probably pissed off my boss. Am now actually convinced that this is pure crap but all that matters is finishing. All pretension to art or talent is gone, stubbornness is all that remains. Word count 1500.
  • Stage eleven: Deadline 15 minutes away. I have finally finished! Draft 1 that is. Now for that ahem, final polish. This is simply a quick read to spot typos, spelling and grammar mistakes. Correct as many of these as I can whilst studiously ignoring massive plot holes, logic problems and other weaknesses it’s too late to fix. Achieve a Zen-like state of denial so that whilst simultaneously recognising the crap that is my story I maintain enough motivation to actually finish the process.
  • Stage twelve: deadline +/- 1 minute (probably +1 but let’s not tell the judges that) Finally hit send. I am done. The sense of relief is a pure joy. This is the other enjoyable stage. This is the purpose of writing. Like beating your head against a wall, it’s so good when it stops!
  • Stage thirteen: (actually part of stage one of the next round) – waiting for score+feedback. Remind myself (without actually re-reading) of the odd phrase or bit of dialogue that I quite like. Manage to recall that sense of self-satisfaction I had with the original idea. Become secretly convinced it’s a work of genius.
  • Stage fourteen: score/feedback arrives. EITHER am deeply shocked and hurt that the judges didn’t recognise the splendour and excellence of my talent, OR am ridiculously proud of the mediocre score and few nice comments (despite the fact that they show that what the judges read in the story wasn’t what I intended and I’ve completely failed to convey the themes and ideas I originally had). Also notice comments like “Your plot/character/dialogue/grammar is weak, take a look at how Famous Author does it” and then tell all my friends that I’ve been compared to Famous Author.

(and yes writing this was part of stage one of task 6 last year)