Short Story Time

I used to love short stories. A collection of Asimov or Clarke or Bradbury short stories? I was a happy camper, as a kid. But something happened along the way. Suddenly, I just had no desire to read short stories at all. I don't know why. Maybe it was that I wanted a longer commitment with the book I was reading, something that was going to keep with me past 30 or so pages. Or if I were going to invest my emotions as a reader with characters, I wanted them to stay with me for hundreds of pages.

Perhaps that's one reason I loved the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton. Published in three books in the UK (nine in the US), each of the books (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist & The Naked God) is more than 1,000 pages long. Now that's a commitment! Of course, I'm a pretty fast reader, so that's another reason a 1,000 page plus book goes over well with me. It's going to last a bit longer.

Hamilton's trilogy is rich with characters and really is a page turner. And unlike Kevin J. Anderson's Saga Of Seven Suns series (seven novels, I've done the first five), you don't feel like it's stuffed with filler. I do like Anderson's writing, but each novel seems to barely progress things.

But suddenly, I'm back in the groove with short stories. I've had this copy of Counting Up, Counting Down -- alternative reality short stories by Harry Turtledove -- on the "to read" bookshelf for ages. For whatever reason, I finally dusted it off this week and started in. I knocked off the first story and found I really enjoyed it, that didn't mind that it was going to come to an end so quickly. It may have been brief, but I enjoyed it -- as the other ones I'm reading. It's nice to rediscover the joys of short stories.

Ah, that first story may seem short, but wait until you hit the last one, which continues / retells the first...

Comment by Simon Heseltine | April 3, 2008 7:19 PM

I just finished 'The Naked God'. Fantastic series, it did seem to end rather suddenly though ... You'd enjoy the 'Commonwealth Saga' also by Hamilton.

IMO he paints the richest pictures of the future I've ever come across.

Comment by Stevechol | April 5, 2008 11:15 AM

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